Category: zerohedge

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

Expanded federal unemployment benefits that were implemented during last year’s pandemic relief efforts are ending earlier than scheduled in Arkansas, Montana, and South Carolina—and Florida is expected to follow suit as Republican governors nationwide respond to pleas from businesses to encourage Americans to return to work.

“We absolutely can put more people to work,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) told reporters during a press conference Wednesday, announcing that Floridians receiving the $300 weekly extra payments will soon have to provide proof that they’re actively looking for a job.

The Republican governor signaled that he would soon follow a similar push from other GOP states in encouraging Americans to return to work.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) has said that by the end of June his state would no longer participate in the extended weekly unemployment benefits under the Biden administration’s new $1.9 trillion stimulus plan—three months earlier than its expiration.

Earlier, the Republican governors of Montana and South Carolina announced similar plans, claiming that these benefits have discouraged people from returning to the workforce and have become a drag on the recovery.

GOP Texas lawmaker Kevin Brady meanwhile has said he expects more states will follow suit, accusing the White House of being “in denial” that many businesses are struggling to hire more people.

“Normally when you’re getting unemployment, the whole idea is that’s temporary, and you need to be looking for work to be able to get off unemployment,” DeSantis said of the matter. “It was a disaster, so we suspended those job search requirements. I think it’s pretty clear now, we have an abundance of job openings.”

“The demand is there. Businesses want to hire more people, and I think we can go in that direction very soon,” he added.

It comes as U.S. jobs growth for April was far lower than what the market had predicted. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 266,000 jobs last month versus an estimate of 1 million. The unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent from 6 percent in March.

Nearly 40 percent of workers could make more on unemployment at the $300 level than they would earn by returning to work, according to American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute.

The economy is still 8.2 million jobs below pre-COVID levels.

Businesses and organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the largest business lobbying groups, have called on the Biden administration to end the unemployment benefits.

It’s “clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market,” the group said.

However, President Joe Biden, when asked by a reporter whether the enhanced unemployment benefits had had any effect on the weak job numbers, said, “No, nothing measurable.”

Democrats have said that companies aren’t offering high-enough wages or subsidized childcare programs, while some say that last month’s job report suggests that Congress needs to pass Biden’s infrastructure bills.

In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the expanded jobless benefits have been a “lifeline of survival” for the unemployed during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. The CCP virus is commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cryptocurrencies crossed a key threshold in the last week, surpassing the value of all physical US dollars in circulation…

Source: WSJ

This latest surge in the total value of all cryptos comes more on the heels of altcoins than bitcoin as Bitcoin ‘dominance’ has dropped to 45% of the crypto market – its lowest since June 2018.

Source

The big move behind altcoins has been driven by Ethereum’s surge to new record highs, topping $4150 this morning…

Source: Bloomberg

Massively outperforming Bitcoin since we warned “ETH/BTC is about to make an epic breakout“…

Source: Bloomberg

Sending the ETH/BTC ratio to its highest since July 2018…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s not all over for bitcoin though as CoinTelegraph notes that it’s all systems go for Bitcoin — at least when it comes to network fundamentals.

Following the sudden hash rate dip last month — tied to miners being flooded in China — network strength and associated price performance have firmly recovered.

The process was already evident last week, with commentators noting that the negative impact of the event was practically behind Bitcoin already.

Now, however, forecasts reflect unprecedented interest and competition among miners, along with a firm commitment to the network’s future.

According to data from on-chain monitoring resource Blockchain.com, the hash rate is now at new all-time highs, with its seven-day average going from 131 exahashes per second on April 25 to 177 EH/s as of Monday.

Bitcoin 7-day average hash rate chart. Source: Blockchain.com

Difficulty, which automatically adjusted downward to take account of the reduction in miners, is now also due for a major hike of its own when it adjusts again in around two days’ time.

At 13.5%, the projected difficulty increase is the largest since June last year.

If the old adage “price follows hash rate” proves itself to be as true today as previously, Bitcoin hodlers could feel the knock-on price benefits in the coming weeks.

Escaping the short-term narrative just for a moment, meanwhile, produces a familiar sensation that all is well in Bitcoin.

While altcoins boom on a trading frenzy, a slow but steady transfer of Bitcoin wealth from weak hands to strong ones is continuing, says popular statistician Willy Woo.

Analyzing data late last week, Woo stressed that this year’s bull run is different to the rest — because speculative hands are not lasting long and seasoned hodlers are buying up the slack at higher prices than ever.

“This cycle is different; the movement of coins to strong holders is unprecedented,” he summarized alongside the data from on-chain monitoring resource Glassnode.

This cycle is different; the movement of coins to strong holders is unprecedented.

Chart: purple line tracks coins moving between weak and strong hands (running total over 128 days)

Raw data: @glassnode pic.twitter.com/xbqSMljCdC

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) May 9, 2021

As Cointelegraph reported, the trend has characterized various phases of 2021 when it comes to BTC price.

And while Ether is quickly catching up to JPMorgan’s market cap…

Source

We note that the adoption by major banks – who were, and still are, largely skeptical naysayers of the DeFi space and its challenge to their centralzied controls, is increasing as UBS Group is joining  the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and BNY Mellon, in deepening their involvement in the digital assets sphere this year, exploring various ways to offer its wealthy clients the possibility of investing in digital assets.

“(Crypto has) got a lot more institutional involvement than people who haven’t followed the market believe,” said Chris Weston, head of research at brokerage Pepperstone. “And everyone’s been in ethereum. It’s not a meme joke coin, it actually has some application use,” he added, referring to its role in DeFi.

Via SchiffGold.com,

Everybody expected the jobs report last Friday to show a big increase in employment. It didn’t happen.

Instead of the 978,000 new jobs created in April that economists expected, nonfarm payroll increased by just 266,000. On top of that, the Labor Department revised the March number down from 916,000 to 770,000. The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1%.

As Peter Schiff put it in his podcast, you don’t need a job to spend printed money handed out by the government.

Peter said nobody should be surprised by this awful report.

If you look at the reason for the so-called recovery, why is the US economy recovering? Well, because a lot of people are spending money, even people who don’t have jobs are spending money. People are spending more money unemployed than they used to spend when they still had jobs. How is all this being made possible? It’s being financed by massive deficit spending that is being enabled by the Federal Reserve monetizing all this debt.”

You also have the added wealth-effect of the stock market bubble, a real estate bubble, and a cryptocurrency bubble. There’s even a baseball card bubble.

We are flooding the economy with fiat money, and so people are spending it.”

Why would anyone think this scenario would lead to robust job growth?

You don’t need jobs if you’re printing money. If people are just getting money from the government what’s the point of working? Why bother?

In a normal, healthy economy, people have to work to earn money to spend. But that’s not true today. You can just stay at home and the government will send you money.

When you have an economy built on spending printed money, that type of money doesn’t require a lot of actual work.”

Of course, somebody has to produce. But as we’ve been reporting, that’s happening abroad. The massive trade deficit in goods reveals exactly what’s happening in the US economy. Americans are spending money to buy things being imported from overseas.

That’s where all the jobs are being added. They’re being added in all the countries that are making all the stuff that we’re buying with all the money that the Fed is printing.”

Peter said the problem is this whole thing is temporary.

Now the jobs are overseas. Later, the purchasing power is going to be overseas. Because you cannot continue to run an economy on a printing press. The whole thing is going to collapse as soon as the dollar crashes and ends this party.”

Even though jobs aren’t being created, wages are increasing. Analysts expected hourly wages to remain flat in April, but they were actually up 0.3%. So, we’re seeing upward pressure on wages even though we’re not getting as many new jobs. This makes perfect sense when you consider employers have to compete with enhanced unemployment benefits in order to get people to come back to work.

For a lot of people, the return on being unemployed is far higher than the gains from being employed. So obviously, if you’re an employer and you’ve got to convince somebody to take a job, you’re going to have to pay them a lot more money now given the alternatives that they have.  You know, most people prefer leisure to work. And therefore, if the government is paying people to take vacations, well, you’re going to have to pay them a lot more to give up those vacations and come into work.”

Both President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted that the enhanced government unemployment benefits are not incentivizing people not to work. Peter said this notion is absurd.

Only government economists could fail to understand this obvious relationship. There is a preference for leisure over work. People would prefer to have leisure than work. The only reason they give up their leisure to work is because they need the money. Because otherwise, they can’t pay their bills. They can’t pay the rent. They can’t put food on the table. So, even though they would prefer leisure, they have to work. Well, if the government says, ‘No, you don’t have to work. You can have the leisure that you prefer and we’ll replace your lost income. In fact, we will actually give you more money to take a vacation than what you would earn if you gave up that vacation and went back to work.’ How can anybody not realize that there is a link here between these lucrative payments not to work and so many people choosing not to work?”

Incentives matter. The government is incentivizing people not to work. People aren’t working. The numbers bear this out.

In this podcast, Peter goes on to talk about how this jobs report might influence the markets going forward.

Amazon has spent years rooting out fake reviews and other seller scams from its e-commerce platform. But the latest discovery from security researchers at SafetyDetectives found what appears to be a sophisticated scheme by Amazon vendors to procure fake reviews for their products. 

SafetyDetectives’s cybersecurity team found a China-based Elasticsearch server of direct messages between Amazon vendors and customers running fake review schemes in exchange for free products. In total, the 7GB treasure trove contained over 13 million records, including the email addresses and WhatsApp/Telegram phone numbers of vendor contacts, plus email addresses, names, PayPal account details, and Amazon account profiles of reviewers, impacting approximately 200,000 people. 

The information on the sever outlined standard procedures by which Amazon vendors would procure fake reviews for their products.

These Amazon vendors send to reviewers a list of items/products for which they would like a 5-star review. The people providing the ‘fake reviews’ will then buy the products, leaving a 5-star review on Amazon a few days after receiving their merchandise.

Upon completion, the provider of the fake review will send a message to the vendor containing a link to their Amazon profile, along with their PayPal details.

Once the Amazon vendor confirms all reviews have been completed, the reviewer will receive a refund through PayPal, keeping the items they bought for free as a form of payment.

The refund for any purchased goods is actioned through PayPal and not directly through Amazon’s platform. This makes the five-star review look legitimate, so as not to arouse suspicion from Amazon moderators.

In some cases, there may be an additional payment – based on the scale of the services provided by the person posting fake reviews. However, we didn’t find any examples of this in the exposed server.

The SafetyDetectives team discovered the database on March 1, and it was secured later that month. The researchers weren’t able to track down its owner.

“Given the extent of the records and vendors included in the database, it’s possible that the server is not owned by the Amazon vendors running the scam. The server could be owned by a third party that reaches out to potential reviewers on behalf of the vendors,” the team said.

Amazon does moderate reviews, but the vendors performing this deception can skirt around platform rules. Data breaches like this help show people that reviews on Amazon cannot be trusted. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Anthony Fauci told NBC’s Chuck Todd that it’s “possible” mask mandates could continue indefinitely in order to reduce seasonal flu infections.

During his appearance on Meet The Press, Fauci was asked when Americans could take the masks off given that the CDC is now advising vaccinated Americans that they can remove the face coverings when outside.

“At what point, if vaccinated people get together, do you take the mask off? Are masks going to be something we have with us in a seasonal aspect?” Todd asked Fauci.

“You know, that’s quite possible, I think people have gotten used to the fact that wearing masks, clearly if you look at the data, diminished respiratory diseases. We’ve had practically a nonexistent flu season this year, merely because people were doing the kinds of public health things that were directed predominantly against COVID-19,” responded Fauci.

While COVID-19 lockdown advocates have asserted that mask wearing and social distancing made the flu virtually disappear, other health experts have questioned the legitimacy of this claim, suggesting that flu cases were merely being counted as COVID-19 cases to inflate the number.

Back in January, epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski stated, “There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID-19’ category of people who have COVID-19 symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA.”

“People know everybody is wearing masks and distancing, and so people want to come up with things that are good about it,” he added.

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who regularly appears on CNN, also previously said that Americans should wear masks and socially distance every winter in order to reduce flu hospitalizations and deaths.

As we previously highlighted, Dr. David Thunder Ph.D warned that governments now have the pretext to suspend liberties on a whim and will abuse that power again “whenever there’s a winter resurgence in respiratory viruses.”

As Tom Pappert points out, Fauci contradicted one of his own claims elsewhere within the same interview.

“The very next question appeared to exemplify an inconsistency, as Chuck Todd proceeded to ask if Americans could finally let their guard down, as he claims they did in May of 2020. Todd’s question would seem to indicate that 2020 saw the spread of COVID-19 because of the lack of adherence to COVID-19 precautions like social distancing, lockdowns, and mask wearing, only seconds after Fauci suggested that the 2020 flu season was greatly diminished because of social distancing, lockdowns, and mask wearing.”

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Not long after we pointed out a report from the Daily Beast which traced the tensions in the marriage of Bill and Melinda Gates to Bill’s relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the Wall Street Journal has followed up with more reporting that confirms that Melinda Gates started consulting divorce attorneys as far back as 2019, before the pandemic thrust her husband back into the global spotlight as the world’s de facto vaccine czar.

Documents obtained by WSJ show the couple negotiated their divorce throughout the pandemic.

Ms. Gates consulted with divorce lawyers roughly two years before she filed for divorce from Mr. Gates, saying their marriage was “irretrievably broken,” according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

As the Daily Beast also reported, tensions in their marriage can be traced back to a New York Times report claiming that Gates had met with Epstein several times, and that he had once stayed late into the night at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Their meetings, according to Gates’ people, reportedly focused on issues of philanthropy. The pair first announced their split a week ago, and since then, the world has been waiting to learn more about how they plan to split their $130 billion-plus fortune.

But what’s almost more notable than the details report by WSJ and the Daily Beast, is the fact that the MSM seems to be jumping on the story that Bill Gates’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein directly led to the dissolution of his marriage. 

Pretty interesting that EVERY major outlet is covering this story. https://t.co/w64Ew0dFtE

— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) May 10, 2021

This is a big deal because, as we reported more than a year ago, Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have built up one of the world’s most formidable media-manipulation machines to help silence Gates’s growing chorus of critics.

Here’s a snippet from a Columbia Journalism Review story on how Gates manipulates the press:

Gatess generosity appears to have helped foster an increasingly friendly media environment for the worlds most visible charity. Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gatess initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsofts bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works.

During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covideven though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectivelyboth of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from false conspiracy theories and misinformation, like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundations website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac.

In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculturea level of influence that has landed Bill Gates on Forbess list of the most powerful people in the world. The Gates Foundation can point to important charitable accomplishments over the past two decadeslike helping drive down polio and putting new funds into fighting malariabut even these efforts have drawn expert detractors who say that Gates may actually be introducing harm, or distracting us from more important, lifesaving public health projects.

As we have reported, Gates’ ties to Epstein are much deeper than a simple prearranged meeting or two on the subject of philanthropy. The Daily Mail once reported that Gates was a guest aboard Epstein’s plane.

When confronted about this, a representative for Gates said he wasn’t aware the plane belonged to Epstein!

Meanwhile, employees of the Gates foundation also visited Epstein’s mansion on multiple occasions, while Epstein also “spoke with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase about a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund — an arrangement that had the potential to generate enormous fees for Mr. Epstein,” according to the Times.

Two of Gates’ closest advisors developed close relationships with Epstein, and later introduced him to Gates.

Gates once said in an email that he found Epstein’s “lifestyle” to be “intriguing”, though he immediately noted that it wouldn’t suit him.

With all this preamble once again coming out in the press, we can’t help but wonder: is a Bill Gates accuser about to step forward?

After a relatively calm overnight session, all hell broke loose at the US cash open with The Dow (new record high) bid while Big-Tech and Small Caps puked hard…

SpotGamma shares some insights from their most recent OCC analysis.

This chart reflects the activity (buy/sell to open vs buy/sell to close) in Index options.

Last week Index traders seemed to shift to net sellers of calls, and net buyers of puts.

Unfortunately we are not given any insights into the specific products (ie SPX, NDX, VIX), but what stands out is this appears to be the highest level of net index put buying since our data started in late 2018.

Is something changing?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The big phone companies have asked the FCC to delay measures to block robocalls…

Billions of Robocalls

Consumers get billions of robocalls and many if not most of them come from overseas locations including India and the Philippines.

On September 28, the FCC seeks to implement foreign provider regulation that would block most of these incoming calls.  

Under the proposal, foreign carriers have to be approved by the FCC and those spamming calls would be blocked.  

Rule Challenge

Several big phone companies say they are On Board With Robocall Blocking, Just Not Now. 

“We strongly support the direction the FCC is going to address the foreign robocall problem, to police the edge of the U.S. telephone network,” Verizon associate general counsel Christopher Oatway said in an interview. “We would like to pause the process, reexamine what needs to be done and continue to work on ways to create effective barriers to these incessant calls.”

“A slight pause could be helpful” to address unintended consequences, he said. “If the foreign providers aren’t making every effort to complete and certify compliance, there needs to be consequences for that.”

ATT said that legitimate calls might get blocked. The Example ATT gave was a US citizen in India tries to call home but the call initiates from a carrier who is not an approved and thus the call is blocked.

David Frankel, the CEO of a Utah based conference call provider was the only person against the delay citing WiFi, texting, and initiating a call from a hotel as a work around.

“How many Americans are overseas in circumstances where they are trying to call home this way, versus how many people are being bombarded with these illegal calls?” he asked.

There is also a loophole in the regulation in that it only pertains to direct calls not calls that go through a middleman.

The obvious remedy is of course to close the loophole. 

The full-blown labor shortage in the US is about to get a lot worse as McDonald’s cashiers and cooks in 15 US cities will strike later this month, demanding an increase of at least $15 per hour.

McDonald’s employees at fast-food shops across Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Detroit, Flint, Kansas City, St Louis, Raleigh-Durham, Charleston, Houston, and Milwaukee are planning to strike on May 19, one day before the company’s annual shareholders meeting, according to Motherboard. 

“We know McDonald’s is gathering for its shareholders meeting to discuss what straws we use, what bags we use, how much we get paid,” Terrence Wise, a McDonald’s manager in Kansas City, Missouri, told Motherboard.  

“The one thing that’s missing is our voice,” Wise continued. “We made them that $5 billion in profit last year. There wouldn’t be shares to divide if we weren’t making burgers and McFlurries. Our message to shareholders on May 19 is you don’t have to wait on legislation. You can pay us $15 an hour now, that should be the floor.” 

There’s no reason for @McDonalds to be dragging their feet about raising ALL of our wages to $15/hr. They made nearly $5 billion in profits last year.

They’ll be fine, we’re struggling. #Fightfor15 pic.twitter.com/ycsWwyLiic

— Fight For 15 (@fightfor15) May 9, 2021

This comes as some McDonald’s stores have become desperate for employees, offering them money for just showing up to an interview and or signing bonuses.  

In a bizarro economy run by the Biden administration unleashing trillions of dollars in stimmy checks to unemployed Americans who are making more money sitting on their ass than having a job, a massive labor shortage has materialized across various labor-intensive industries. 

McDonald’s told Motherboard that wage laws depend on the federal government and local municipalities and not the company. 

“Our first responsibility is to hardworking restaurant crew, and we respect and appreciate their dedication to serve millions of customers daily,” a statement from McDonald’s said. “It’s the responsibility of federal and local government to set minimum wage, and we’re open to dialogue so that any changes meet the needs of thousands of hardworking restaurant employees and the 2,000 McDonald’s independent owner/operators who run small businesses.”

Across the country, customers are reporting some McDonald’s are short staff with signs that read: 

“We are short-staffed. Please be patient with the staff that did show up. No one wants to work anymore.” 

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski and president Joseph Erlinger recently suggested wage increases could be on the horizon. 

Republicans lawmakers are blaming the labor shortages on stimulus checks while Democrats blame it on the fear of returning to work amid a virus pandemic.  

Overweight Americans on May 19, seeking a Big Mac, large Fry, and an Mc Flurry will have to look elsewhere for their fast-food cravings because of the multi-city strike. 

Fast-food workers must understand their jobs will be displaced by automation and artificial intelligence in the coming years – so stop demanding higher wages and retrain in another industry less prone to a robot takeover. 

Having fallen over 10% from its all time high hit just a week ago, and currently in correction territory despite posting blockbuster results ju, Jeff Bezos – who has been in a stock selling spree lately – is making it clear that this aggression against his currency of choice will not stand, and on Monday morning Amazon.com announced a jumbo bond offering in 8 parts to refinance debt and buy back stock in its first offering in nearly a year.

The size of the offering, which is expected to price today, is unknown but is expected to be in the $10-$20BN range and will be vastly oversubscribed. Price talk is shown below, courtesy of Bloomberg:

USD 2Y Fixed (May 12, 2023) IPT +30 Area

• MWC
• See security information: 2Y Fixed

USD 3Y Fixed (May 12, 2024) IPT +45 Area

• MWC
• See security information: 3Y Fixed

USD 5Y Fixed (May 12, 2026) IPT +55 Area

• 1-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 5Y Fixed

USD 7Y Fixed (May 12, 2028) IPT +65 Area

• 2-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 7Y Fixed

USD 10Y Fixed (May 12, 2031) IPT +75 Area

• 3-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 10Y Fixed

USD 20Y Fixed (May 12, 2041) IPT +90 Area

• 6-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 20Y Fixed

USD 30Y Fixed (May 12, 2051) IPT +100 Area

• 6-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 30Y Fixed

USD 40Y Fixed (May 12, 2061) IPT +115 Area

• 6-month par call, MWC
• See security information: 40Y Fixed

As Bloomberg adds, Amazon has been a fairly infrequent issuer, but when it comes, it comes in big on those rare occasions, and unleashes a massive buyback spree as soon as the new cash is wired, sending its stock price bursting higher. It last tapped the bond market in June 2020, borrowing $10 billion for general corporate purposes in what was then the lowest rate in the history of the bond market, with the proceeds used to repurchase stock and sent AMZN stock soaring 40% higher in the next 3 months. Prior to that, it sold $16 billion of bonds in 2017 to help finance its acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc.

The company announced that it intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the notes for general corporate purposes, which may include, but are not limited to, repayment of debt, repurchases of outstanding shares of common stock, acquisitions, investments, working capital, investments in our subsidiaries, and capital expenditures.”

The two-year bond will be allocated for eligible green or social projects.

“We intend allocate an amount equal to the net proceeds from the sale of the Sustainability Notes to finance or refinance, in whole or in part, green or social Eligible Projects (as defined herein).”

JPMorgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are managing the sale.