3 countries now too scary for tourists to visit
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Vet: Trump University fired me over reserve duties
Deposition in Trump University lawsuit includes claim by Iraq war veteran that she was fired after bosses objected to her Army Reserve service.
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Mafia Expert Calls Great Britain The "Most Corrupt Place On Earth"
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The City is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimized by the Privy Council. Britain’s financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.
Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drug gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever so civilised mafia state.
– From last year’s post: Guardian Op-Ed – The City of London Has Turned Britain Into a “Civilized Mafia State”
This shouldn’t come as any surprise to readers, but it’s a provocative statement nonetheless.
From The Independent:
Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.
Mr Saviano, who wrote the best-selling exposés Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, made the comments at the Hay Literary Festival. The 36-year-old has been living under police protection since publishing revelations about members of the Camorra, a powerful Neapolitan branch of the mafia, in 2006.
He told an audience at Hay-on-Wye: “If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it’s the UK.
“It’s not the bureaucracy, it’s not the police, it’s not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital. 90 per cent of the owners of capital in London have their headquarters offshore.
For related articles, see:
Introducing the London Kleptocracy Bus Tour
Guardian Op-Ed – The City of London Has Turned Britain Into a “Civilized Mafia State”
Source: Mafia Expert Calls Great Britain The "Most Corrupt Place On Earth"
Bill Gross Explains Why He Is Now Shorting Credit
By Tyler Durden
One week ago, in an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Gross made a surprising announcement when he said that he was starting to short credit. As he said at the time, “It’s really hard to change your psychological makeup and to be a hedge manager that is comfortable with being short,” he said during his interview. “I’m working on it, because I’m an investor that ultimately does believe in the system, but believes that the system itself is at risk.“
In his just released monthly letter, “Bon Appetit!”, he provided some additional insight on why he has become so bearish on credit instruments. In short, as he says that since the inception of the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate or Lehman Bond index in 1976, investment grade bond markets have provided conservative investors with a 7.47% compound return with remarkably little volatility.
He then says that his take from these observations is that this 40-year period of time has been quite remarkable – “a grey if not black swan event that cannot be repeated.”
He attributes this tremendous performance to the “carry” trade, facilitated by ever higher debt, and ever lower interest rates over the past 30 years, a condition he thinks will not repeated again.
What does this mean in practical terms? Gross summarizes his thesis in more compact form, noting that anyone seeking such historical returns, will not find them on earths: perhaps on Mars.
“For over 40 years, asset returns and alpha generation from penthouse investment managers have been materially aided by declines in interest rates, trade globalization, and an enormous expansion of credit – that is debt. Those trends are coming to an end if only because in some cases they can go no further. Those historic returns have been a function of leverage and the capture of “carry”, producing attractive income and capital gains. A repeat performance is not only unlikely, it is impossible unless you are a friend of Elon Musk and you’ve got the gumption to blast off for Mars. Planet Earth does not offer such opportunities. “
He then goes on to explain why the “carry” trade will no longer provide the kind of returns investors are used to.
- Duration is unquestionably at risk in negative yielding markets. A minus 25 basis point yield on a 5-year German Bund produces nothing but losses five years from now. A 45 basis point yield on a 30-year JGB offers a current “carry” of only 40 basis points per year for a near 30-year durational risk. That’s a Sharpe ratio of .015 at best, and if interest rates move up by just 2 basis points, an investor loses her entire annual income. Even 10-year U.S. Treasuries with a 125 basis point “carry” relative to current money market rates represent similar durational headwinds. Maturity extension in order to capture “carry” is hardly worth the risk.
- Similarly, credit risk or credit “carry” offers little reward relative to potential losses. Without getting too detailed, the advantage offered by holding a …read more
Source: Bill Gross Explains Why He Is Now Shorting Credit
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Turkey Recalls Ambassador From Germany After Bundestag Acknowledges Armenian "Genocide"
By Tyler Durden
Moments ago, in a move that will infuriate Turkey, the German parliament withstood a barrage of pressure from the Turkish government, and approved a symbolic resolution that declares the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a ‘genocide’, a step widely viewed as a tacit escalation against Turkey. The vote was almost unanimous in supporting the resolution with just one MP voting against and another abstaining. The move was largely expected and was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That said, the German leader was “forced” to skip the vote due to prior commitments.
The parliamentary vote was originally scheduled to take place a year ago to mark the centenary of the genocide, but due to concerns over the fallout with Turkey, Merkel’s allies postponed the move.
The news was greeted with delight by dozens of Armenian supporters who had gathered outside the parliament building carrying banners commemorating the genocide.
Armenian clergy men and activists react after law
makers voted to recognise the Armenian genocide.
According to the Christian Democratic Union’ Albert Weiler, Germany had a “historical duty” to recognize the mass killings of Armenians. “Without this admission there cannot be forgiveness and reconciliation. Suffering does not know temporary boundaries. Genocide will never remain in the past. By recognizing the genocide, it will force the Turkish government to take a brave step and look into its own history,” he said.
Gregor Gysi, a politician from The Left Party who was critical of Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds who were doing an excellent job in fighting Islamic State, was quoted by RT in saying that that “Germany was a historical accessory” and has a duty to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the First World War. “We need to call this what it was – a genocide,” he told the parliament. “The Bunderstag should not allow itself to be blackmailed by Turkey’s threats.”
Meanwhile, as expected Turkey responded in an angry fashion: the ruling AK Party in Turkey responded by saying that the decision taken by the German parliament has seriously damaged relations between the two countries. The Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus was equally scathing, calling the resolution a “historic mistake.”
Turkey’s prime minister has condemned the motion as “irrational” and said it will test the friendship between the NATO partners. As Reuters notes, the timing could not be worse for Merkel, who has championed a deal with Turkey under which Ankara has agreed to stem the flow of refugees to Europe in return for cash, visa-free travel rights and accelerated talks on European Union membership.
However, Merkel was powerless to stop the symbolic resolution, which was initiated by the opposition Greens and was also backed by lawmakers in her conservative bloc and the Social Democrats.
“With one vote against and one abstention, this resolution has been passed by a remarkable majority of the German Bundestag,” said Norbert Lammert, the president of the lower house of parliament. In a sign of the sensitivities, neither Merkel, her foreign minister …read more
Source: Turkey Recalls Ambassador From Germany After Bundestag Acknowledges Armenian "Genocide"
With The OPEC Meeting Now In Session, Here Are The Latest Updates
By Tyler Durden
With the OPEC meeting having started a little under two hours ago, it appears that the premature optimism raised yesterday about yet another imminent production freeze deal may have been mostly hot air. Indeed, yesterday’s bounceback in oil was driven by the various reports of a potential reintroduction of a ceiling on production after the previous ceiling was scrapped in December. The WSJ ran a story suggesting that the willingness is shared by Saudi Arabia as well as smaller producers in Nigeria, Qatar, Algeria and Venezuela. However, like in Doha, Iran appears to be against a wholesale supply cap after its oil minister said late on Wednesday he’d prefer individual national output quotas rather than an overall production ceiling, and added that he doubted a deal is possible. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is willing to live with either outcome.
This is a recap of what oil ministers said just before they entered a close door session which is expected to conclude at 10 am Eastern:
- Saudi Arabia’s minister said OPEC’s current strategy was working and that group should reestablish a production ceiling “when necessary”; click here for summary
- Iran says an OPEC output ceiling without country quotas means nothing; Iran aims to pump 4.8m b/d in 5 yrs
- Kuwait doesn’t think a ceiling is necessary
- Iraq says OPEC will consider 32.4m b/d ceiling, which is same as April’s output level, according to secondary sources
Like in Doha, while Iran will be the scapegoat for any lack of deal, the question is what Saudi Arabi’s strategy is. For the answer, we go to Saudi Arabia’s new Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih who spoke to reporters at start of OPEC’s ministerial conference in Vienna. This is what he said via BBG:
On OPEC strategy, market balancing:
- Sees supply and demand coming into balance
- Mkt is not oversupplied; just inventory that needs to be absorbed
- We will be gentle with our approach
- Demand is robust; non-OPEC supply declining
- Everybody is satisfied w/ mkt
- OPEC strategy is succeeding
- Saudi Arabia would welcome non-OPEC coordination
- When supply exceeds demand it isn’t sustainable
- Saudi Arabia doesn’t want over-investment in oil supply
On prices:
- Market will rebalance at a higher oil price than today
- Saudis could withstand a longer period of lower prices
- Oil supply disruptions are supporting mkt recovery
- Nobody can know what is equilibrium price of oil mkt
- We think prices are on the way up
- Saudi Arabia is concerned about effect of low prices
On production ceiling:
- Saudi doesn’t want to see reduction in OPEC output
- OPEC should go back to production ceiling when necessary
On Saudi capacity:
- Saudi Arabia oil production capacity is 12.5m b/d
- Saudi will respond to oil mkt if there’s a shortage
- Will have enough spare capacity to meet any demand
* * *
As noted above, while Saudi Arabia remains the most important OPEC player, the market’s focus will be on what Iran does, and as Bloomberg reports, the middle-eastern nation resisted overtures from OPEC’s largest producer Saudi Arabia to restore a production target scrapped at the group’s last meeting in December.
“I don’t agree with an overall output ceiling for OPEC,” Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Thursday, before …read more
Source: With The OPEC Meeting Now In Session, Here Are The Latest Updates
3 rules that could change the payday loan world
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed new rules for the payday loan industry.
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"It’s A Complete Mess" – New Voter Registration Law In Kansas Leaves Thousands Of Young Voters "Suspended"
By Tyler Durden
A law in Kansas is creating chaos among voters, especially younger voters in the state. In 2013, Kansas passed a law that requires residents to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and if it isn't provided, the registration is put in suspense, leaving residents unable to vote. While you must be a US citizen to vote in American elections, most states allow those who register to simply sign a statement affirming they are citizens and provide a driver's license number, Social Security number, or other proof of residence according to Reuters.
Of course the story is a bit more nuanced, as US District Court Judge Julie Robinson recently issued an order to put voters back on the rolls that had been suspended for not providing proof of citizenship, providing that the registration was done at a DMV. Those who did not register at a DMV, by mail for example, were not included in the order, and thus still had to provide proof of citizenship. And finally, as if the situation is not confusing enough, Robinson's order only applied to federal elections for the presidency and US Congress, it left out voting at the state and local levels, meaning in order to vote locally residents would still have to provide proof of citizenship.
Confused? So are a lot of younger voters in the state, who have been been suspended for not providing proof of citizenship.
Of the 16,774 people on a late-April suspense list obtained by Reuters, more than half were ages 17-21, and more than 60 percent were age 25 or under. Suspended voters were clustered in the high-population areas of Wichita, Topeka and the Kansas City suburbs, and the college towns of Lawrence and Manhattan.
About 41% weren't affiliated with a party, 35% were Democrats, 23% were Republicans, and 1% Libertarian.
“It's created a system that is needlessly complex and very discouraging, particularly for young people. Now people just say 'forget it, I'm not going to vote'.” said Steve Lopes, head of the Johnson County Voting Coalition which helps register voters.
The man primarily responsible for the law, Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is adamant that the law will help keep illegals from voting, despite little evidence of the problem even existing in the first place. In Judge Robinson's order, it was noted that Kansas could identify only three non-citizens who voted between 2003 and the onset of the law in 2013.
“The court cannot find that the state's interest in preventing non-citizens from voting in Kansas outweighs the risk of disenfranchising thousands of qualified voters” Robinson said.
To which Kobach retorted: “Every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a US citizen. That's the real disenfranchisement, it's happening every election and it's happening in every state.”
Unfortunately for Kobach, upon being given the power by the Kansas legislature in 2015 to prosecute voter fraud, Kobach has won just four misdemeanor illegal voting convictions, and none of them involved non-citizens.
Michael Smith, a professor at Emporia State University said that “younger …read more
Another Reason To Vote Brexit: UK Taxpayers Biggest Funders Of ‘Failed’ Juncker "Immigration" Plan
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
British citizens seeking yet another reason to vote Brexit, have one in spades.
The roots of this reason go back to last year when European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker hatched a 3-year plan to leverage €20 billion in seed capital to produce a €300 billion gain in Eurozone investment.
As one might expected, the results are nonexistent even though Juncker has already used up the €20 billion in seed capital.
Juncker now wants to up the seed capital, make the plan permanent, and extend the plan outside the EU to immigration zones such as Syria and Africa!
Here’s the kicker. The UK ponied up the biggest share of this monstrous boondoggle so far.
UK Makes the Biggest Contribution to the Juncker Plan
Flashback July 17, 2015: EurActiv reports UK Makes the Biggest Contribution to the Juncker Plan.
The UK may be a Eurosceptic country, but it has made the biggest contribution to the flagship project of the Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker – the €315 billion Investment Plan for Europe designed to stimulate the EU’s post-crisis economy.
The UK announced yesterday (16 July) it will contribute £6 billion (about €8.5 billion) to projects benefiting from finance by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI),better known as the Juncker Plan. This is in fact the biggest contribution so far.
The plan is based on a 15-fold leverage of a limited €21 billion of initial public money. As Juncker explained, the fund will be called European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), guaranteed with public money from the EU budget and the European Investment Bank (EIB). The Fund will be able to mobilize €315 billion over the next three years.
The Commission has put up €8 billion from the EU budget. This backs up a €16 billion guarantee given to the Fund. Topped up by another €5 billion from the EIB, the sum totals €21 billion.
In addition, the European Investment Bank (EIB) can give out loans of €63 billion. But private investors will be pitching in the remaining €252 billion.
Juncker warned about national wish-lists, and said there was no guarantee how much they would profit from the fund, if they contribute to it.
Brussels Extends the “Juncker Plan” Beyond 2018 and Outside the EU
Flash Forward May 31, 2016: Brussels Extends the “Juncker Plan” Beyond 2018 and Outside the EU.
Via translation from El Pais …
The European Commission wants to give new impetus to the Juncker Plan, which aims to mobilize investments of over €300 billion by mid-2018. Brussels announced today that the project will be extended by at least two additional years, and aims to make it permanent. The executive arm of the EU will also seek to finance investments outside Europe, in conflict areas and projects related to immigration.
Juncker does not stop there: the head of the Commission shall submit a legislative proposal in autumn to expand the plan beyond the timeframe foreseen (mid-2018). According to sources, the idea is to extend the plan …read more
Source: Another Reason To Vote Brexit: UK Taxpayers Biggest Funders Of ‘Failed’ Juncker "Immigration" Plan
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Nation In Distress: US Death Rate Increased In 2015 For The First Time In A Decade
By Tyler Durden
For the first time in a decade, the US death rate increased in 2015. According to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control, the death rate in 2015 was 729.5 deaths per 100,000 people, which was up from 723.2 in 2014.
Federal researchers cautioned it was too early to tell what had pushed up the overall national death rate (preliminary data is not broken down by race, and final data will not be out until later this year), but they said the rise was real. While it is premature to ring an alarm now, if it continues, it could be a signal of distress in the health of the nation the NYT reports.
“It's an uptick in mortality and that doesn't usually happen, so it's significant. But the question is, what does it mean? We really need more data to know. If we start looking at 2016 and we see another rise, we'll be a lot more concerned” said Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics.
Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the C.D.C who did not work on the paper says that the current rise was surprising, and that the gap between the US and other countries is now growing.
“We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale. We've seen increases in mortality for some age groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population. Many countries in Europe are witnessing declines in mortality, so the gap between the US and other countries is growing.”
Last year, a paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented the rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education, and other research has found rising rates among younger whites according to the NYT.
“This is probably heavily influenced by Whites. It does sort of fit together.” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. More conclusive evidence on that theory will have to wait until the final data is released later this year which will provide more details of the research.
Chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease take by far the most American lives, so any change in other causes can have a big effect on the final numbers. Also, the fact that the rate of death from heart disease increased in 2015 no longer offset the rise in drug deaths, bringing that category more to the forefront.
Here are the other death categories from the NYT
The death rate from heart disease stood at 167.1 in 2015, up from 166.7 in 2014, though the rise was not statistically significant. It was the first time since 1993 that the rate did not decline, Dr. Anderson said.
The death rate from suicides rose to 13.1 in the third quarter of 2015, from 12.7 in the same quarter of 2014. (The last quarter of 2015 data was not yet available for suicides.)
The same was true for drug overdoses, whose data the …read more
Source: Nation In Distress: US Death Rate Increased In 2015 For The First Time In A Decade
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