BENGALURU (Reuters) – Swedish defense firm Saab AB, which is seeking to sell its Gripen fighter jets to the Indian Air Force, said on Tuesday it could offer to make most of them in a production facility likely to be set up in one of the southern cities.
Saab is expected to face competition from rivals such as Boeing Co, Lockheed Martin Corp and Dassault Aviation SA to supply about 110 fighter jets to the Air Force, in what could be a deal worth more than $15 billion.
As part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ push, Saab is considering locally manufacturing 96 of the 114 jets it wants to sell to the country, the Stockholm-based company officials told reporters on the sidelines of a conference ahead of “Aero India 2019” in Bengaluru.
Saab has tied up with resources conglomerate Adani Group to sell the single-engine planes to fulfill the condition of bidders having an Indian partner to be considered for the order.
Any manufacturing facility in the country could also become an export hub, Saab’s Indian unit Chairman and Managing Director Ola Rignell told Reuters at the conference.
Southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad would be the “natural choice” for any plant.
(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
On Wednesday, the Mississippi state Senate and House of Representatives passed bills to prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable (between six and seven weeks gestation).
While the bills offer “life of the mother” exceptions, they do not make exceptions for infants conceived in rape or incest. An amendment to provide such an exception was proposed during debate, but it was ultimately defeated.
On the day the bills passed, Republican Governor Phil Bryant sent out a tweet saying that he intends to sign the legislation into law:
I’ve often said I want Mississippi to be the safest place for an unborn child in America. I appreciate the leadership of the MS House and Senate, along with members of the Legislature, for passing the fetal heartbeat bills today. I look forward to signing this act upon passage.
The pertinent text of the Senate bill reads in part:
Except when a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance with this section, no person shall perform an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining if the unborn human individual that the pregnant woman is carrying has a detectable fetal heartbeat. Any person who performs an abortion on a pregnant woman based on the exception in this section shall note in the pregnant woman’s medical records that a medical emergency necessitating the abortion existed. …
Except as provided in paragraph (b) or (c) of this subsection (5), no person shall knowingly perform an abortion on a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of the unborn human individual that the pregnant woman is carrying and whose fetal heartbeat has been detected according to the requirements of subsection (3) of this section.
The legislation goes on to make exceptions for doctors who engage in procedures that would “prevent the death of a pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”
In response to the bill’s passage, the Center for Reproductive Rights tweeted:
Last November, a federal judge struck down Mississippi’s 15-week ban, calling the law “unequivocally” unconstitutional. Now, the state is pushing an even more extreme measure, a 6-week abortion ban, in an attempt to eliminate abortion access in the state entirely.
According to the Clarion Ledger, during the floor debate on the bill, Democratic state Senator Derrick Simmons asked Republican state Senator Joey Fillingane if it was worth the money to fight this bill in court — a reference to the alleged $1.2 million the state spent fighting over 2018’s 15-week abortion ban.
Fillingane said that it was indeed worth it. Republican state Senator Michael Watson went further, asking, “What is a life worth?”
The legislation will most certainly be challenged in court.
As the above tweet noted, after Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban was signed into law in March 2018, the Center for Reproductive Rights sued. On November 20, 2018, District Judge Carlton W. Reeves ruled that the law was “unconstitutional.” He added: “Mississippi’s law violates Supreme Court precedent, and in doing so it disregards the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of autonomy for women desiring to control their own reproductive health.”
ABU DHABI (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates’ armed forces signed 5.8 billion dirhams ($1.58 billion) in contracts with international companies on Monday at the IDEX military exhibition, spokesman Brigadier General Mohammed al-Hassani said.
The contracts include a 5.3 billion dirham deal with Raytheon, al-Hassani said.
The UAE armed forces also signed contracts with local companies worth 1.14 billion dirhams.
($1 = 3.6728 UAE dirham)
(Reporting by Alex Cornwell; Editing by Toby Chopra)
At the beginning of this decade, the NBA was not on firm footing. More than half of the league’s teams were losing money, and negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement were looming.
Today, however, the NBA has undeniable momentum, buoyed by hefty broadcast agreements and superstars like LeBron James and Steph Curry. With interest in the NFL flagging in the U.S., professional basketball appears to be seizing the opportunity to win over sports fans and grow the popularity of the league.
This momentum has pushed team valuations to new heights, with the median team now being worth a solid $1.56 billion.
What are the exact valuations of individual franchises in the league, and how are these values derived? Let’s dig into Forbes’ annual NBA Valuations Ranking to learn more.
Breaking down team value
Forbes has broken down the value of an NBA team valuations into four components:
Sport: The revenue shared equally among all teams in the league
Market: City and market size
Arena: Revenues from sources such as attendance and premium seating
Brand: The actual value of the team’s brand
Every single team in the NBA is now valued at over $1 billion, and all but one team (the Cavaliers) were profitable last year.
For teams like the Knicks and Lakers, it’s easy to see how their huge market size contributes to their sky-high valuations. The former is currently the second-most-valuable sports franchise in America, tied with the New York Yankees.
While the biggest teams are worth more than double the NBA median value, the rising tide appears to be lifting all boats. The median team value has risen steadily and is up nearly 200% since 2014.
Gold Rush
The biggest story in basketball over recent years has been the ascension of the Golden State Warriors.
Making the NBA finals four seasons in a row – and winning three of those match-ups – has had a massive impact on the team’s value, which has shot up 367% over the last five years. As the team moves to the brand new Chase Center next season, Golden State may even have a shot at surpassing the Knicks or Lakers in overall valuation.
Here are the top five gainers over the past five years:
Fan Power
The teams with the highest revenue-per-fan are typically in smaller markets like Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City, though both cities are unique in that an NBA franchise is their only professional sports team.
The struggling Chicago Bulls comes in near the bottom by revenue-per-fan, despite being the fourth most valuable team in the league.
Shifting Gravity
In recent years, LeBron James has been one of the most electrifying personalities in professional sports, however, his influence on the NBA is now proving to be a double-edged sword. Since LeBron moved time zones from Cleveland to Los Angeles, NBA viewership is down – a dip that is particularly pronounced during the earlier Eastern Conference time slot.
Despite the slight dip in viewership, NBA teams are more profitable than they’ve ever been, and as the NBA turns its sights eastward to China, today’s valuations may seem modest in a few years time.
TOKYO/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Japanese share buybacks have hit a record this fiscal year and are set to maintain the booming growth as cash-rich companies bow to pressure from investors and the government to boost returns and improve governance.
In recent weeks, SoftBank Group Corp, Sony, Itochu Corp and other companies have announced plans to buy back shares worth more than 1.3 trillion yen, bringing the total value of buybacks flagged since April 1 to over 6.5 trillion yen ($58.92 billion).
That is already the most for any fiscal year since 2003 when new and stricter buyback rules were unveiled, according to financial data service firm I-N Information Systems.
Japan Buyback – https://tmsnrt.rs/2E9ABPV
Investors have long criticized Japanese companies for hoarding cash rather than investing it or returning it to shareholders, pushing down their returns on equity (ROE), a measure of the amount of profit a company generates from the money invested in it.
Buying back shares reduces a company’s equity base, boosting its ROE.
“This past month has seen a lot of very positive shareholder-friendly activity from a wide array of Japanese companies,” said Seth Fischer, founder and chief investment officer of Oasis Management, citing actions by SoftBank, Sony, Haseko, Tokyo Tatemono and Toppan Printing.
“To attract foreign investors, companies should continue this path of increasing shareholder returns, while continuing to improve their corporate governance.”
Activist investor Oasis, among others, has been vocal in urging Japanese companies to boost returns. In December, Oasis failed to block the sale of Alpine Electronics to its larger affiliate Alps Electric, but Alps did announce a 45 billion yen buyback in January, the third largest buyback that month.
Japan Inc is under pressure to appease foreign investors after they sold 13 trillion yen of Japanese stocks in 2018, more than four times the net sales in 2015 and 2016, and a sharp reversal of the net 1.9 trillion yen bought in 2017.
“Recently, the global economy is weak and the Japanese market has fallen as foreign fast money has been selling aggressively,” said Archibald Ciganer, co-head of Japanese equity at money manager T.Rowe Price.
“But those Japanese companies that have good governance are taking advantage of cheaper stock prices and putting a floor under their stock price through buybacks.”
Share buybacks have had political pushback elsewhere. In the United States, Senator Marco Rubio last week announced plans to tax buybacks in an effort to encourage companies to reinvest spare cash instead of returning it to shareholders.
In Japan, though, policy makers have been urging companies to pay more attention to the wishes of investors, most notably through the country’s corporate governance and stakeholders codes. Guidelines released last year urged firms to focus on their financial management policies, including the amount of cash they had on hand.
According to Ministry of Finance data, Japanese companies had internal reserves worth a record 446.5 trillion yen at the end of their latest fiscal year.
Japanese companies’ ROEs are expected to fall below 10 percent this fiscal year for their first decline in three years, according to Nomura Securities.
“Many Japanese companies simply have too much cash on their balance sheets weighing down their ROEs. Better capital structure management is definitely needed,” said Kin Chan, chief investment officer of Argyle Street Management.
A revision to Japan’s corporate governance code last year, designed to push companies to sell stakes in other companies, is also driving buybacks.
“Dissolving cross shareholdings, and increasing dividends and buybacks are two ways to make Japanese companies more attractive to foreign investors,” said Patrick Moonen, principal multi asset strategist at Netherlands-based NN Investment Partners.
Further buybacks are expected. Analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that buybacks will reach 7.8 trillion yen for the 12 months to the end of March 2020.
Currently, 56 percent of Japanese non-financial companies in the benchmark Topix index sit on net cash – meaning they have funds left over even if they paid all debts tomorrow. That compares with less than 20 percent in the United States or Europe, according to figures from brokerage CLSA.
“I tell investors that the presents are still under the Christmas tree,” said Nicholas Smith, CLSA’s Japan strategist.
(Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo and Alun John in Hong Kong; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
The Mississippi Legislature on Wednesday passed bills to ban abortions after an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detected — usually at about six weeks — Live Action reported.
The “heartbeat bills” passed by the state Senate and House offer no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, according to The Clarion Ledger. There are, however, exceptions if it is believed the pregnancy could cause serious harm or endanger a woman’s life.
If either bill is ultimately agreed to and signed into law, abortions would be illegal in Mississippi as soon as a heartbeat is detected. Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said he would sign a bill banning abortion as early as six weeks.
What was the debate?
Republican Sen. Joey Fillingane presented the bill in the Senate, according to the Clarion Ledger. That prompted Democratic Sen. Derrick Simmons to ask Fillingane if he was aware that Mississippi has spent $1.2 million defending in court a previous 15-week abortion ban, which was struck down by a federal judge.
During discussion, Simmons began asking a question: “Do you think it’s a wise use of taxpayer money—” but before he could finish, Fillingane interrupted and said, “Absolutely.”
Republican Sen. Michael Watson defended his colleague by asking, “Is it worth $1.2 million? What is a life worth?”
Fillingane also said that with Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court, a different ruling could prevail.
“These decisions may swing in a very different decision now,” Fillingane told Simmons.
Republican Sen. Angela Hill, one of the authors of the Senate’s heartbeat bill, gave an emotional speech about the issue.
“Times are changing in this country,” she said, the Clarion Ledger reported. “We can see more of what’s happening in the womb. … We can see that heart beating with those tests and I’ve had those tests and they’re not so bad.”
“I see in this country that we protect sea turtle eggs and we protect other endangered species of animals with a greater degree of scrutiny and zealousness than we protect a child in the womb that has a beating heart,” Hill continued. “The womb should be the safest place in the world for an unborn child. I’m asking Mississippi to be different.”
Democratic Sen. Deborah Dawkins, a former nurse, called the idea of a heartbeat bill a “misnomer.”
“In my opinion and the opinion of a lot of scientists, the heartbeat bill is a misnomer,” Dawkins said. “What is called a heartbeat by some is pulsating embryonic tissue that may become a heart.”
What else?
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Southeast complained that the bills would essentially outlaw abortion before many women “even know they’re pregnant.”
“Individual rights and freedoms go to the heart of who we are as a country, including the right to access safe and legal abortion,” said Felicia Brown-Williams, the Mississippi director at Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee are considering legislation similar to what Mississippi lawmakers approved Wednesday.
Argentina has settled an export deal with Paraguay in Bitcoin (BTC), Cointelegraph en Español reported on Thursday, Feb. 14.
In a reported first for both countries, Paraguay has bought pesticides and fumigation products worth $7,100 from Argentina, using cryptocurrency to settle the deal. The purchase was paid for in BTC and then converted into Argentine peso to settle accounts with the exporter of the agricultural chemicals.
To proceed with the payments, Argentina applied to Bitex — a Latin American financial services provider that supports Bitcoin payments.
According to the chief marketing office of Bitex, Manuel Beaudroit, the company is a part of the Argentine government’s program Exporta Simple, which facilitates the export of goods and services worth less than $15,000. Bitex, in its turn, aims to make cross-border payments for such deals more efficient.
As Cointelegraph reported, Bitex previously participated in a crypto project initiated by Argentine bank Masventas. In May 2018, Masventas announced it was considering creating an alternative to the SWIFT payment system used between banks globally. Bitex was appointed to provide the necessary ecosystem for supporting BTC transactions.
In other news for Argentina, this month, the country’s official state transport card SUBE (Sistema Único de Boleto Electrónico) — used by over seven million people in 37 locations — has startedaccepting BTC.
Meanwhile in Paraguay, global blockchain tech firm and Bitcoin mining manufacturer Bitfury partnered with South Korean peer-to-peer knowledge commons research firm, Commons Foundation, to launch several mining facilities in the country.
from 21st Century Wire: As Washington’s Secret Team continues to line-up its guns against the elected government led by Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, it’s worth reminding viewers of another recently executed regime change operation – a portion of which was caught on tape – where US State Department officials could be heard discussing their new hand-picked, post-coup […]
Bill Gates on Tuesday claimed he had paid too little tax and did not deserve to be so rich.
The 63-year-old, who is worth around £73 billion ($96.5 billion), said he and other business barons should have to contribute more.
In an interview with the Mail, he said: ‘I have paid more than $10billion (£7.75billion) in taxes but I should have paid more. I more than followed the law but I think things should be more progressive.’
The father of three made his fortune after founding Microsoft in 1975. It is now one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Mr Gates, who stepped back from his day-to-day role in 2008, is one of a handful of billionaires who have promised to leave most of their fortunes to good causes rather than to their children.
With his 54-year-old wife he runs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is dedicated to tackling poverty and disease in poorer countries.
‘I don’t deserve my fortune,’ Mr Gates added. ‘Nobody does. It has come through timing, luck, and through people I worked with. I certainly worked hard and I think software has been a beneficial thing, but I benefited from a structure too.
‘I don’t think giving the money to my children would be good for them or good for society.
‘So after whatever consumption I have, and after some left aside for the kids and for taxes, the rest of the money goes to the foundation.
‘Melinda and I work hard all the time to make sure that money goes to help those most in need.’
He said he was in favour of raising inheritance tax. In the US, parents can leave almost £9million to their heirs without being subject to tax.
Mr Gates also supported calls for more clarity about the taxes paid by technology giants so it is easier to see whether the amounts handed over are fair.
‘I’m a big fan of transparency,’ he said. ‘In terms of corporate tax, if people want to collect more from different types of companies then we need to change the law.’
His comments came as he and his wife published their annual letter setting out their main concerns about the world. They highlighted how nationalism was endangering global co-operation on important health issues.
The couple were first spurred into philanthropy after reading in a newspaper about hundreds of thousands of children dying of diarrhoea in poor parts of the world. Since then global health schemes – with help from governments and charities such as their foundation – have helped save millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost to diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Mr Gates claimed these schemes were under threat.
In his letter, he said: ‘I worry that wealthy countries are turning inward and will take such a limited view of their own self-interest that they’ll decide these efforts aren’t worth the cost.
‘Or that even if everyone agrees in principle that aid is important, they’ll be so polarized that their political allegiances will keep them from taking action.’
Mrs Gates added: ‘Strengthening health systems overseas decreases the chance of a deadly pathogen like ebola becoming a global epidemic.
‘And ensuring every parent everywhere has the opportunity to raise safe, educated, healthy kids makes it less likely they will embark on desperate journeys to seek better lives elsewhere.
‘There is nothing about putting your country first that requires turning your back on the rest of the world. If anything, the opposite is true.’
The UK Government teamed up with the Gates Foundation in 2016 to commit £3billion to fighting malaria.
Mr Gates said other organisations that would need further funding this year and next include the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Gavi, which improves access to vaccines among children in poor countries. In their letter, the couple also called for the collection of better data on women’s lives in developing countries.
They also said action was needed to cut carbon emissions.
Daily Mail
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc said it has trimmed its stake in iPhone maker Apple Inc, though none of the selling was Buffett’s, and added positions in Canada’s Suncor Energy Inc and software company Red Hat Inc.
Berkshire also appeared to have shed a $2.13 billion stake in database software company Oracle Corp after having first disclosed it in November. It is rare for Berkshire, which owns some stocks for decades, to unwind an investment so fast.
The changes were disclosed in a Thursday regulatory filing detailing Berkshire’s U.S.-listed stock portfolio as of Dec. 31, which shrank $38 billion in the quarter to $183.1 billion amid a broad selloff in stocks.
A recent change in accounting rules means that decline will likely punish Berkshire’s reported net income, though not operating profit, when the Omaha, Nebraska-based company reports fourth-quarter and year-end results, expected on Feb. 23.
Thursday’s filing includes investments by Buffett and his portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, but does not say who bought and sold what.
Berkshire said in the filing that its Apple stake shrank to 249.6 million shares in the quarter from 252.5 million, reducing its reported stake to below $40 billion as Apple’s share price slid 30 percent.
Buffett, though, had nothing to do with the selling.
“One of the managers other than Warren had a position in Apple and sold part of it in order to make an unrelated purchase,” Buffett’s assistant Debbie Bosanek said in an email. “None of the shares under Warren’s direction have ever been sold.”
Investors monitor Berkshire’s quarterly filings for signs about where Buffett, Combs and Weschler see value.
Stock prices often move higher or lower when Berkshire discloses new stakes, or sheds old ones.
Suncor shares rose 4 percent after Berkshire reentered the stock, which it last owned in the third quarter of 2016, owning 10.76 million shares worth $300.9 million.
Shares of Red Hat rose 0.3 percent after Berkshire said it owned 4.18 million shares worth $733.4 million.
Oracle shares fell 1.3 percent.
Suncor, Red Hat, Oracle and Berkshire did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Berkshire has more than 90 businesses in the insurance, energy, food and retail, industrial, railroad and other sectors, and often buys stocks when buying whole companies appears too expensive. Its last major acquisition was in January 2016.
Most other changes in Berkshire’s stock portfolio were relatively smaller, though it boosted its stake in JPMorgan Chase & Co 41 percent to 50.1 million shares, worth $4.9 billion.
Combs is a director at JPMorgan, which is working with Berkshire and Amazon.com Inc to create a new company aiming to cut employee healthcare costs.
Berkshire also confirmed its new, $261 million stake in StoneCo Ltd, a Brazilian credit card processor that went public in October.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and James Dalgleish)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are in Beijing this week as Chinese and American negotiators try to hammer out a trade deal to ease a trade war and avert an increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods scheduled for March 2.
The governments of the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariff battle for months as Washington presses Beijing to address long-standing concerns over Chinese practices and policies around industrial subsidies, market access and intellectual property rights protections.
Here is a look at the key issues in the talks and their implications:
WHAT ARE WASHINGTON AND BEIJING FIGHTING ABOUT?
After years of steadily rising U.S. trade deficits with China and U.S. complaints that Beijing has systematically obtained American intellectual property and trade secrets through coercion and outright theft, the Trump administration last year demanded fundamental changes to China’s economic model to allow U.S. companies to compete on a more level playing field. These include an end to policies that Washington claims effectively force U.S. companies to transfer their technologies to Chinese partners and full protection for American intellectual property rights.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
At the most basic level, a dominant position in future high-technology industries, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. China is determined to upgrade its industrial base in 10 strategic sectors by 2025, including aerospace, robotics, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and new-energy vehicles. U.S. officials say they do not have a problem with China moving up the technology ladder, but they do not want it to happen with stolen or unfairly obtained American know-how. They argue that China’s massive support for state-owned enterprises is leading to overproduction, making it hard for U.S. companies to compete on a market-driven basis.
HOW DOES BEIJING VIEW THESE COMPLAINTS?
Chinese officials generally view the U.S. actions as a broad effort to thwart the Asian country’s inevitable rise to a dominant position in the global economy. They deny that China requires or coerces technology transfers, saying that any such actions are commercial transactions between American and Chinese firms. At the same time, China is looking to make a deal with President Donald Trump to ease U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and to directly reduce the trade imbalance between the world’s two largest economies through increased purchases of U.S. goods, including soybeans and energy. Beijing has also taken some steps to open up to more imports, including lowering tariffs on imported cars and allowing foreign companies in some sectors to own a majority of their operations in China.
WHAT ACTIONS HAS THE UNITED STATES TAKEN?
Trump has imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of imported goods from China so far – a 25 percent duty on $50 billion worth of machinery, semiconductors and other technology-related products, and 10 percent tariffs on a broader, $200 billion range of goods that includes many chemicals, building materials, furniture and some consumer electronics. Thus far, Trump has spared many consumer goods, including cellphones, computers, clothing and footwear from tariffs. But if no deal is reached by March 2, the United States is scheduled to raise tariffs on the $200 billion in goods from China to 25 percent from 10 percent. Trump said on Wednesday that a delay was possible.
HAS CHINA RETALIATED?
Yes. China has imposed tariffs of 25 percent on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods, including soybeans, beef, pork, seafood, whiskey, ethanol and motor vehicles. Beijing also has imposed tariffs of 5 percent to 10 percent on another $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, including liquefied natural gas, chemicals, frozen vegetables and food ingredients. So far, Beijing has spared imports of U.S. commercial aircraft largely made by Boeing Co. Since Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in December to pursue the current round of talks, China has also suspended tariffs on U.S.-made autos and has resumed some purchases of U.S. soybeans.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE TALKS SO FAR?
China has pledged to make its industrial subsidy programs compliant with World Trade Organization rules and nondistortive to markets, but has offered no details on how it will achieve this, sources told Reuters. It’s unclear if that will be enough to satisfy U.S. negotiators, but that indicates China may be willing to address those American concerns.
The two sides seemed far apart on industrial subsidies and forced technology transfer when they met in late January, though they indicated some progress had been made around intellectual property rights issues.
A key U.S. demand is creating a mechanism for regular reviews of China’s progress on following through on any reform pledges that it makes, a plan that would maintain a perpetual threat of U.S. tariffs.
China has also offered to make purchases of over $1 trillion worth of goods over the next six years, including of agricultural and energy products as well as industrial goods.
WILL U.S. OFFICIALS ACCEPT A DEAL BASED MAINLY ON PURCHASES?
Trump has been optimistic about a deal, saying on Wednesday that the talks were going “very well”. But he indicated in his State of the Union address on Feb. 5 that big spending by China on American goods would not be enough for a deal. Any new trade deal with China “must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit and protect American jobs,” he said in the address.
The president’s advisers say he will not soften his demands that China make structural reforms on intellectual property and related issues. The United States rebuffed some initial offers by China last spring to increase purchases of U.S. goods, choosing instead to proceed with tariffs.
WHAT ARE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF THIS WEEK’S TALKS?
The two sides could report some progress toward a deal and may extend the March 2 deadline to keep negotiating, as often happened during talks last year to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. A stalemate on core structural issues would be viewed as a negative sign, and investors would brace for higher tariffs. Trade negotiations often go down to the wire, so a final outcome is not likely before the end of February, and any agreement will need the approval of Trump and Xi. The two presidents have no meeting planned before the March deadline.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Additional reporting by Chris Prentice; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a “digital dividend” that would let consumers share in the billions of dollars made by technology companies in the most populous U.S. state.
In his “State of the State” speech on Tuesday, Newsom said California is proud to be home to tech firms. But he said companies that make billions of dollars “collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it. Consumers have a right to know and control how their data is being used.
He went further by suggesting the companies share some of those profits, joining other politicians calling for higher levies on the wealthy in U.S. society.
“California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data,” Newsom said. “And so I’ve asked my team to develop a proposal for a new data dividend for Californians, because we recognize that data has value and it belongs to you.”
Newsom didn’t describe what form the dividend might take, although he said “we can do something bold in this space.” He also praised a tough California data-privacy law that will kick in next year.
The world’s largest internet advertising companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. are based in California. Google made more than $30 billion last year, while Facebook earned over $22 billion.
Alphabet shares gave up some gains in New York trading, while Facebook turned negative, following Newsom’s comments. Representatives of the companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Privacy advocacy groups lauded the governor’s announcement while calling for full consumer transparency about how their data is being used and how much it’s worth to companies profiting from users’ online browsing patterns.
“While platforms are fast and loose with consumer data, they are not so willing to share what they are doing with the data or how much they are profiting,” said James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, which played a central role in drafting and passing the California Consumer Privacy Act in 2018.
“We fully support the governor’s data dividend proposal and expect to introduce legislation that reflects that in the coming weeks.”
(Natural News) Chemotherapy may be the cornerstone of conventional cancer treatment, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Studies continue to demonstrate that chemo isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In addition to worsening quality of life, past research has shown that up to 50 percent of patients on chemo will die —…
LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC has reduced the cost of settling foreign exchange trades by a quarter through its blockchain-based system, an executive overseeing the project told Reuters, offering a glimpse of the savings the technology could offer banks.
The bank processes between 3,500 and 5,000 trades a day on its “FX Everywhere” system, settling trades worth $350 billion, Mark Williamson, chief operating officer of FX cash trading and risk management, told Reuters.
The HSBC platform is a rare example of blockchain technology being put to practical use by a major bank. Last month the London-based lender said it had processed FX trades worth $250 billion on the platform since February last year.
The fresh details of the scale of the HSBC project suggest that the potential of blockchain to make significant cost savings in the financial services industry – long touted by its proponents of the technology – is being realized.
“We going at a pace now,” Williamson said. “We’re able to demonstrate that this is not a one-off proof of concept or just one or two trades.”
Supporters say blockchain – a shared database that can securely process and settle transactions without the need for third-party checks – could transform industries from finance to real estate by obviating cumbersome and inefficient processes.
That hype, though, has rarely been backed up by examples of large companies moving beyond tests on a limited scale.
Financial institutions have so far taken a cautious approach with the technology originally conceived to underpin of the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Many are concerned by uncertainty over security, regulation and the impact on existing systems.
HSBC coordinates payments across its Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific trading hubs on the platform, a type of blockchain known as a “shared permissioned ledger”, which allows approved multiple parties to amend and update in real time.
Williamson said that HSBC settles “billions of dollars” worth of payments every day, helping the bank to manage risk by allowing it to see real-time exposure across multiple balance sheets.
He did not give precise figure for daily transactions but said that a significant amount of overall internal flows are likely to be settled on the system.
The bank is aiming to provide the tools to corporate clients with complex, cross-border forex flows.
“The more participants that you have joining the HSBC shared permissioned ledger and the ecosystem, the more efficient we’re going to become in providing services to our clients,” Williamson said.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by David Goodman)
We have a blissfully short column this morning because the real “deal points” in the news flow this morning market America’s present mass-media-breakdown a prime candidate for diagnosis as bipolar disorder (Refer to your dog-eared DSM-5) although it could enlarge into a schizophrenic break.
If I were a mental health professional (which I’m thankfully not) the problem arises when we try to reconcile conflicting behaviors.
We’re confused on what the best treatment is for this kind of bipolar/schizophrenic display, although it seems there are three main options:
First, we could call a “dog whisperer” because there’s a chance the American population is “biting the hand that feeds it” – which strikes us as a canine expression.
OR, we would simply begin a daily regimen of vitamin supplements to help rebalance our thinking. K2+D3 might be one. Lithium orotate, might be another, and perhaps additional magnesium…
The third choice is more drastic: Television writers have to be replaced in wholesale lots because the (pardon me) sh*t on television isn’t worth our time.
Here at the ranch a week and a half back, our TV went out. Ordered up the part needed (I thought) from www.shopjimmy.com. Problem is, when the part arrived, turned out out 55″ LCD had a Polaroid T-Con, not the one ordered. So we did the dance with parts (we’re still dancing) but in the meantime, I’m back to gobbling down Kindle books as is Elaine. Toss in nightly bouts with Alexa hosting Trivial Pursuit contests and who needs a TV, right?
Current looking at a Hisense because the old Sceptre 55 would look fine in the studio and the 50″ there would replace the 42″ in the gym/guest room, and that would free up an LCD for the shop…but I digress.
The whole premise of television is that there’s something worth watching. And – in case you haven’t caught-on yet – that’s becoming a very sketchy case, indeed.
You see, the problem is that humor heals…but now, with Digital Mob Rule on the rise, along with the pathetic snowflake mee-too’ers and their digitalantism screaming “I’m a bigger victim than you” every five minutes…well, makes us wanna puke, know what I’m saying?
Democrats Aren’t Getting It!
Sadly, the democrats – who are going to give Trump less than what he’s asking for in Wall building funds, which will lead to GovDown2 next week because Trump is a doer not a player – are trying to “negotiate down to $1.3 billion and change. Apparently (as we’ve mentioned before) democrats are seriously math impaired. Trump hasn’t budged on $5.7- billion.
Another example of democrats being disconnected from the here and now is the Beto O’Rourke campaign, although we’re not sure who he’s running against yet. Point I’m making is that whether he runs for president or the senate, there were Mexican flags up at his border show yesterday. Which to us looks more like O’Rourke is running for the presidency of Mexico than America.
Near as we can figure, the only real asset O’Rourke has is as an t entertainer turning out music that’s not on the charts anymore, at last not in the Billboard Hot 100 I saw. He did better in business than music, better in politics than business….
Tell you what, though: If Beto runs for president (of Mexico) put us in for $100.
(Does this mean if you’re going to turn axe murderer, go trans first??? Not sure how this works out…but since Twitter no longer supports really free speech we don’t go there anymore. — Vote with Your Mouse!)
Elaine and I are showing solidarity with everyone by playing with our plumbing here in the Outback. Depending on which bathroom you’re in, the hot water could be on the right…or, in some on the left. We thought it would be the least we could to do show it doesn’t matter to us how the plumbing is positioned. (*We sell a decoder card to guests for a dime so they know what to expect in which bathroom…)
I used to think Soros was a pretty bright fellow. When he talks about what’s ahead for Europe in dire terms, he goes on to telling Europe to get back to “traditional values” and natters on.
What he misses is that the woes of Europe mostly relate to wrong-headed immigration “laws” (to use the word loosely). OK, and too much government, too.
Soros – who I seem to recall funnels money into the various anti-US Reconquista Groups, can’t seem to grok why Europe is going down Implosion Boulevard.
Here’s how Europe will play out:
With no real borders between countries, thanks to the monumental border tear-down in the Schengen Zone, Europe has no check on immigration. Mostly, immigrants for over a dozen years have been anti-Christian, strong Muslim. Oh, who also seem to hate Jews.
Radicalized right or radicalized Muslims? When it comes to hating Jews, both sides are suspect because their rhetoric lands on one group… and that leads to regional political implosion.
While we agree with Soros; vision of “bad stuff coming to Europe” his lack of citing immigration as turmoil force #1 is disheartening…
He needs to understand affinity groups in society and online hate much better than he apparently does. If Soros really grokked it, he might start respecting borders. But until then, he’s passing out checks to the wrong people – and to the wrong causes – in our view.
Talks a “traditional values” line and funds its opposition. Which brings us down to sedition or stupid as the question to be answered.
Meantime, Business is Optimistic
Says so right on the press release: “Small Business Optimism Returning to Normal Levels as Owners Express Uncertainty about the Future.”
“The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index slipped 3.2 points in January, as owners continued hiring and investing, but expressed rising concern about future economic growth. The 101.2 reading, the lowest since the weeks leading up to the 2016 elections, remains well above the historical average of 98, but indicates uncertainty among small business owners due to the 35-day government shutdown and financial market instability. The NFIB Uncertainty Index rose seven points to 86, the fifth highest reading in the survey’s 45-year history.”
The stock futures are up a couple of hundred points. Since our needs 700 more points of upside, we could see some smoking upside, so we will look for a positive blip or three in the news over the next week, or so. But, that’s a dart toss and it’s early.
Hungarian President Viktor Orban delivered his state of the nation speech on Sunday, and for supporters of his nationalist, anti-immigration Fidesz Party, it did not disappoint.
Because, in a policy revelation that is sure to agitate George Soros, the European Commission (and Parliament) and every other supporter of the pro-immigration globalist policies that Orban opposes, the Hungarian leader declared that, from now on, all Hungarian women who give birth to four or more children will be permanently exempt from income tax…for life.
In his speech, Orban portrayed the policy as necessary for bolstering Hungary’s faltering birth rate without adopting more lax immigration policies, which other Western democracies see as the answer to their own demographic issues.
“There are fewer and fewer children born in Europe,” Mr Orban said during his annual State of the Nation address. “For the west, the answer is immigration. For every missing child there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children.”
The birth-rate tax plan was one of several initiatives unveiled by Orban, whose party won re-election last year by a wide margin. His policies enjoy broad support in Hungary, particularly in the countryside, though they have also encountered vociferious opposition from those whose political views are more closely aligned with Soros. Earlier this year, protesters nearly sacked the Hungarian Parliament after political opponents accused Fidesz of a blatant power grab by creating a new federal court that many feared would be used to crack down on political dissidents.
Other initiatives unveiled by the anti-immigration premier included an investment in healthcare worth Ft700bn ($2.4 billion); loans to newly-weds worth that could be partially, or fully, forgiven if the couple has two or three children in the years after the ceremony, and money for purchases of family cars – as well as increased funding to expand child-care facilities. Orban also promised mortgage-forgiveness tied to childbirth, and paternity or maternity leave tied to grandparents.
According to the FT, Hungary, like many of its neighbors in central and eastern Europe, struggles with some of the lowest fertility rates in the world, while many of its best-educated workers have traveled elsewhere on the Continent in search of better employment prospects. Its population is forecast to fall by 15% by 2050, from 9.7 million in 2017 to 8.3 million.
Orban’s government didn’t offer an estimate of the cost of the new measures, according to Reuters, and Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said they would be financed from the country’s 2019 budget.
Here are some more details on Orban’s plan, courtesy of Reuters.
The new measures include the expansion of a loan program for families with at least two children to help them buy homes, subsidies for car purchases and waiving personal income tax for women raising at least four children.
Women below 40 who marry for the first time will be eligible for a 10 million forint ($36,000) subsidized loan, Orban said. A third of the debt will be forgiven when a second child is born and the entire loan waived after the third child.
The 2019 budget targets a deficit worth 1.8 percent of economic output. In January, it posted a 244.5 billion forint surplus, the highest in two decades, data showed.
Orban isn’t alone in pushing these types of incentives to inspire more couples to have more than one child. In recent years, both Poland and Serbia have adopted similar measures.
Other countries in the region have also offered incentives to raise the birth rate. In Poland, the conservative Law and Justice party rose to power in 2015 with an expensive pledge giving 500 zlotys (£100) a month, about one-third of the net minimum wage, for every second and subsequent child.
The initiative costs more than 1 per cent of Poland’s GDP Last spring, Serbia, which loses 30,000 people annually, introduced a 500m dinar (£3m) fund to provide payments worth 12,000 dinar for families with three children and 18,000 dinar for the fourth.
Allowing in more immigrants (particularly non-Christian immigrants) isn’t an option for Hungary, Orban said. Because it would risk Christians “eventually becoming a minority.”
He said that permitting migration resulted in “mixed population countries” in which Christians would eventually become a minority. “Those who ride that train will go to the last station and there’s no return ticket,” he said.
But while Soros is sure to oppose these policies, even as his “Open Society” organization has been exiled from the country, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said something with which, we imagine, Orban might agree: During a speech in Budapest, Pompeo warned about the growing influence of China and Russia in central Europe, and said he would try to make the case to Orban that doing business with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei might risk Hungary’s security, according to the Associated Press.
Huawei is a major player in the Hungarian telecoms space…and China’s growing influence in Hungary has been viewed with alarm by US officials.
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – A Malaysian court on Monday postponed the corruption trial of former prime minister Najib Razak over charges related to a multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB pending an appeal, his lawyer said.
Najib was ousted in an election in May last year amid public fury over the alleged theft of $4.5 billion from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
He has pleaded not guilty to ten charges of criminal breach of trust, money laundering and abuse of power and his trial was originally set to begin on Tuesday.
His lawyers, however, filed an application last week to stay the trial pending an appeal over a lower court’s ruling to transfer some of the charges to Kuala Lumpur High Court, media reported.
Harvinderjit Singh, one of Najib’s lawyers, told Reuters in a brief text message that the Court of Appeal had agreed to postpone the trial “until the appeal is heard”.
No new date for the trial or the appeal has been set, he said.
The postponement is seen as a blow for the government of Mahathir Mohamad, which reopened probes into 1MDB shortly after the election and had promised to bring those involved in the scandal swiftly to justice.
Prosecutor V. Sithambaram told Reuters he expected the appeal to take only a week or two.
“It’s just a hiccup,” he said. “The case is just delayed slightly.”
The charges against Najib relate to a suspected transfer of 42 million ringgit ($10.3 million) into Najib’s bank account from SRC International, a former 1MDB unit.
CHARM OFFENSIVE
The trial is the first of four criminal proceedings that Najib is expected to face over the 1MDB scandal so far, and the sum involved is a fraction of the $1 billion that investigators say allegedly made their way into his bank accounts.
Police found nearly $300 million worth of goods and cash at properties linked to Najib soon after the election.
Authorities have also charged his wife, Rosmah Mansor, and several high-ranked officials of the former administration. All of them have pleaded not guilty.
Najib has consistently denied wrongdoing and says the charges against him are politically motivated.
In recent weeks, he has undergone a public makeover, appearing in a music video portraying himself as a champion of the working class and throwing jibes at the ruling government on social media in a bid to shed the image of a wealthy, elite politician.
But the charm offensive may not help him in court. Najib faces years in prison after being hit with a total of 42 criminal charges, most of them linked to 1MDB.
At least six countries, including the United States, Switzerland and Singapore, have launched money laundering and graft probes into 1MDB, set up by Najib in 2009.
U.S. prosecutors say money stolen from 1MDB was used to buy a private jet, luxury real estate, artwork by Picasso and Monet, as well as jewelry for Rosmah.
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Nick Macfie)
“Brexit leaves Britain naked.” That was the message scrawled on economics scholar Victoria Bateman’s completely nude body during a recent lecture she gave at which audience members were also allowed to “create a living anti-Brexit petition by signing her bare body,” Inside Higher Edreports.
The Jan. 14 event was titled: “Brexit: The Naked Truth.” A description of the event said it would delve into the “economic, political and social damage that Brexit will cause, drawing on her expertise in economic history as well as detailing the practical and emotional impact on her own academic community.”
Signing her body attempted to create “the first living human petition,” the description noted, adding “expect impassioned argument and nudity in equal measure.”
This is not the first time the University of Cambridge lecturer has taken on controversial issues by baring her breasts and vagina. In 2016, she protested Brexit in the same exact way: naked. And last summer, she went semi-naked to an end-of-term university dinner with the pro-abortion slogan “my body my choice” written on her upper chest and stomach.
“Women’s bodies are one of the big battlegrounds we face today, whether in terms of women’s access to birth control, sex workers’ rights or clothing, including burka bans,” Bateman toldInside Higher Ed. “By covering up the body, these problems don’t go away. Instead, we fail to address them because we think of the body as something that’s embarrassing and not to be talked about in polite — or academic — company.”
… As she saw it, however, “the relevant question is not ‘Why use your naked body?’ but ‘Why not use your naked body?’ Reversing the question in this way helps to reveal people’s inner thoughts or presumptions about women’s bodies: that when a woman shows her body it devalues her worth or decreases the respect people have for her.”
She also believes “in the power of art to go beyond what academic writing alone can offer … I’ve condensed all my words into one simple message: that Britain has been sold the emperor’s new clothes.”
Bateman posted a portion of her nude lecture on Twitter, which garnered a fair amount of humorous mocking on the social media platform.
(Natural News) A Canadian cryptocurrency exchange is reportedly filing for bankruptcy following the highly questionable “death” of its CEO and corresponding “loss” of nearly $200 million worth of customers’ crypto assets, once again raising the question: Is there anything legitimate going on in the crypto world that isn’t a total scam? QuadrigaCX, which had been…
A pharmaceutical executive whose lavish Miami lifestyle included fancy automobiles, private jets, yachts, and luxury homes, was found guilty of federal fraud charges in connection with a $100 million scheme more than a decade ago that triggered the 2010 collapse of Westernbank, one of Puerto Rico’s most prominent banks at the time, reported the US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs.
Jack Kachkar, 55, was convicted earlier this month of eight counts of wire fraud affecting a significant financial institution following a 21-day trial before U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham in Miami. Kachkar is expected to serve decades behind bars; the sentencing will be held on April 30.
“Jack Kachkar’s fraud caused substantial harm to the 1,500 employees of Westernbank and the people of Puerto Rico,” said U.S. Attorney Fajardo Orshan. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office remains committed to the prosecution of those individuals and corporations that use Miami and other South Florida communities as their base to operate multinational fraud schemes.”
“Today’s verdict holds the defendant accountable for orchestrating fraudulent schemes that resulted in more than $100 million in losses to insured institutions and the FDIC as receiver,” said Inspector General Lerner. “The FDIC Office of Inspector General remains committed to investigate cases of deception and swindles that undermine the integrity of financial institutions, and we will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to bring to justice those who commit such offenses.”
“IRS Criminal Investigation will always pursue investigations like this where Mr. Kachkar, for his own personal benefit, orchestrated such a large scheme at the expense of one of Puerto Rico’s largest banks and its 1,500 employees,” said IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Palma. “This investigation shows that the appearance of success can be a mask for a tangled financial web of lies, and we are proud to be part of the prosecution team that is bringing Mr. Kachkar to justice.”
“HSI San Juan will continue working with our local, state and federal partners to investigate and prosecute these types of cases as well as those involving violations to the more than 400 federal statutes that we investigate, “ said HSI Special Agent in Charge Arvelo. “This man was responsible for one of the largest fraud schemes ever recorded in the banking business in Puerto Rico and he will pay the consequences.”
“This defendant’s greed was powerful enough to destroy a bank, taking with it the jobs of approximately 1,500 hard working citizens of Puerto Rico,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Leff. “The FBI thanks the US Attorney’s Office for sending an equally strong message that most fraud schemes will eventually lead to a prison cell.”
According to the trial evidence, from 2005 to 2007, Kachkar was the CEO of-of Inyx Inc., a publicly traded specialty pharmaceutical products and technologies company. The fraud began in early 2005, Kachkar entered into a series of loan agreements with Westernbank in exchange for collateral in assets of Inyx and its subsidiaries. Under the loan agreements, the bank advanced money based on Inyx’s customer invoices from “actual and bona fide” sales to Inyx customer.
However, the evidence showed that Kachkar organized a scheme to defraud Westernbank by creating dozens of fake customer invoices worth tens of millions of dollars.
During the course of the scheme, Kachkar falsified and deceived Westernbank loan officers about imminent repayments from its international lenders to continue the scheme of pumping more credit into Inyx.
Kachkar distorted additional collateral to Westernbank executives, including numerous mines in Mexico and Canada worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The evidence showed that the additional collateral was worth a fraction of that presented by Kachkar.
Westernbank lent about $142 million, primarily based on false and fraudulent customer invoices to Kachkar over the two years. The evidence showed he diverted tens of millions of dollars for his benefit, including “a private jet, luxury homes in Key Biscayne and Brickell, Miami, luxury cars, luxury hotel stays, and extravagant jewelry and clothing expenditures,” said the DOJ.
At the end of the scheme, in the summer of 2007, Westernbank declared a default on the Inyx loans, ultimately suffered losses of more than $100 million. Shortly after, the losses triggered a series of catastrophic events leading to Westernbank’s collapse.
MELBOURNE, Victoria, Australia – A joint operation involving U.S. and Australian law enforcement agencies has resulted in the seizure of more than 1.7 tonnes of methylamphetamine (ice) with an estimated street value of $1.29 billion.
It was the largest ever domestic seizure in the U.S.
The shipment would have enabled 17 million drug deals, and was the largest ever shipment bound for Australia.
Officers from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Victoria Police on Thursday arrested six people in Victoria and New South Wales allegedly involved with the U.S.-based organised crime syndicate being investigated behind the record-making shipment.
The investigation was commenced as a result of intelligence gathered by the Victorian Joint Organised Crime Taskforce (JOCTF) about a planned large-scale drug importation by a suspected syndicate operating out of California. The Victorian JOCTF comprises the AFP, Victoria Police, the Australian Border Force (ABF), the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and the Department of Home Affairs.
The Victorian JOCTF enlisted the support of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Homeland Security Investigations Border Enforcement Security Task Force (HSI BEST), which located a consignment suspected of containing illicit drugs before it left American shores.
As a result, the HSI BEST and U.S. Customs and Border Protection detected more than 1.7 tonnes of various illicit drugs – largely methylamphetamine – inside two large containers purporting to contain audio equipment.
The drugs were seized in California by U.S. authorities four weeks ago, on 9 January 2019, before they could reach Australian shores.
The shipment included the following drugs, with their respective estimated street values based on their value if they had reached Australia:
– 1,728 kilograms of methylamphetamine, estimated to be worth more than AUD $1.29 billion and equal to more than 17 million drug deals.
– 25 kilograms of cocaine, worth an estimated AUD $9.5 million.
– 5 kilograms of heroin, worth an estimated AUD $2.6 million.
As a result of extensive investigations to identify the alleged syndicate connections in Australia, the JOCTF executed 10 search warrants on Thursday and Friday in the Melbourne suburbs of Woodstock, Pakenham, Derrimut, Campbellfield, Keilor Downs and Epping, resulting in the arrest of two U.S. nationals and two Australian nationals.
These include a 52-year-old American man and 46-year-old American woman based in Woodstock, and a 31-year-old man and 29-year-old female based in Keilor Downs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of proceeds of crime was located during the search warrant in Woodstock, and about 6.5kg of methylamphetamine was found at a property in Keilor Downs.
Three of those arrested were scheduled to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday on a range of charges, the maximum penalty for which is life imprisonment.
Three search warrants were also executed Thursday in the Sydney suburbs of Bonyyrigg Heights, Mount Pritchard and Hinchinbrook, resulting in the arrest of two Australian nationals and seizure of about 2kg of cocaine in Hinchinbrook. Those arrested include a 25-year-old Bonnyrigg Heights man and a 31-year-old Hinchinbrook man. Authorities say they will seek to have the men extradited to Victoria to face court in the coming days.
In Canada, with assistance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Federal Serious and Organised Crime Unit (FSOC), five additional search warrants were executed in Burnaby, British Columbia on 7 February. These search warrants resulted in the seizure of a significant quantity of suspected proceeds of crime.
“This is the biggest ever seizure of methylamphetamine – more than 1.7 tonnes – stopped before it had a chance to reach Australian streets. By stopping this, we have ensured criminals will not profit from the immense pain these drugs would have caused our community,” AFP Assistant Commissioner Organised Crime Bruce Hill said Friday.
“I wish to thank our U.S. counterparts for their expert involvement in this investigation and strong support of our efforts to keep these drugs off Australian shores.”
U.S. Acting Ambassador James Carouso expressed his appreciation. “This historic seizure highlights just how important the U.S.-Australian partnership is in protecting Americans and Australians alike. Every day, U.S. and Australian law enforcement officers work together to keep us all safe.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Homeland Security Investigations Acting Attaché Phillip Chaves said that this investigation perfectly highlights how foreign and domestic law enforcement partnerships can successfully combat transnational criminal organisations.
Victoria Police Crime Command Assistant Commissioner Tess Walsh said the large-scale drug importation would have had profound impacts on the Victorian community and beyond.
“Victoria Police has zero tolerance for those bringing harm to our community by importing and trafficking drugs of any type – with this seizure we have stopped more than 17 million drug deals from reaching our streets,” AC Walsh said.
ABF Assistant Commissioner, Sharon Huey said the large-scale of this attempted import shows that criminal syndicates continue to brazenly target Australia as a market for this dangerous drug.”Working together with our law enforcement colleagues at a state, national and international level, we are able to disrupt the illicit drug trade before it reaches the Australian community.”
ACIC State Manager Victoria Operations Jason Halls said the drugs, particularly the 1.7 tonnes of methamphetamine, would have had an immeasurable impact on the community.
“According to our National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program data, Victoria is estimated to consume just over 2 tonnes of methylamphetamine each year. Removing 1.7 tonnes of methylamphetamine before it reaches our streets will have a huge effect on the illicit drug market,” Mr Halls said.
Chief Superintendent Keith Finn, Officer in Charge of FSOC in British Columbia, stated: “The RCMP is committed to working with our international partners in any and all investigations focussed on identifying and disrupting transnational organised crime. A seizure such as this not only helps protect the country to which the shipment was destined but has a positive impact on the international market as a whole.”
Remember when President Trump said that 99% of the territory once claimed by ISIS had been recovered? Well, according to Reuters, US-backed forces are trying to take back that last 1% of lost ground before President Trump withdraws US troops in April.
Per Reuters, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have started their assault against the final ISIS enclave in eastern Syria on Saturday, a territory that includes two villages near the border with Iraq, as they struggle to wipe the last pockets of what was a nation-spanning caliphate off the map for good (though it’s worth noting that ISIS still controls some territory in the part of the country that is mostly back under the control of Syrian government, which has received assistance from Russia and Iran in its struggle to hang on to power).
SDF official Mustafa Bali, speaking to Reuters, described the assault as “the last battle.” He later wrote on Twitter that the attack had started and the enclave would “be cleared soon.”
The SDF had handled the last 10 days “patiently” as more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the besieged IS enclave, Bali said.
Senior SDF official Redur Xelil told Reuters the force hoped to capture the area by the end of February, but cautioned that IS would continue to pose “great and serious” security threats even after that.
ISIS has been steadily losing ground since the US first joined the fight in 2014. The caliphate lost two of its biggest prizes – Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria – back in 2017.
However, as DNI Dan Coats claimed during Senate Intelligence Committee testimony late last month, plenty of ISIS-aligned fighters and leaders remain active in Syria, and the US military-intelligence apparatus has spent the months since Trump initially announced his plans to remove the 2,000 US fighters still in Syria warning anybody who will listen about how ISIS will make a come back the second the last US soldier steps foot on to Iraqi soil.
On Tuesday, a top US general said ISIS poses an “enduring threat”, a line frequently used by former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who famously quit over Trump’s decision. Because, as the logic goes, a US military intervention cannot be considered “a success” until all possibility of a hostile force ever reemerging has been systematically stamped out.
The price of gold is $1,300 per ounce right now. But imagine if there was one place in the world – say Japan – where you could buy an ounce of gold for a fraction of that, $450.
By exporting and selling it at the world price, you’d have earned an easy $850 per ounce. This might sound too good to be true, but it’s precisely what happened in Japan in 1859. This post is about one of the greatest gold trades ever.
To understand how the greatest gold trade ever played out, we first need to delve into the years that preceded it.
Two centuries of isolation
By the early 1850s, Japan had been isolated from the rest of the world for over two hundred years. At the beginning of the 1600s, the ruling Tokugawa clan had adopted a policy of barring foreigners from entering the nation. The only point of Western contact was the Dutch trading post Dejima, an artificial island in the port of Nagasaki. But Western powers like the U.S. were anxious to trade with Japan too, so in 1853 U.S. commodore Matthew C. Perry was dispatched to negotiate a trade agreement.
Using the threat of force, Perry brought the Tokugawa shoguns to the bargaining table. In 1854, Perry managed to secure an opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to U.S. vessels. This was a coaling agreement: it only allowed for the resupply and refueling of steam ships. A general commercial treaty would have to wait.
One of the complications that Perry ran into was determining how American ships were to make payments for coaling. For centuries, international trade had been dominated by the Spanish silver dollar (otherwise known as the Mexican dollar, pillar, eight real, or piece of eight), which was minted in Mexico as well as at several South American mints.
The Spanish “pillar” dollar, with the Pillars of Hercules on its reverse side
But Japan, having been closed off, did not typically deal in Spanish/Mexican dollars. It had its own unique set of coins and measurements. Prices were set in ryo, bu, and shu, with 1 ryo = 4 bu = 16 shu. The ryo was represented by a gold coin referred to as a koban. An ichibu silver coin was worth one bu, with four ichibus equal to 1 ryo, or one gold koban.
What was needed was an exchange rate between the dollar and the Japanese coins. To pay for the fueling of his ships at the newly-opened port of Hakodate, Perry ended up accepting the rate offered by his Japanese hosts: one Mexican dollar to one ichibu. Since four ichibus were equal to a gold koban, this meant that a Mexican dollar was worth 1/4 koban.
The main Tokugawa coins, including the koban (top left) and silver ichibu (top right). Source: Wikipedia
This arrangement didn’t satisfy the Americans. A Mexican dollar weighed about three times an ichibu. Each dollar contained 25 gram of silver whereas an ichibu contained just a third of that, 8.5 grams of silver. Exchanging one Mexican dollar for one ichibu thus meant that the Americans were giving up two-thirds of the dollar’s silver content for free, or at least so it appeared to them.
With Perry having secured a small foothold on the island, Townsend Harris – the first US consul general to be appointed to preside in Shimoda – was tasked with prying Japan completely open to trade. In addition to negotiating a commercial treaty with the Tokugawa shogunate, Harris would also tackle the exchange rate controversy. Harris figured that if the exchange rate was set on a weight-for-weight basis, then one Mexican dollar would be the equivalent of three ichibu. In that way the silver bullion content of the two opposing coins would be equated, which to him only seemed fair.
Upon his arrival in September 1856, Harris immediately began to send letters to officials protesting the already-established one ichibu-to-one dollar exchange rate (Hanashiro, 1999). But he was unable to make much headway. For their part, the Japanese had excellent reasons for preferring the one ichibu-to-one dollar rate. When pressed by Perry and Harris, Japanese officials rightly pointed out that the ichibu was not like the Mexican dollar, which was valued according to its silver content. Rather, the ichibu was a token coin.
Token coins vs bullion coins
For readers of this post, token coins will be second nature. This is because all modern coin are tokens. A one-euro coin, for instance, weighs 7.5 grams, 75% of this copper, 15% nickel, and 10% zinc. The market value of this metal is around €0.05, far less than the coin’s face value of €1. This €0.95 gap between its commodity value and its face value is what qualifies the one-euro coin as a token.
Imagine that an alien beamed down to earth in 2019 and offered a Parisian the following deal. It will buy each of the Parisian’s 7.5 gram one-euro coins with a blank copper-nickel-zinc disc that weighs 7.5 grams. Would the Parisian take this offer? Of course not. She’d be giving up coins that trade for €1 a piece for discs that are worth a fraction of that amount.
In the same way that our Parisian would not want to accept the alien’s discs, the Japanese were understandably loath to trade away ichibus on a weight-for-weight basis. Like a euro coin, the ichibu’s value was supported not by its metal content but the authorities’ promise to accept it at a rate that far exceeded it bullion value. Selling ichibus to American on a weight-for-weight basis dramatically undervalued them, just like selling euro coins to an alien for metal discs would undervalue the euro.
It is possible that Harris and his American colleagues simply didn’t grasp the concept of token coinage. At the time, silver coins in the U.S. passed at their bullion value. Or perhaps they willfully ignored the ichibu’s status as a token. Whatever the case, Harris pressed his case until the Tokugawa government bowed to his demands. In the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the Japanese accepted a weight-for-weight exchange rate between the two types of coins, or three ichibus-to-one dollar.
This new relationship between the dollar and the ichibu destroyed the token status of the ichibu. Not only that, it created a terrific arbitrage opportunity between the Mexican dollar and the gold koban, thus laying the path for the 1859 gold mania.
The silver-gold arbitrage
At the pre-Harris exchange rate of one ichibu-to-one dollar, there was no arbitrage opportunity between Mexican dollars and Japanese koban. An American trader could convert four dollars into four ichibus, which in turn could be traded at the Tokugawa shogunate’s official rate for one gold koban. A koban contained around 6.3 gram of yellow metal (Bytheway & Chaiklin, 2016).
After melting the koban and exporting it, the trader could sell this 6.3 grams of gold for silver at the world silver-to-gold ratio of 15.5:1, netting himself 98 grams of silver. With one Mexican dollar containing 24.5 gram of silver, 98 grams was the equivalent of four Mexican dollars. Thus, having originally spent four Mexican dollars in Japan, the American trader ended up with four dollars. There was no profit in carrying this trade out. Below at left, I’ve illustrated how things balanced out.
The profitability of selling Mexican dollars in Japan
Harris’s 1859 weight-for-weight rule dramatically tipped the calculus of this trade in favour of the American side. Where before an American could convert four dollar into just four ichibus, now they were entitled to twelve ichibus. These twelve ichibu could in turn purchase three kobans, which together contained 19 gram of golds (6.8 grams each). On the international market, 19 grams of gold was worth 294 grams of silver, or 12 Mexican dollar (294 grams divided by 24.5 grams/per coin).
Thus, at the new rate, an American trader could magically turn four Mexican dollar into twelve Mexican dollars. By constantly recirculating silver and gold between the world market and Japan, it was theoretically possible to make infinite profits. (To understand the profitability of this trade, see calculation above at right). Below, the Bank of Japan Museum has provided a nice portrayal of this trade.
The great gold trade illustrated. Source: Bank of Japan
Delay tactics
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce took effect on July 4, 1859. But the great gold trade did not take off yet. Anticipating that foreigners would flock to exchange a dollar for an equal weight of Japanese silver coins, leading to a flood of gold out of the nation, the Japanese suddenly introduced a new coin, the nishu-gin. They had carefully calibrated the nishu’s specifications such that two nishus weighed as much as one Mexican dollar. So when it came to trade dollars for Japanese coins on a weight-for-weight basis, as stipulated in the Harris Treaty, Japanese officials could provide two nishu per dollar instead of three ichibus.
The nishu was given a face value of two shu. This meant that whereas it took just four ichibus to get a gold koban, it would take eight nishus to get a koban (1 koban = 1 ryo, and 16 shus = 1 ryo). Introducing the nishu effectively reestablished the pre-Harris exchange rate. An American trader’s four Mexican dollars could now be converted into eight nishus, and eight nishus into a koban. But the amount of gold in a koban was only worth four Mexican dollars in the world market, which was the original quantity of dollars spent to buy nishus. Having removed the gain to be made by selling dollars and purchasing kobans, Japanese officials had short-circuited the great gold trade.
The Americans were indignant, so the wary Japanese pulled the nishu off the market just a few weeks after introducing it. Now they relied on other tactics to cut off the great gold trade. Officials decreed that locals were not to sell gold kobans to foreigners. But this was evaded since kobans were easy to hide. They also limited the amounts of ichibus they made available. Huge lineups at official Japanese exchange offices developed as Westerners submitted claims to convert dollar into ichibus. But using money mules and straw names, traders could avoid their quotas:
“In October 1859, Thomas Eskrigge applied for three hundred and fifteen million dollars on behalf of Messers Bank, Rake, Nelly, Smell-bad, and No-nose… Another petition simply said, “Please change for me today $250,000,000 and much oblige.” (Frost, 1970)
By the fall of 1859, the gold mania was in full flight. Ships left China for Japan with cases full of Mexican dollars and returned laden with kobans. Below is a list of the vessels dispatched by Jardine, Matheson & Company – a large British trading firm – including the quantity of koban exported (McMaster, 1960).
Source: McMaster, 1960
Estimates for the total number of koban sent out of Japan are wide-ranging. According to Bytheway & Chaiklin (2016), Japanese scholars have set a lower bound for koban exports of 100,000 (0.63 tonnes of gold) and an upper one of 20 million koban (126 tonnes). Let’s assume that 25 tonnes of gold was exported. Twenty-five tonnes of gold may not be much gold these days, but back in the 1860s this was quite a bit. Total above ground gold supply had only reached 7,000 tonnes of gold by the 1860s, and the world was only producing around 190 tonnes per year (Turk, 2012). Thus the amount of kobans that left Japan constituted a significant share of that year’s production.
The speculation comes to an end
Japanese officials brought the mania to an end after a few months. Foreigners were still allowed to convert their dollars on a weight-for-weight basis, and four ichibus could still be swapped for one koban. But the koban coin itself was now updated. The new koban that debuted in early 1860 contained just a third the gold that the old koban had contained. The image below illustrate the size of the debasement. This monetary reform had the effect of reducing the amount of gold that a dollar could purchase, thus cutting into the profit of a round-trip between China and Japan. The great gold trade was over.
The 1860 reduction of the koban gold coin. Source: Wikipedia
The 1859 Japanese gold trade was great for all the westerners who profited from it. But it wasn’t so great for the Japanese. The Tokugawa government had earned much of its revenue through the issuance of token coins like ichibu. With token coins being replaced by less profitable bullion coins, that revenues source was gone. Faced with violent opposition, the last Tokugawa prince would resign in 1867.
The gold trade also pressured Japan’s feudal class structure. In an effort to accommodate themselves to foreigners’ conception of coinage, the Japanese government imposed a huge fall in the purchasing power of both the ichibu and koban. Anyone who earned an income denominated in these coins was suddenly much poorer. The Samurai warrior caste, many of whom lived off fixed stipends, was particularly hard hit. Samurai revolts would become a recurrent theme over the next few decades.
Many decades later, Japan remains an important gold market. The Tokyo Commodity Exchange, or TOCOM, is one of the largest gold trading venues in Asia. Following the liberalisation of the Japanese gold market in the 1970s, Japan became one of the world’s largest importers of gold during the 1980s and 1990s, fueled in part by an investment boom. But don’t go to Tokyo expecting to buy gold for $450 an ounce.
Like every socialist state in the history of the world, the children of Venezuela’s socialist elite spend their time galavanting around Europe and fanning themselves with 100-dollar-bills while the people immiserated by their family’s policies starve in the streets.
Maria Gabriella, the oldest daughter of former leader Hugo Chavez, is Venezuela’s richest woman, according to the Daily Mail.She reportedly is worth some $4 billion, thanks to a fortune that has been secreted away in European bank accounts. The wealthy socialite earned her fortune while serving as Venezuela’s first lady when her father was still alive.
Former Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Maria Gabriella
But while Gabriella relies on diplomatic immunity (she is Venezuela’s alternative ambassador to the UN), her younger sister Rosines Chavez fled the country for Paris more than two years ago after a photo of her flaunting dollar bills went viral, provoking widespread outrage. Now, the 21-year-old Rosines is enjoying the luxe life in Paris as a student at the Sorbonne.
Rosines Chavez
But if Chavez’s children are behaving badly by the standards of socialism (where being rich is a sin and being a billionaire is a policy error), the children of Chavez’s successor are doing even worse.
Nicolas Maduro’s stepsons Yoswal Gavidia Flores and Walter Gavidia Flores recently managed to blow $45,000 on an extravagant 18-night stay at the Ritz hotel in Paris, where rooms cost $591 a night, and breakfast is an extra $40.
Yoswal Gavidia Flores and Walter Gavidia Flores
Moreover, while Maduro’s sons were partying in Paris, six out of ten Venezuelans reported having a relative who went without in order to feed their family, while one in 12 families in the country have been forced to scavenge for food in dumpsters.
Their hotel bill, according to the DM’s calculations, was equivalent to the monthly wages of 2,000 Venezuelans.
Maduro himself has been criticized for his largesse, recently appearing in a video at a banquet hosted by the Turkish restaurateur better known as “Salt Bae”.
Salt Bae and Nicolas Maduro
But only one of the rich kid’s of Venezuela has an Instagram presence on par with the wealthy offspring of American and European elite. And that’s the daughter of Maduro’s second-in-command Diosdado Cabello. Cabello’s daughter Daniela has achieved Internet fame thanks to her stunning beauty and celebrity lifestyle, which she shares with her boyfriend, the Latin pop-singer Omar Acedo.
Daniela Cabello
Daniela Cabello
To be sure, not all of Venezuela’s rich kids have it so lucky: Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores are languishing in a US jail, where they will remain for the duration of an 18-year sentence, after they were caught trying to smuggle $20 million worth of cocaine into the USA via Haiti.
Saudi Arabia clinched 37 deals worth $53 billion after announcing that it intends to attract upwards of $426 billion in total over the next decade as it seeks to advance Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s (MBS) ambitious Vision 2030 agenda of socio-economic reform. The young leader knows that his majority-youthful country has no hope for the future if it doesn’t rapidly transition to a post-oil economy before its world-famous reserves run dry, which is why he’s doing everything in his power to court infrastructural, industrial, defense, and technological investments in order to prudently give his people a chance to survive when that happens.
This will naturally result in far-reaching lifestyle changes whereby the relatively well-off native population is compelled to leave their plush government jobs and segue into the competitive private sector out of economic necessity. Relatedly, the Kingdom is loosening its previously strict religious edicts that hitherto prohibited Western-style social freedoms such as playing music in restaurants, going to the cinema, and allowing women to drive. About the last-mentioned of these three latest reforms, it’s inevitable that more women will move out of the home and into the workforce as Vision 2030 progressively develops, though therein lays the potential for serious social unrest.
The Saudi state is upheld by the dual pillars of the monarchy and the Wahhabi clerics, the latter of which have been sidelined as a result of Vision 2030 and MBS’ previous crackdown on both radical Islam and the corrupt elite. For all intents and purposes, the Crown Prince’s rapid rise to power was a factionalist coup within the monarchy itself but also a structural one of the monarchy imposing its envisioned will over the Wahhabi clerics, both in the sense of curtailing any militant activities that some of them might have been encouraging and/or funding and also when it comes to counteracting their previously dominant influence over society.
As the country makes progress on advancing Vision 2030 and its related economic reforms continue catalyzing social ones as well, it’s very possible that the structural fault lines between the monarchy & Wahhabis and the younger generation & the older one will lead to political destabilization if they’re not preemptively and properly dealt with.
While it might sound overly dramatic, there’s a lot of objective truth in the forecast that MBS might either end up as the first King of a New Saudi Arabia or the last Crown Prince of a country that might ultimately cease to exist if these naturally occurring Hybrid War variables aren’t brought under control.
