Article: For democracy, it’s a time of swimming against the tide

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For democracy, it’s a time of swimming against the tide

Tim Sullivan, 12 July 2021

The old Nicaraguan revolutionary, with his receding hairline and the goatee that he had finally let turn grey, spoke calmly into the camera as police swarmed toward his house, hidden behind a high wall in a leafy Managua neighborhood. Surveillance drones, he said, were watching overhead.

Decades earlier, Hugo Torres had been a revered guerrilla in the fight against right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza. In 1974, he’d taken a group of top officials hostage, then traded them for the release of imprisoned comrades. Among those prisoners was Daniel Ortega, a Marxist bank robber who would become Nicaragua’s elected president and later its authoritarian ruler. Continue reading “Article: For democracy, it’s a time of swimming against the tide”

Article: The Illegal Wildlife Trade and the Banking Sector in China

Article - Media, Publications

The Illegal Wildlife Trade and the Banking Sector in China

TRAFFIC, 12 April 2021

Cambridge, UK – 14 April 2021: Chinese banks must take action to prevent illegal wildlife traffickers from exploiting their networks to launder money says TRAFFIC. The non-governmental organisation, which works globally on trade in wild animals and plants in the context of both biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, is today releasing resources that indicate how Chinese banks are at risk of greater scrutiny and pressure from governments and institutional investors if they fail to act on the illegal trade of wildlife. Continue reading “Article: The Illegal Wildlife Trade and the Banking Sector in China”

Article: Big banks win dismissal of U.S. Treasury rigging litigation

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Big banks win dismissal of U.S. Treasury rigging litigation

Jonathan Stempel, 31 March 2021

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday dismissed long-running litigation accusing 10 large banks of conspiring to suppress competition in the now $21.2 trillion market for U.S. Treasury securities.

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan ruled against 21 pension, retirement and benefit funds, as well as unions, banks, individuals, and companies that traded in Treasuries, in the proposed antitrust class action.

The defendants included Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, NatWest Group and UBS, as well as trading platform operator Tradeweb Markets. Continue reading “Article: Big banks win dismissal of U.S. Treasury rigging litigation”

Article: Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading

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Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, 30 March 2021

It was a bleak moment for the oil industry. U.S. shale companies were failing by the dozen. Petrostates were on the brink of bankruptcy. Texas roughnecks and Kuwaiti princes alike had watched helplessly for months as the commodity that was their lifeblood tumbled to prices that had until recently seemed unthinkable. Below $50 a barrel, then below $40, then below $30.

But inside the central London headquarters of one of the world’s largest oil companies, there was an air of calm. It was January 2016. Bob Dudley had been at the helm of BP Plc for six years. He ought to have had as much reason to panic as anyone in the rest of his industry. The unflashy American had been predicting lower prices for months. He was being proved right, though that was hardly a reason to celebrate. Continue reading “Article: Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading”

Article: Ex-Glencore Trader Pleads Guilty to Manipulating Oil Prices

Article - Media, Publications

Ex-Glencore Trader Pleads Guilty to Manipulating Oil Prices

Joel Rosenblatt, Malathi Nayak and Javier Blas, 25 March 2021

(Bloomberg) — A former Glencore Plc trader pleaded guilty to manipulating an oil price benchmark, allowing the world’s largest commodities trader to profit from the price swings and enriching himself.Emilio Heredia appeared by video conference on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to a conspiracy in which he directed buy and sell orders that pushed fuel oil prices up and down.

Heredia, 49, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Justice Department lawyer Matthew Sullivan told the judge that Heredia, who became a naturalized citizen in 2016, could lose his immigration status and be removed from the U.S. But Sullivan also said Heredia had agreed to cooperate with the government as it investigates further.

Glencore has said it is cooperating with authorities. Continue reading “Article: Ex-Glencore Trader Pleads Guilty to Manipulating Oil Prices”

Article: Madoff Client Ordered To Pay Back $3M In Fake Profits

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Madoff Client Ordered To Pay Back $3M In Fake Profits

Vince Sullivan, 24 March 2021

A client of the notorious Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff must return nearly $3 million in fictitious profits it received from the scheme after a New York federal judge found in favor of the trustee overseeing the Madoff fund’s liquidation.

U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl granted summary judgment to Irving H. Picard, the trustee for the Substantively Consolidated SIPA Liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and Bernard L. Madoff, and ordered JABA Associates to fork over $2,925,000 in payouts it received in the two years before Madoff’s scheme crumbled in December 2008. Continue reading “Article: Madoff Client Ordered To Pay Back $3M In Fake Profits”

Letter: Marc Cohodes to Judge Jed Rakoff

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PDF (5 Pages): 20210218-Cohodes Submission Against Petit

“Second, Mr. Cohodes has never engaged in naked short selling (that is, he trades through brokers who find shares for him to borrow and he pays high interest fees to maintain his short positions). He was never part of any concerted illegal campaign to target MiMedx; his actions were his own.”

Comment: The above statement by a lawyer is easily challenged in court with evidence. Mr. Cohodes appears to be panicking. This time around it will cost him 10X to 100X what he was forced to pay Patrick Byrne.  We have it all. The matter of compromised judges and DOJ and SCC as a RICO organization are also on the table. DTCC will not survive a Special Prosecutor.

Article: Short Selling and the New Market Manipulation

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Short Selling and the New Market Manipulation

John C. Coffee, Jr. and Joshua Mitts,  18 March 2019

Stock market manipulation has been around since shortly after stock markets were invented. Everyone is familiar with the methodology in the standard “pump and dump” scheme: False rumors are circulated, the stock is bid up by the manipulators, supply might be constrained, and, once the public’s appetite is aroused, the stock is dumped by the manipulators.

But the internet has changed all that. No need exists today for the boiler shop or its battery of phones or even carefully assembled lists of suckers. All that one needs today is to put one’s message (written under a pseudonym) on a blog that features hot news about individual stocks. Of these sites, the best known and most watched is Seeking Alpha, whose “Short Ideas” column contains numerous posts recommending that specific stocks be shorted. Reversing the old pattern, the focus is no longer on touting stocks for an immediate rise, but rather on suggesting a dark downside. Once the professional media may have played a gatekeeper role, refusing to publish wild and unsubstantiated reports. But on the blogs, it is the Wild West today. Continue reading “Article: Short Selling and the New Market Manipulation”

Article: How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution

Article - Media

How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 2 April 2009

It’s over – we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline – a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?