At a time when Beijing is cracking down on dissent, the Communist Party has refused to renew the press credentials of a WSJ reporter who co-wrote an investigative report about a relative of President Xi Jinping.
The reporter, Chun Han Wong, is a Singaporean national who has been working at the paper’s Beijing bureau since 2014. Earlier this year, he wrote a story about one of Xi’s cousins, who has been under investigation by Australian law enforcement for his involvement in what investigators believe is a front company to launder money for high-stakes gambling.
Every year until now, the reporter’s credentials have been renewed without issue. But when WSJ applied earlier this month to have Wong’s credentials renewed, the ministry of foreign affairs refused. When asked about its decision, the ministry said it “opposes individual foreign reporters who maliciously smear and attack China. These types of reporters are not welcome.
Xi’s cousin, Ming Chai, is a naturalized Australian citizen.
Chun Han Wong
The private lives of top Chinese government officials are considered off-limits to reporters because they’re extremely taboo. It’s not difficult to imagine why: The government’s communist roots make personal wealth an off-limits subject. Before the story was published, the ministry warned WSJ that it would face repercussions if it moved forward.
But the paper’s editors refused to back down. And in a comment on Friday, the paper’s editor in chief said it remained committed to impartially covering the country.
According to the Washington Post, WSJ’s coverage of China has been considered incisive, but fair.
“It is disappointing that the Chinese government has denied our reporter press credentials,” said Matt Murray, WSJ editor in chief. “Our journalism has been fair and accurate. We of course remain committed to covering the important story of China with the usual high standards that our readers expect.”
Wong is the sixth reporter working for an American media outlet to be forced out of the country for their reporting since 2013, WaPo reported.
The wealth of Communist Party leaders and their families has long been a taboo subject. Both The New York Times and Bloomberg encountered visa troubles after they reported on the wealth of the families of then-Premier Wen Jiabao and Xi in 2012.
Since Xi took power that year, media outlets and various parts of civil society in China have faced tightening restrictions.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China stridently denounced the government’s decision.
“Such treatment of foreign correspondents runs completely counter to Chinese claims that it supports openness and inclusiveness,” the FCCC said in a statement.
Foreign reporters working in China need press credentials from the government to keep working. Press credentials are typically issued alongside their visas.
Wong was forced to leave China on Friday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NDxKDT Tyler Durden
Oil production in the once-gushing North Slope has been in steep decline for a number of years, with this year set to be the worst on record since the pipeline’s inception in 1977, and the Alaskan government is now drowning in debt from oil and gas tax credits that are no longer bringing much-needed cash flow to the state’s struggling economy. So why on Earth is one of the richest men in the world turning his back on Texas and putting his money into Alaskan oil?
Self-made multi-billionaire and Texas oilman Jeffery Hildebrand has made a career of investing in and revamping old oil and gas fields and steering clear of all of the shale hype that has boomed and now seems to be on the verge of busting in his home state’s Permian Basin. Now, as the West Texan shale boom slows down and the once red-hot Permian Basin becomes “toxic” in investment circles, Hildebrand has already moved on to his next frontier in the Last Frontier.
The oil industry veteran is making his next big play in Alaska, where his Hilcorp Energy Co. is buying up old wells and pipelines being unloaded at a discount from BP Plc. The British supermajor is leaving Alaska after operating there for 60 years, finally throwing in the towel on what it says is no longer a competitive investment.
Hildebrand’s Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy Co. has purchased $5.6 billion worth of BP’s holdings and infrastructure in Alaska despite the fact that Alaskan wells are all but dried up after years of severe decline as the company “chases fast-growing shale production that has transformed global energy markets over the past decade,” as reported by Bloomberg.
But what one company (BP) sees as a non-competitive money pit is, in Hildebrand’s eyes at least, simply a particularly attractive buyer’s market.
“Hilcorp is somewhat uniquely following a counter-cyclical strategy, really going after these legacy assets that public companies are selling at pretty attractive price points,” Andrew Dittmar, a senior analyst at Enverus (a Texas-based oilfield data services company previously called Drillinginfo), was quoted by Bloomberg following a phone interview. “They will generate cash flow for decades.”
While $5.6 billion is a hefty sum, it’s less than 4 times the annual cash flow of the assets acquired, meaning that Hilcorp will likely make that money back in a hurry. Even if Alaskan oil wells do continue to decline, however, (as they very likely will), they will decline at a much slower rate than the shale wells that investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into in recent years. By comparison, $5.6 billion is a trifling sum, and its money that’s all but guaranteed to secure a return on Hilcorp’s investment.
Shale wells are attractive thanks to their gushing volumes of oil at the very beginning of production, but they decline extremely rapidly, leading to slowdowns like the one we’re currently witnessing in the Permian Basin.
“Shale wells lose as much as 70 percent of their production in the first year, meaning that explorers have to constantly pour money into more drilling just to maintain production,” reports Bloomberg.
“By contrast, once up and running, conventional wells lose as little as 5 percent each year, providing a much more solid production outlook.”
While shale oil plays are much more lucrative in the short term, their production levels, and therefore their profit margins, are entirely unsustainable. Looking at the difference between shale wells and traditional wells brings to mind proverbial tortoises and hares–and we all know who won that race.
“In the past five years, while everyone from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Concho Resources Inc. spent billions to get a slice of the shale boom, Hilcorp picked up assets in New Mexico, Wyoming and other oil properties in Alaska,” says Bloomberg. While it’s not the most common strategy, it is certainly on-brand for Hildebrand, who has made a career of laughing all the way to the bank as the industry questions his business decisions, even ones as seemingly ludicrous as putting billions of dollars into Alaskan oil when the sector seems almost certainly headed for the grave.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34d8fz1 Tyler Durden
Oil production in the once-gushing North Slope has been in steep decline for a number of years, with this year set to be the worst on record since the pipeline’s inception in 1977, and the Alaskan government is now drowning in debt from oil and gas tax credits that are no longer bringing much-needed cash flow to the state’s struggling economy. So why on Earth is one of the richest men in the world turning his back on Texas and putting his money into Alaskan oil?
Self-made multi-billionaire and Texas oilman Jeffery Hildebrand has made a career of investing in and revamping old oil and gas fields and steering clear of all of the shale hype that has boomed and now seems to be on the verge of busting in his home state’s Permian Basin. Now, as the West Texan shale boom slows down and the once red-hot Permian Basin becomes “toxic” in investment circles, Hildebrand has already moved on to his next frontier in the Last Frontier.
The oil industry veteran is making his next big play in Alaska, where his Hilcorp Energy Co. is buying up old wells and pipelines being unloaded at a discount from BP Plc. The British supermajor is leaving Alaska after operating there for 60 years, finally throwing in the towel on what it says is no longer a competitive investment.
Hildebrand’s Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy Co. has purchased $5.6 billion worth of BP’s holdings and infrastructure in Alaska despite the fact that Alaskan wells are all but dried up after years of severe decline as the company “chases fast-growing shale production that has transformed global energy markets over the past decade,” as reported by Bloomberg.
But what one company (BP) sees as a non-competitive money pit is, in Hildebrand’s eyes at least, simply a particularly attractive buyer’s market.
“Hilcorp is somewhat uniquely following a counter-cyclical strategy, really going after these legacy assets that public companies are selling at pretty attractive price points,” Andrew Dittmar, a senior analyst at Enverus (a Texas-based oilfield data services company previously called Drillinginfo), was quoted by Bloomberg following a phone interview. “They will generate cash flow for decades.”
While $5.6 billion is a hefty sum, it’s less than 4 times the annual cash flow of the assets acquired, meaning that Hilcorp will likely make that money back in a hurry. Even if Alaskan oil wells do continue to decline, however, (as they very likely will), they will decline at a much slower rate than the shale wells that investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into in recent years. By comparison, $5.6 billion is a trifling sum, and its money that’s all but guaranteed to secure a return on Hilcorp’s investment.
Shale wells are attractive thanks to their gushing volumes of oil at the very beginning of production, but they decline extremely rapidly, leading to slowdowns like the one we’re currently witnessing in the Permian Basin.
“Shale wells lose as much as 70 percent of their production in the first year, meaning that explorers have to constantly pour money into more drilling just to maintain production,” reports Bloomberg.
“By contrast, once up and running, conventional wells lose as little as 5 percent each year, providing a much more solid production outlook.”
While shale oil plays are much more lucrative in the short term, their production levels, and therefore their profit margins, are entirely unsustainable. Looking at the difference between shale wells and traditional wells brings to mind proverbial tortoises and hares–and we all know who won that race.
“In the past five years, while everyone from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Concho Resources Inc. spent billions to get a slice of the shale boom, Hilcorp picked up assets in New Mexico, Wyoming and other oil properties in Alaska,” says Bloomberg. While it’s not the most common strategy, it is certainly on-brand for Hildebrand, who has made a career of laughing all the way to the bank as the industry questions his business decisions, even ones as seemingly ludicrous as putting billions of dollars into Alaskan oil when the sector seems almost certainly headed for the grave.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2rZDc6c Tyler Durden
Most of last Friday’s Jackson Hole focus was on Powell, but what Standard Chartered’s chief FX strategist, Steven Englander was struck by, was the apparent consensus among JH participants, that US rates and USD were too high, surprisingly, but hardly consciously in line with President Trump’s views. And while Englander does not see a direct line from such intellectual consensus to a weaker USD, he would not rule out that weaker USD somehow ends up as the long-term outcome.
Below we recap some of the key points from Englander’s take on the “modest proposal” to reduce the USD’s role in reserves.
As the FX strategist notes, a strange convergence of views emerged between President Trump and Jackson Hole (JH) participants. The president feels that lower US rates and a weaker USD would be good for the US. Participants at Jackson Hole suggested that a weaker USD and lower US interest rates would be good for the world. The similarity can be extended in that the president sees higher US rates as having choked off growth in the US economy, while the JH crowd sees higher US rates and a stronger USD as having choked off growth abroad through the risk-premium channel.
Of course, if that was all there is to the debate, then we would have a new Plaza Accord as soon as this weekend: after all, “everyone agrees” that the dollar is strong, right? Then just agree to devalue it.
Alas it never is quite that simple.
As Englander expands, at JH the discussion of the negative impact of USD strength focused on emerging market (EM) economies. A weaker USD against developed market (DM) currencies is probably necessary and sufficient to weaken the USD against EM currencies, but DM assets don’t face the same risk premium as EM assets when their currencies depreciate. Currency weakness for DM economies does not carry the same risk premium as for EM economies. In other words, Europeans may not mind a weaker USD, as long as it doesn’t come with a stronger EUR (which it inevitably will).
The bigger point, of course, is that the extensive discussion of the USD, US rates and risk premia abroad establishes an analytical basis for a weak USD as a global policy. Indeed, as we repeatedly noted in the past week, outgoing Bank of England Governor Carney argued for an alternative reserve asset to the USD. It is too early to tell whether monetary easing in the US and fiscal stimulus in the EU can both stimulate each region and give the world the combination of low rates and weaker US dollar that are needed.
Another reason to replace the USD as the global reserve currency
For those who missed it, Carney gave “a surprisingly pointed talk on the international monetary and financial system (IMFS), in which he argued for dramatic long-term changes. In particular, he felt that the USD’s pre-eminence in international financial transactions was disproportionate to the US’ importance in production and trade” as Englander recaps. Still, there is no guarantee that US monetary policy makers will adequately take into account spillover into EM economies. The other issue is the pro-cyclicality of capital flows into EM economies, which means that a tightening of DM financial conditions drives a withdrawal of capital from EM markets.
None of this should be new.
The surprise was his long-term recommendation that the USD-centric system of global finance be replaced by a multi-polar system, arguing that a system of “multiple reserve currencies would increase the supply of safe assets”. In consequence, “the safety premium they [reserve currencies] receive should fall” and ”reduce the fragilities in the system, and increase the sustainability of capital flows”. As Englander continues, noting that transactions are increasingly online and through electronic payments, Carney went on to argue for central bank digital currencies as a new reserve asset, analogous to proposed new private-sector “payments infrastructure … fully backed by reserve assets in a basket of currencies”.
He certainly has it in for the USD:
“The IMFS … is also encouraging protectionist and populist policies which are exacerbating the situation. This combination reduces the rate of global potential growth, increases its downside skew, and bolsters the likelihood of an extreme downside event (a fatter left tail). … such a change in the distribution of economic outcomes reduces the global equilibrium rate of interest. Past instances of very low rates have tended to coincide with high risk events such as wars, financial crises, and breaks in the monetary regime.”
The punchline in Carney’s speech: the proposal for a Global Hegemonic Currency (GHC) to “dampen the domineering influence of the US dollar on global trade” to “help reduce the volatility of capital flows to EMEs”. EM countries would diversify away from the USD, reducing risk. As this digital reserve currency was increasingly used in trade and finance, the impact of US shocks and USD shocks would become less important in EM asset markets. He seems to want the GHC to replace rather than augment USD as a reserve asset. What was not said that such a transfer of reserve status from a central bank-backed currency to a digital/crypto currency is a tacit admission that central banks are now powerless, and the transformation is one of necessity as the old, fiat model begins to fall apart (of course, none of this could be verbalized at a central banker convention).
As Englander correctly notes, Carney’s proposal is certainly audacious, and “would appeal to the IMF, whose role in international financial policy would be increased. The proposal would also appeal to countries that want to see the role of the USD in international finance reduced for political reasons. It is less clear whether EM countries would prefer a new reserve asset or more ready availability of the old one.”
Then again, as Carney puts his proposal, it may not be very enticing to US policy makers (Rabobank’s Michael Every said that the US would not relinquish reserve status without a fight). One important consequence would be long-term diversification away from the USD in reserve portfolios and private-sector balances. A smaller role for the USD in international trade and finance would mean that private-sector businesses would need lower transaction balances denominated in USD. All of these factors would likely push the USD lower, not just cyclically, but structurally as well, and as Std Chartered summarizes, “the US would give up its free lunch from global reserves demand of about USD 10-15bn per year. It is also possible that US rates would be higher because of lower demand for USD assets from abroad.”
So will it work?
Some, as Englander saud, “would label the proposal as a bunch of buzzwords stretching from Jackson Hole to Washington, but it is worth looking closely at the proposal and flagging where more work has to be done to establish whether the SHC has the intended properties.” The FX strategist sees a couple of issues:
The proposal looks a lot like a digital version of the Special Drawing Right (SDR) which has been around for fifty years. Interest in the SDR perks up every decade or so when the basket is reconfigured and then disappears. Private-sector participants can borrow and lend in SDRs if they like but there does not seem to be much demand for such products, despite their diversification advantages.
Carney emphasizes the disadvantages to the USD-based system for the EM world, but does not discuss the liquidity, scale and networking economies that might accrue to having a single currency as the premier accepted global reserve asset. Both the pros and the cons to having a multipolar as opposed to hegemonic reserve system are speculative. Most discussions of the history of reserves, including Carney’s, emphasise that there is usually one dominant reserve currency at a time. There have been episodes of USD strength over the last 15 years that have not been used for shrinking the USD share in reserves (Figure 2), so holding dollars must be voluntary to some degree.
The incumbency advantage of the dominant reserve currency means that it may be an expensive proposition to establish an alternative, with uncertain success.
Correlations among asset prices often go to one when there is a financial crisis, eliminating the key advantage of the SHC. If reserves consisted of a broader set of DM currencies that are viewed as safer than EM currencies, we would still see EM under pressure if a big enough shock hit. Carney has faith that the existence of the diversified alternative asset will be enough to keep DM money in EM.
The set of circumstances where SHC outperforms USD may be quite narrow. The shocks have to be moderate rather than acute (to avoid correlations going to one) and have to be worse outside the US than inside. This fits where we are now but may not match future scenarios.
The key question may be whether there is a mechanism to fill the EM funding gap when a shock hits. If there is such a mechanism, it may not make much difference if the funding is in USD or SHC. If there is no such mechanism, it may not make much difference what the nature of the reserve currency is.
Fiscal expansion may be the biggest ‘favor’ that DM countries can do for EM. Fiscal expansion in DM would both give a boost to local and global demand and increase the supply of safe DM assets, reducing their scarcity.
The bottom line, at least to Std Chartered’s FX team is the intellectual consensus at Jackson Hole that lower US rates and a weaker USD were desirable. Not all proposal solutions look practical to, but the takeaway is that there is a growing consensus that a weaker US dollar would be a good idea, and policy makers are beginning to look for a way to implement it.
In other words, instead of a sharp drop in the yuan, don’t be surprised to wake up one morning and see your favorite dollar index devalued by about 10% against all of its currency pairs.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ztqZfF Tyler Durden
Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most interesting, absurd, and concerning stories we are following this week.
Local tax collector ruins children’s entrepreneurship event
Every summer, a Utah non-profit agency called the Libertas Institute holds an entrepreneurship event for children.
It’s a wonderful idea– children as young as 5 gather together in a marketplace to buy and sell products and services that they’ve created to one another.
And parents are strongly encouraged to step back and let their kids be in charge– advertise, negotiate, count money, and make the sale. So it really is children doing business with other children. Obviously no one is getting rich from this; the larger point is to start cultivating the desire within the next generation to build and grow their own companies.
The Libertas Institute held one such event at Spanish Fork, Utah a few weeks ago on August 7. And for the first time since they’ve been holding these, the local tax collectors showed up, demanding that the kids pay city sales tax on the day’s transactions.
Moreover, the tax collectors insisted that even kids who didn’t make a single sale that day should still file tax forms with the state government.
San Francisco continues reinventing the English language
The City of San Francisco is back at it. A few weeks ago we told you they were ‘gender neutralizing’ the English language, changing words like “manhole” into “maintenance hole”.
They’re terrified that someone might be offended by words like “manhole”, so they’ve cleansed the dictionary and demanded that all city workers and agencies begin using the new gender-neutral language.
Now they’re extending their sensitivities to even more groups.
The word “felon” will henceforth be replaced with “justice involved person”. Because we’d hate for felons to be offended.
And a convict going back to prison will now be a “returning resident.”
I can’t even imagine how that will sound in a courtroom: “That justice involved person is going to be a returning resident!”
Cop tries to shoot innocent teenager, misses, and hits another innocent bystander
On the morning of February 10, 2015, a cop saw a group of teenagers a few blocks from their school. One of them was holding a toy gun– the kind with a giant, bright orange tip on it..
So without any warning, or any request to drop the weapon, he shot at the kid with the toy gun.
But the bullet missed the intended target, and instead hit another one of the teenagers.
Despite this appalling blunder, the cop handcuffed and detained the students for five hours– probably in a desperate attempt to try to find something to pin on them to take the focus off the fact that he just shot an innocent, unarmed kid.
The student that was accidentally shot has tried to sue the police officer.
But a federal appeals court has just thrown out the case, ruling that the police officer ha ‘qualified immunity’.
In other words, the cop cannot be sued for something he did in the performance of his official duties… even when his official duties involved shooting at a bunch of teenagers with no warning.
Humans have been herding and breeding livestock for their milk for about 10,000 years.
That likely played a huge role in developing an advanced human society.
But we are now such an advanced species that proponents of feminist theory now claim artificial insemination of cows is rape, and milking them is sexual abuse.
In a paper called “Readying the Rape Rack: Feminism and the Exploitation of Non-Human Reproductive Systems,” one such enlightened thinker argues that feminists need to incorporate non-humans females into their movement.
And the paper demands that women should challenge the “outdated stereotype about women being caretakers and most importantly child-bearers [which] remains consistent in the dairy industry.”
Sounds like comparing dairy farming to rape might be insensitive to actual rape victims… But what do I know, I’m just a patriarchal oppressor.
Cop and Paramedic assault a 76-year old man trying to help
A self-described frail 76-year-old man, Freddie Judd, heard his friend’s store was burning down.
So Judd drove to the scene and saw firefighters struggling to open the main door to the store.
Judd went up to an officer to try to give her the keys to the front door.
According to court documents, the officer then threw Judd to the ground and handcuffed him, at which point a nearby paramedic came over to help beat him.
Judd did not resist, but he was still beaten, and sustained a broken elbow.
When we hear about holders of crypto being tracked down by the Internal Revenue Service, or that imprisonment is being considered for anyone using crypto in India, it conjures up a disconcerting image of what regulation might entail.
It’s part of crypto’s DNA to be unregulated, some might say. It falls outside the scope of government and should remain so for all the reasons it was created in the first place.
But if crypto is the future and there are valid concerns, then surely these should be addressed. If we want crypto to be accepted and become part of our everyday lives, then we need to engage in the debate and embrace reasonable and responsible regulation. Even the most devout supporters, who wish nothing more than to see crypto succeed on a mass scale, could agree that the growth of this industry depends, in part, on the establishment of safe, fair and reliable market conditions.
Presently, the regulatory climate is still uncertain and fragmented across jurisdictions. However, recent developments seem to suggest that we find ourselves at a turning point. The contours of a global regulatory framework are coming into focus, and we should welcome it.
An emerging framework
Global
On July 15, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a compelling documentcontaining a useful typology of digital money, an assessment of the risks it poses and policy recommendations. It posits that privately issued stablecoins pose a number of risks to consumers and financial stability, citing liquidity risk, default risk, market risk and foreign exchange risk as comprising the primary concerns.
It argues that digital assets and cryptocurrencies could be attractive and see capital inflows away from fiat currencies in countries with high inflation rates and weak institutions. It furthermore notes that it is hard for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), such as crypto exchanges, to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regulations when assets are underpinned by decentralized technology and stakeholders are spread across jurisdictions.
But it also provides some solutions. Central banks could play a role in providing issuers of stablecoins with access to central reserves. To prevent monopolies from forming and to protect monetary policy, they could consider issuing their own digital currency, such as what is currently being considered in China. However, to drive innovation in the private sector, the IMF document favors public-private partnerships instead.
Central banks could grant licenses — on the condition of supervision — and hold VASPs accountable for customer screening, transaction monitoring and reporting suspicious activity in accordance with Know Your Customer (KYC), AML and CFT regulations. Industry standards could also be defined for the security of wallets and client data.
The paper from the IMF does stress, however, that any regulation should be applied in proportion to the risks and types of services offered, and that international cooperation is crucial to prevent regulatory arbitrage.
We can see the first attempts at such cooperation being made with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recently introduced travel rule, which requires VASPs to collect and transfer customer information when processing transactions. Although the FATF’s guidance is not legally binding, the G-20 has declared it will follow the FATF’s guidance.
Domestic: The United Kingdom
But it’s not just at the global level that we’re seeing the crystallization of a regulatory framework. For example, in July, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published two important documents. The first was its “Guidance on Cryptoassets,” which, after extensive industry consultation, makes a clear assessment and distinction between exchange tokens, utility tokens and security tokens — while recognizing that some assets may fall within multiple categories. The second document published by the FCA proposes rules to ban the sale of crypto derivatives to retail investors on account of them being less-equipped in their ability to assess the risks of these types of complex, often volatile financial products.
In studying the FCA’s guidance, a number of remarks are worth making.
Firstly, the U.K.’s overall approach is not all that different from other jurisdictions, such as, say, Singapore, Hong Kong or even the United States, where special attention is given to crypto assets that have the characteristics of securities — i.e., tokens that constitute equity, debt or are part of a collective investment scheme.
Secondly, the documents provide fairly clear guidance with regard to the regulatory status of crypto assets, as they aim to strike a balance between leaving the field open for financial innovation while ensuring retail investor protection.
Thirdly, the FCA’s guidance comes at an interesting time. According to the financial advisory firm deVere Group, the U.K. finds itself in a unique position as it nears its exit from the European Union. This could present itself as an opportunity to chart a new course to potentially turn the U.K. into a crypto-friendly hub in a similar fashion to Switzerlandand Japan.
So, what’s driving these processes, and why should an industry that has so far enjoyed nearly unbridled freedom be positive about new regulatory restrictions?
External and internal push factors
Libra cannot be ignored here. When a giant tech company, with a 2.4 billion-strong user base and supported by the likes of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, seeks to enter the space, it is significant.
Looking past sensationalist coverage, highlighting how Facebook was grilled in U.S. Congress over its proposal, we’re actually seeing the stirrings of a healthy debate. If anything, Libra has served to elevate the discourse about what governments ought to do about this phenomenon called cryptocurrency, which, according to Bitwise, has moved crypto at least three years ahead.
“Facebook’s Libra project has generated renewed interest in digital currencies and blockchain,” and “with the appropriate balance of regulation, digital currencies, and their innovative underlying technology, could provide meaningful benefits,” U.S. Republican Sen. Mike Crapo said at the Hearing on Digital Currencies and Blockchain on July 30, 2019.
Similarly, increased involvement in the industry from traditional market participants in finance, like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity Digital Assets Services, can only add further impetus to this debate — especially considering the recent findings of a Fidelity Investments survey, which revealed that unclear regulation is among the major obstacles deterring institutional investors from adding crypto to their portfolio.
But apart from these external push factors, a similar drive can be observed from within the industry itself. It is marked by the rise of a new generation of cryptocurrency and digital asset exchanges, built in collaboration with traditional exchange operators.
Bakkt, for example, which is a Bitcoin (BTC) futures trading platform, was created by the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. ErisX counts Nasdaq as one of its investors. Likewise, at our own exchange, AAX, our matching engine is powered by LSEG Technology, which is part of London Stock Exchange Group.
What these exchanges have in common is a shared recognition that institutional-grade technology and a proactive approach toward regulatory compliance are vital to creating the conditions fit to accommodate institutional investors and bring serious capital into the market.
Regulation is not the process by which users are deprived of the liberties and benefits essential to cryptocurrency. Rather, it is a necessary condition by which they can be made available to everyone.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZBccu0 Tyler Durden
The president recently tweeted out a pro-Trump video created by the irrepressible memester Som3thing Wicked (Twitter account here, YouTube channel here). It is, in my opinion, mesmerizing, slightly nausea-inducing, and brilliant. Some of the stats are off (Trump’s approval rating is 51 percent in a single, outlier poll; his average approval rating peaked at 45.5 percent the week he entered office and is mired in the low 40s), outdated (the regulations repealed figure is from last year), misleading (crime was been dropping for decades before Trump took office), or missing altogether (no mention at all of the explosion of debt under Trump). But it hits all the bases for Trump’s base: crowing about judges, economic growth, paid family leave, deporting illegal aliens, defunding Planned Parenthood, and record-low unemployment rates for minorities and women.
It’s also funny: Watch carefully and you’ll see the bull’s balls sway gently in the section highlighting the Dow’s rise, and it’s hard not to read the lion logo that appears at the end as a shrewdly calculated fuck-you to #resistance types always on the lookout for links between the president and the alt-right. The rave-up music, which sounds like a great riff the old anarcho-pranksters KLF might have come up with, is hilariously over-dramatic, which only adds to the trolling quotient. Take a look:
Does watching this video push all your anti-Trump buttons? Does it make you sputter with rage? Does it make you ashamed that such a vulgarian is your president? If so, it’s working almost certainly as intended. But here’s a word to the wise: Every time you gnash your teeth and rend your garments over what a disgusting, déclassé, embarrassing piece of protoplasm Donald Trump really is, you’re making him stronger. He’s like the old Marvel supervillain The Blob, a psychologically unstable mutant who gained strength whenever he was attacked. You’re simply not going to beat Trump by talking about his inability to tie a tie properly or insisting that he is “an extinction-level event” when it comes to “liberal democracy and constitutional order.”
As Windsor Mann notes in The Week, Trump supporters cite his personality, not his policies, as what they like most about him:
Trump has done nothing that another Republican could not do, and do better. What distinguishes Trump from other Republicans is his behavior….Republican support for Trump is not about ideology or policy. It is psychological.
In a related way, Reason‘s Robby Soave noted right after Trump’s election the billionaire in part “won because leftist political correctness inspired a terrifying backlash.” When you strip away Trump’s personality, his demonstrated inability to spell or speak in polished phrases, and his general crudeness, his platform is not seriously different from the standard-issue Republican Party platform of income tax cuts, deregulation, and a never-mind attitude toward spending and deficits.
He is unapologetic in waging a trade war, but George W. Bush levied tariffs on steel and timber during his time in the White House. Trump is fiercer in his rhetoric about illegal aliens than any president since Bill Clinton, whose 1996 reelection campaign praised his zero tolerance for undocumented immigrants, but his policies are not that different from those of Barack Obama, who also pushed a “Buy American” program that was wildly popular among Democrats back in the day. If you think immigration policy is going to be vastly different under, say, Bernie Sanders (who frets that too many poor people want to move here) or Joe Biden (who was deporter-in-chief Obama’s vice president), you’re focusing on the sizzle, not the steak.
What should be shocking to people are the ways in which Trump deviates from worn-out GOP positions and embraces some Democratic policies too. He’s been good on criminal-justice reform, for instance, has spoken out against military adventurism, and was better than Hillary Clinton on ending marijuana prohibition.He has been more forward on school choice than any president and he embraces paid family leave too. These are not all good things, in my view, and his negatives, especially on immigration and trade, are disturbing as hell. But especially from a libertarian perspective, he’s a mixed bag, as are all presidents.
Put slightly differently, he is mostly an abomination, but that merely makes him the most recent president, not history’s greatest monster.
Trump and his sharpest supporters are shrewd folks who, in their heart of hearts, know that the president is not going to top the 46 percent of the popular vote he eked out in 2016. His path to victory in 2020 is a hard one that will involve minimizing enthusiasm and turnout for the eventual Democratic nominee by making the primary candidates and their supporters appear deranged, unhinged, and extreme. In 2016, Hillary Clinton and her supporters played into this strategy perfectly by taking her support among swing voters and eventual victory for granted. Today’s Democrats, helped along by a number of often-unconvincing #NeverTrump conservatives who are now denouncing exactly what they stood for a few minutes ago (hi, Joe Walsh!), are making Trump’s job easier with almost every passing day. Such antics harden existing Trump supporters.
At the same time, each call to give away more “free” stuff and every charge of racism, Russian influence, and undermining of the American experiment lobbed against Trump will only alienate the 38 percent plurality of voters who identify as independent (just 29 percent call themselves Republicans and only 27 percent cop to being Democrats). What independent is not going to be insulted when reading invective like this from supposedly learned and objective political scientists—in this case, Rutgers’ Ross K. Baker, writing in USA Today?
I am now hesitant defending what I used to refer to as the “genius” of the framers of the Constitution because I no longer have confidence in the checks and balances that James Madison assured us were “auxiliary precautions” to prevent our government from going off the rails at times when the wisdom of the American people is faulty. The faultiness of that wisdom is, in my mind, on vivid display by the man they chose to lead the nation.
The smarter course of action for all of us who didn’t vote for Trump and don’t plan to in 2020 is to engage in a substantive critique of the actual effects of his policies and to offer an alternative that does more than attack the president’s many character flaws and rhetorical awfulness.
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Poland and the United States have agreed on six locations for new US troops to be stationed throughout the European nation, according to a Friday statement by Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.
“We have agreed on six locations, we talked about a seventh location,” Blaszczak said during a joint news conference with US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who – along with Vice President Mike Pence, are in Poland to attend a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII. President Trump will not attend, having canceled due to hurricane Dorian, according to Reuters.
The military deal, signed in June, will add 1,000 non-permanent US troops to the currently stationed 4,500 on rotation as part of NATO forces.
In June, Poland signed a deal to increase the American military presence on its soil to counter Russia’s growing assertiveness since its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Poland has a border in the northeast with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, where Moscow has deployed advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missiles. –Reuters
“Poland has been an outstanding partner of the U.S. and NATO, spending more than 2% of GDP on defense,” Bolton announced at the presser, adding that Trump will visit Poland as soon as possible.
According to an aide to Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump may visit over the next few months. Many are expecting the US president to announce an easement of US visa requirements for poles, along with comments on energy and technology cooperation.
“Probably some part of the declarations, which only the U.S. president can make, will be delayed (…) and probably some of the declarations will wait for his visit to Warsaw,” said Krzysztof Szczerski on public radio.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HAJa7x Tyler Durden
The president recently tweeted out a pro-Trump video created by the irrepressible memester Som3thing Wicked (Twitter account here, YouTube channel here). It is, in my opinion, mesmerizing, slightly nausea-inducing, and brilliant. Some of the stats are off (Trump’s approval rating is 51 percent in a single, outlier poll; his average approval rating peaked at 45.5 percent the week he entered office and is mired in the low 40s), outdated (the regulations repealed figure is from last year), misleading (crime was been dropping for decades before Trump took office), or missing altogether (no mention at all of the explosion of debt under Trump). But it hits all the bases for Trump’s base: crowing about judges, economic growth, paid family leave, deporting illegal aliens, defunding Planned Parenthood, and record-low unemployment rates for minorities and women.
It’s also funny: Watch carefully and you’ll see the bull’s balls sway gently in the section highlighting the Dow’s rise, and it’s hard not to read the lion logo that appears at the end as a shrewdly calculated fuck-you to #resistance types always on the lookout for links between the president and the alt-right. The rave-up music, which sounds like a great riff the old anarcho-pranksters KLF might have come up with, is hilariously over-dramatic, which only adds to the trolling quotient. Take a look:
Does watching this video push all your anti-Trump buttons? Does it make you sputter with rage? Does it make you ashamed that such a vulgarian is your president? If so, it’s working almost certainly as intended. But here’s a word to the wise: Every time you gnash your teeth and rend your garments over what a disgusting, déclassé, embarrassing piece of protoplasm Donald Trump really is, you’re making him stronger. He’s like the old Marvel supervillain The Blob, a psychologically unstable mutant who gained strength whenever he was attacked. You’re simply not going to beat Trump by talking about his inability to tie a tie properly or insisting that he is “an extinction-level event” when it comes to “liberal democracy and constitutional order.”
As Windsor Mann notes in The Week, Trump supporters cite his personality, not his policies, as what they like most about him:
Trump has done nothing that another Republican could not do, and do better. What distinguishes Trump from other Republicans is his behavior….Republican support for Trump is not about ideology or policy. It is psychological.
In a related way, Reason‘s Robby Soave noted right after Trump’s election the billionaire in part “won because leftist political correctness inspired a terrifying backlash.” When you strip away Trump’s personality, his demonstrated inability to spell or speak in polished phrases, and his general crudeness, his platform is not seriously different from the standard-issue Republican Party platform of income tax cuts, deregulation, and a never-mind attitude toward spending and deficits.
He is unapologetic in waging a trade war, but George W. Bush levied tariffs on steel and timber during his time in the White House. Trump is fiercer in his rhetoric about illegal aliens than any president since Bill Clinton, whose 1996 reelection campaign praised his zero tolerance for undocumented immigrants, but his policies are not that different from those of Barack Obama, who also pushed a “Buy American” program that was wildly popular among Democrats back in the day. If you think immigration policy is going to be vastly different under, say, Bernie Sanders (who frets that too many poor people want to move here) or Joe Biden (who was deporter-in-chief Obama’s vice president), you’re focusing on the sizzle, not the steak.
What should be shocking to people are the ways in which Trump deviates from worn-out GOP positions and embraces some Democratic policies too. He’s been good on criminal-justice reform, for instance, has spoken out against military adventurism, and was better than Hillary Clinton on ending marijuana prohibition.He has been more forward on school choice than any president and he embraces paid family leave too. These are not all good things, in my view, and his negatives, especially on immigration and trade, are disturbing as hell. But especially from a libertarian perspective, he’s a mixed bag, as are all presidents.
Put slightly differently, he is mostly an abomination, but that merely makes him the most recent president, not history’s greatest monster.
Trump and his sharpest supporters are shrewd folks who, in their heart of hearts, know that the president is not going to top the 46 percent of the popular vote he eked out in 2016. His path to victory in 2020 is a hard one that will involve minimizing enthusiasm and turnout for the eventual Democratic nominee by making the primary candidates and their supporters appear deranged, unhinged, and extreme. In 2016, Hillary Clinton and her supporters played into this strategy perfectly by taking her support among swing voters and eventual victory for granted. Today’s Democrats, helped along by a number of often-unconvincing #NeverTrump conservatives who are now denouncing exactly what they stood for a few minutes ago (hi, Joe Walsh!), are making Trump’s job easier with almost every passing day. Such antics harden existing Trump supporters.
At the same time, each call to give away more “free” stuff and every charge of racism, Russian influence, and undermining of the American experiment lobbed against Trump will only alienate the 38 percent plurality of voters who identify as independent (just 29 percent call themselves Republicans and only 27 percent cop to being Democrats). What independent is not going to be insulted when reading invective like this from supposedly learned and objective political scientists—in this case, Rutgers’ Ross K. Baker, writing in USA Today?
I am now hesitant defending what I used to refer to as the “genius” of the framers of the Constitution because I no longer have confidence in the checks and balances that James Madison assured us were “auxiliary precautions” to prevent our government from going off the rails at times when the wisdom of the American people is faulty. The faultiness of that wisdom is, in my mind, on vivid display by the man they chose to lead the nation.
The smarter course of action for all of us who didn’t vote for Trump and don’t plan to in 2020 is to engage in a substantive critique of the actual effects of his policies and to offer an alternative that does more than attack the president’s many character flaws and rhetorical awfulness.
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Any normal person driving behind Wendy Auger’s vanity license plate would likely have a quick laugh and continue about their day. But for a while there, the state of New Hampshire didn’t think it could tolerate “PB4WEGO” on the roads.
Seacoast Onlinereports that Auger first obtained the plate—in case you missed the joke, it’s short for “pee before we go”—15 years ago. A few weeks ago, she got a letter in the mail saying it was to be recalled.
The state recently issued stricter rules about vanity plates, in the wake of a 2014 case before the state Supreme Court. According to the decision, resident David Montenegro—who has since legally changed his name to “human”—applied for plate that said “COPSLIE.” The Department of Motor Vehicles rejected the application after employees found it “insulting.” The court decided that New Hampshire’s ban on vanity plates that were “offensive to good taste” was unconstitutionally vague and left room for subjective enforcement.
So New Hampshire produced a more carefully delineated list of subject matters prohibited for vanity plates. And one of the topics it bars is references to “excretory acts or functions,” which technically includes Auger’s plate.
“I’m not the type to sit here with a picket, but come on,” Auger told Seacoast Online.
Since going public about her predicament, Auger gained a strong ally: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN yesterday that he had spoken to the DMV on her behalf.
“Upon this being brought to my attention, I reached out to the Division of Motor Vehicles and strongly urged them to allow Wendy to keep the license plate she has had for the last 15 years,” he said. “I recently left a message on her phone to share the good news that her plate will not be recalled.”
While Auger’s plate is saved, her fight highlights a larger concern about freedom of speech. How much power should the state have over what can and cannot appear on someone’s vehicle? If your crackdown on offensive speech is sweeping enough to threaten a cheeky reminder to use the bathroom, was the crackdown a good idea in the first place?
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