This post was published at SGTreport
Category: Corruption
Apple, The BeeEss Company
Done being a “fanboy” yet? No? You must like getting ripped off.
Hiding something you know is defective in a manner that will cause people to think their device should be replaced with a newer one, instead of either having it fixed under warranty or performing a relatively inexpensive repair, is outrageous.
Apple is being sued on this basis alleging consumer fraud, and IMHO rightly so.
Make no mistake — Apple only came clean after being caught. They didn’t tell anyone up front, they didn’t disclose the presence of the software change they made in anything like release notes that accompanied the new code, nothing.
They in fact said nothing despite people noting a problem until they were caught by irrefutable evidence that was presented to the public by a customer, and only thendid they come clean as to what they did.
That is evidence of bad faith and intentional misconduct and I hope the plaintiffs shove it so far up Cook’s and Apple’s ass that they can taste it.
That was not a mistake. It was in fact just the latest manifestation of what Apple as a company is — an extractive firm that has managed to create a religious cult of fervent grape Kool-Aid drinkers among Americans who parade around like they’ve got some part of God in their pockets and thus are blessed.
The truth does not matter to any of those fanbois however, nearly all of whom will keep buying their crap despite now having hard evidence that they’ve been intentionally screwed.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-12-30.
The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Mechanism of the Super-Wealthy: Money-Laundering 2.0
Financial and political power are two sides of one coin.
We all know the rich are getting richer, and the super-rich are getting super-richer. This reality is illustrated in the chart of income gains, the vast majority of which have flowed to the top .01%–not the top 1%, or the top .1% — to the very tippy top of the wealth-power pyramid:
Though all sorts of reasons have been offered to explain this trend–I’ve described the mechanisms of financialization here for years–two that don’t attract much mainstream media attention are money laundering and control fraud, i.e. changing the rules of what’s legal so what was illegal yesterday is legal today–presto-magico, illegally skimmed wealth is now “legal.”
Correspondent JD recently submitted an excellent summary of the progression from Money Laundering 1.0 to Money Laundering 2.0:
Money laundering 1.0 is making dirty money legal, control fraud is manipulating the ‘legal’ options, and money laundering 2.0 is making sure that ‘legal’ fortunes are not taxed and cannot be clawed back.”
Conventional money laundering works by shifting ill-gotten gains into legitimate banks and/or assets. Ill-gotten gains can be laundered quite easily by buying homes or businesses (in the U. S., Europe, etc.) with cash. The home or enterprises can then be sold and the net is now legit.
This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on DECEMBER 29, 2017.
What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
Real News host and producer Aaron Mat has recently emerged as one of the most articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, and has published in The Nation some of the clearest arguments against both that I’ve yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian where he has been writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.
In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill accurately described as ‘brutal’.
The term Gish gallop, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the opposition’s ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by Mat who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Thu, 12/28/2017 –.
China Beige Book Warns Economic Slowdown Has Begun
When it comes to the global economy, few things matter as much as China, the trajectory of its economy and especially the pace and impulse of its credit creation, which is ironic because virtually all data coming out of China is fabricated and manipulated, and thoroughly untrustworthy, either on purpose or “by accident.”
The latest example of the former was highlighted over the weekend, when we discussed that a nationwide Chinese audit found some local governments inflated revenue levels and raised debt illegally, once again making a mockery of China’s credibility on the global stage. As Bloomberg reported ten cities, counties or districts in the Yunnan, Hunan and Jilin provinces, as well as the southwestern city of Chongqing, inflated fiscal revenues by 1.55 billion yuan, the National Audit Office said in a statement on its website dated Dec. 8.
An even more blatant example of the former was highlighted in October ahead of China’s Communist Party Congress, when the local securities watchdog literally “advised” some loss-making companies to avoid publishing quarterly results ahead of the Congress as authorities sought to ensure stock-market stability during the critical gathering of China’s political elite. As a result, at least 17 Shenzhen-listed companies announced delays to their earnings reports from Oct. 20 to Oct. 24, up from three during the same period last year.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Wed, 12/27/2017.
WHEN LEFTIST VIRTUE SIGNALLING GOES HORRIBLY WRONG
On Wednesday, HuffPost writer Andy Ostroy attempted to virtue signal as a progressive liberal by attacking Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as a token black man and a ‘manipulated prop’ being used to sell the Republican’s newly passed tax bill.
‘What a shocker… there’s ONE black person there and sure enough they have him standing right next to the mic like a manipulated prop,’ Ostroy tweeted. ‘Way to go @SenatorTimScott.’
This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on DECEMBER 23, 2017.
Busted Billion-Dollar-Baby Fraud Finds Another Greater Fool – Softbank Lends Theranos $100 Million!
Japan’s Softbank Group is coming to the rescue of yet another embattled Silicon Valley ‘unicorn’. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Fortress Capital, the publicly traded private-equity firm that agreed to sell itself to the Japanese conglomerate earlier this year, has extended a $100 million loan to Theranos, which is still facing multiple lawsuits and investigations for misleading investors, business partners and clients about the efficacy of its core technology.
The loan, which will avert a bankruptcy filing for the former poster-child of tech-centric “disruption”, which was once one of Silicon Valley’s most valuable private companies with a valuation of $10 billion. Theranos famously marketed itself to investors by playing up its core innovation: A diagnostic machine that could supposedly run tests for hundreds of medical conditions with only a single drop of blood.
The company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, honed the perfect marketing pitch: A Stanford dropout, she claimed she was inspired to create the ‘nanotainer’ fingerstick that would become Theranos’s signature product by her irrational fear of needles.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 24, 2017.
Asian Metals Market Update: December-21-2017
‘Spend wisely and Invest lavishly should be life mantra for 2018’
American companies announcing large bonuses for its employees after the passage of Tax bill will result in higher consumption in the first quarter of next year. Higher retail consumption in the USA will result in higher employment and higher profitability. Global stock markets will remain firm and result in rosier projections for economic growth in the USA and China.
Negative news surrounding crypto currencies like hacking etc this week is state manipulated. States know that block chain technology is like the Linux of the world (which is free) and not windows (which is very expensive).
This post was published at GoldSeek on 21 December 2017.
Is crApple Playing Games With iFrauds?
Oh if true this is nastiness …..
So, Poole used Geekbench’s benchmarking testing to find out. He conducted single-core tests on iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 units running different versions of iOS. His findings suggest that Apple has made a tweak in iOS 10.2.1 to 11.2.0 that appears to throttle the iPhone’s performance when the smartphone’s “battery condition decreases past a certain point,” Poole said.
The change was likely made after iPhone 6s users reported that their smartphones would spontaneously shut down even when there was seemingly more than enough life left on their batteries. Apple acknowledged the shutdown problem and offered a battery replacement program. The company also released an update to address it.
I’ll tell you what’s going on here with the batteries.
As lithium batteries age they are unable to sink as much current as they used to be able to — either charging or discharging. At a certain point this becomes noticeable; you seem to have plenty of power, you turn on the GPS in the phone (which has a high drain) and whammo — the phone shuts down.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-12-21.
China Systemic Risk: Liquidity Problem Surfaces At HNA Group Less Than Two Weeks After Company’s Denial
Here we go again…
On December 8, we lamented how every few days we return to the subject of systemic risk in China related to its big four highly-indebted conglomerates, HNA, Anbang, Evergrande and Dalian Wanda. We also noted how our chief source of concern had become HNA, after it issued a bond with less than one year to maturity with the extortionately high coupon of 9%. And S&P downgraded HNA’s credit rating from b+ to b, five levels below investment grade. The reason for our continuing focus on HNA is its $28bn of short-term debt which matures before the end of next June, much of it accumulated during a $40 billion binge of acquisition-driven growth which saw it become a major shareholder in Deutsche Bank, Hilton Worldwide and others.
In our update less than two weeks ago, we noted how HNA business units had suffered further credit downgrades and been forced into cancelling bond issues. For example, Hainan Airlines cancelled a 1 billion yuan ($151.2 billion) issue of perpetual bonds to repay maturing debt, HNA Investment Group (hotels and real estate) cancelled a 5.22 billion yuan ($790 million) issue and S&P cut the long-term credit rating of HNA’s Swissport Group Sarl to b-, six levels below investment grade, citing concerns about its parent.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 18, 2017.
The Great Oil Swindle
When it comes to the story we’re being told about America’s rosy oil prospects, we’re being swindled.
At its core, the swindle is this: The shale industry’s oil production forecasts are vastly overstated.
Swindle: Noun – A fraudulent scheme or action.
And the swindle is not just affecting the US. It’s badly distorted everything from current geopolitics to future oil forecasts.
The false conclusions the world is drawing as a result of the self-deception and outright lies we’re being told is putting our future prosperity in major jeopardy. Policy makers and ordinary citizens alike have been misled, and everyone — everyone — is unprepared for the inevitable and massive coming oil price shock.
An Oil Price Spike Would Burst The ‘Everything Bubble’
Our thesis at Peak Prosperity is that the world’s equity and bond markets are enormous financial bubbles in search of a pin. Sadly, history shows there’s nothing quite as sharp and terminal to these sorts of bubbles as a rapid spike in the price of oil.
And we see a huge price spike on the way.
As a reminder, bubbles exist when asset prices rise beyond what incomes can sustain. Greece is a prime recent example. In 2008 when the price of oil spiked to $147/bbl, Greece could no longer afford imported oil. But oil is a necessity so it was bought anyway, their national balances of payments were stressed to the point that they were exposed as insolvent and then their debt bubble promptly and predictably popped. The rest is history. Greece is now a nation of ruins and their economy might as well be displayed alongside the Acropolis.
This post was published at PeakProsperity on Friday, December 15, 2017,.
Still Can’t Find That Pitchfork, Can You?
Corporate balance sheets have never been in the condition they are now, but most of this is a fraud.
Virtually all of the so-called “growth” has been in buybacks and (to a lesser extent) dividends. The problem with buybacks is that into ramping prices they are a terrible long-term deal. They make some sense in the depths of a crash, but of course nobody has the cash to do it during a crash.
When debt financed it’s even worse because history says that corporate debt is never paid off, only rolled over. In point of fact non-financial companies did not decrease their total debt levels (as measured by the Fed Z1) even during the depth of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. This of course means that debt:equity levels go vertical as soon as the ramp in equity price stops.
I remind you that while buybacks increase earnings during good years (by reducing the divisor) they also increase losses during bad ones. People forget this because, well, there haven’t been any bad ones recently. That will end and when it does it will provide a gross amount of acceleration for the decline in equity prices. In fact, it’s not going to be gasoline poured on that fire, it’s going to a mixture of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate…. See Galveston for what will come of that.
But on top of this we now have the real screw job in the tax bill.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-12-15.
Strap Yourself In – We Are About To See Some Big Moves In Metals
First published on Wed am Dec 13 on SeekingAlpha:
Recent price action
The last week has seen the metals and miners drop down into support regions. As I write this, we are sitting just over major support for most of the charts I follow.
Whereas the GDX likely provides the cleanest picture of the market potential right now, I will be providing you guidance about the GDX in my analysis below. And, while I maintain a strong bullish bias for 2018, the action we see in the coming weeks will tell us when we can begin to take a more immediate bullish perspective.
Anecdotal and other sentiment indications
The whipsaw continues. Most in the complex don’t know whether they are coming or going right now. One day we go up, another day we go down. And, many have become quite bearish again, with many even calling for lows below those seen in 2015.
My last article on metals, which was about whether the metals market is truly manipulated, certainly generated some heated debate. And, anyone who has an opinion about the issue usually has a very emotional perspective on the issue, which is often on display in the comment section.
This post was published at GoldSeek on 14 December 2017.
Public Enemy No. 1: Walls Closing In On Peter Strzok As Questions Arise Over His Involvement In FISA Application
Over the past 10 days we’ve learned a lot about FBI agent Peter Strzok, a man who very likely would have lived the remainder of his life in relative obscurity as an FBI counterintelligence agent but for his sudden dismissal from Special Counsel Mueller’s “Russian Collusion” investigation.
As we noted on December 2nd (see: Mueller’s Top FBI Agent Probing Clinton Emails, Russian-Collusion “Removed” After Anti-Trump Texts Found), Strzok’s life became far more complicated when it was revealed that his dismissal from Mueller’s team was linked to the discovery of multiple “anti-Trump text messages” shared with a colleague…a colleague with whom he happened to be having an extramarital affair.
Of course, like most twisted Washington D. C. scandals, his overt political bias and anti-Trump text messages were only the tip of the iceberg as it was subsequently discovered that Strzok not only held a leading role in the Hillary email investigation but potentially single-handedly saved her from prosecution by making the now-infamous change in Comey’s final statement to describe her email abuses as “extremely careless” rather than the original language of “grossly negligent.”
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 12, 2017.
Bitcoin vs Fiat Currency: Which Fails First?
What if bitcoin is a reflection of trust in the future value of fiat currencies? I am struck by the mainstream confidence that bitcoin is a fraud/fad that will soon collapse, while central bank fiat currencies are presumed to be rock-solid and without risk. Those with supreme confidence in fiat currencies might want to look at a chart of Venezuela’s fiat currency, which has declined from 10 to the US dollar in 2012 to 5,000 to the USD earlier this year to a current value in December 2017 of between 90,000 and 100,000 to $1: *** Exchange Rate in Venezuela: On 1 December, the bolivar traded in the parallel market at 103,024 VED per USD, a stunning 59.9% depreciation from the same day last month. Analysts participating in the LatinFocus Consensus Forecast expect the parallel dollar to remain under severe pressure next year. They project a non-official exchange rate of 2,069,486 VEF per USD by the end of 2018. In 2019, the panel sees the non-official exchange rate trading at 2,725,000 VEF per USD.
This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2017.
Crypto-Cornucopia Part 4 – “Without It, You’re Talking Mad Max”
Authored by Dr. D via Raul Ilargi Meijer’s The Automatic Earth blog,
Part 1 “Bitcoin Is A Trust Machine” here.
Part 2 “This System Is Garbage, How Do We Fix It?” here.
Part 3 “A System With No Justice, No Order, No Rules, & No Predictability” here.
Well, all parts of the system rely on accurate record-keeping.
Look at voting rights: we had a security company where 20% more people voted than there were shares. Think you could direct corporate, even national power that way? Without records of transfer, how do you know you own it? Morgan transferred a stock to Schwab but forgot to clear it. Doesn’t that mean it’s listed in both Morgan and Schwab? In fact, didn’t you just double-count and double-value that share? Suppose you fail to clear just a few each day. Before long, compounding the double ownership leads to pension funds owning 2% fake shares, then 5%, then 10%, until stock market and the national value itself becomes unreal. And how would you unwind it?
Work backwards to 1999 where the original drop happened? Remove 10% of CALPERs or Chicago’s already devastated pension money? How about the GDP and national assets that 10% represents? Do you tell Sachs they now need to raise $100B more in capital reserves because they didn’t have the assets they thought they have? Think I’m exaggerating? There have been several companies who tired of these games and took themselves back private, buying up every share…only to find their stock trading briskly the next morning. When that can happen without even a comment, you know fraud knows no bounds, a story Financial Sense called ‘The Crime of the Century.’ No one blinked.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 9, 2017.
Wisconsin Governor Pushes Forward With Plan To Drug Test Food Stamp Recipients
After yesterday’s latest botched hit job by CNN on president Trump, which came exactly one week after the fiasco where erroneous ABC reporting on the Flynn affair sent the market tumbling, it was only a matter of time before Trump lashed out at the news network whose credibility and influence is evaporating with every fabricated story.
A little after 8am on Saturday, he did just that slamming CNN of making a “vicious and intentional mistake” over the network’s effective retraction, when it was forced to correct an erroneous news report related to the Trump/Russia probe. Having been on the receiving end of three “fake news” stories in the past week, betwee the ABC Flynn debacle, the Bloomberg Deutsche Bank subpoena, and now CNN, Trump demanded that CNN fire “those responsible,” and commented that an ABC reporter who was suspended for a separate erroneous report should be fired as well.
“Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday. They were caught red handed, just like lonely Brian Ross at ABC News (who should be immediately fired for his ‘mistake’),” Trump wrote. “Watch to see if @CNN fires those responsible, or was it just gross incompetence?” It is worth noting that Ross was not fired but rather suspended for 4 weeks.
In a second tweet, the president suggested CNN change their slogan after the report to “the least trusted name in news.”
“CNN’S slogan is CNN, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS. Everyone knows this is not true, that this could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public. There are many outlets that are far more trusted than Fake News CNN. Their slogan should be CNN, THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS!” the president tweeted.
Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday. They were caught red handed, just like lonely Brian Ross at ABC News (who should be immediately fired for his ‘mistake’). Watch to see if @CNN fires those responsible, or was it just gross incompetence?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 9, 2017.
Trump Lashes Out At “Fake News” CNN For “Vicious And Purposeful” Mistake, Demands Terminations
After yesterday’s latest botched hit job by CNN on president Trump, which came exactly one week after the fiasco where erroneous ABC reporting on the Flynn affair sent the market tumbling, it was only a matter of time before Trump lashed out at the news network whose credibility and influence is evaporating with every fabricated story.
A little after 8am on Saturday, he did just that slamming CNN of making a “vicious and intentional mistake” over the network’s effective retraction, when it was forced to correct an erroneous news report related to the Trump/Russia probe. Having been on the receiving end of three “fake news” stories in the past week, betwee the ABC Flynn debacle, the Bloomberg Deutsche Bank subpoena, and now CNN, Trump demanded that CNN fire “those responsible,” and commented that an ABC reporter who was suspended for a separate erroneous report should be fired as well.
“Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday. They were caught red handed, just like lonely Brian Ross at ABC News (who should be immediately fired for his ‘mistake’),” Trump wrote. “Watch to see if @CNN fires those responsible, or was it just gross incompetence?” It is worth noting that Ross was not fired but rather suspended for 4 weeks.
In a second tweet, the president suggested CNN change their slogan after the report to “the least trusted name in news.”
“CNN’S slogan is CNN, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS. Everyone knows this is not true, that this could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public. There are many outlets that are far more trusted than Fake News CNN. Their slogan should be CNN, THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS!” the president tweeted.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 9, 2017.
China Systemic Risk: HNA Group Denies Liquidity Problem, It’s Only “End-Of-The-Year Tightness”
Every few days at the moment, it seems, we return to the subject of systemic risk in China related to its big four highly-indebted conglomerates, HNA, Anbang, Evergrande and Dalian Wanda.
Our main source of concern recently has been HNA, after it issued a bond with less than one year to maturity with the extortionately high coupon of 9%. This prompted us to ask whether China was experiencing the beginning of its Minsky moment? The reason for our continuing focus on HNA is its $28bn of short-term debt which matures before the end of next June, much of it accumulated during a binge of acquisition-driven growth which saw it become a major shareholder in Deutsche Bank, Hilton Worldwide and others.
Last week, as we discussed, S&P downgraded HNA’s credit rating by one notch from b+ to b, five levels below investment grade. in another sign that HNA is under pressure from the Chinese government and its creditors, CEO Adam Tan announced that it was ditching its acquisitive strategy, while considering the IPO of Gategroup, a company it only acquired last year for $1.5 billion.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 8, 2017.
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