Category: zerohedge

Over the past three years, the Department of Defense (DoD) acquiesced to an aggressive lobbying campaign by Silicon Valley to move its hodge-podge of incompatible databases to the cloud in order to standardize and streamline data in a system that uses machine learning to improve efficiency. 

The $10 billion, decade-long contract – known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, came to fruition after Silicon Valley’s top players convinced a reluctant then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis to make the jump into the cloud. 

Last week, ProPublica published an in-depth report from behind the scenes – noting the revolving doors and conflicts of interest which have made JEDI’s origins all the more controversial.

What’s happened at the Pentagon extends past the JEDI contract. It’s a story of how some of America’s biggest tech companies used a little-known advisory board, some aggressive advocacy by a few billionaires and some unofficial lobbying to open a backdoor into the Pentagon. And so, no matter who wins the JEDI contract, one winner is already clear: Silicon Valley. The question is no longer whether a technology giant will emerge with the $10 billion prize, but rather which technology giant (or giants) will. –ProPublica

Mattis and Bezos

In mid-2017, James Mattis was about to fly to the West Coast to personally swear Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in so that he could sit on an influential Pentagon advisory board despite the fact that he had never completed a prerequisite background check to ensure that people with access to national secrets don’t have conflicts of interest – or can’t be blackmailed (which is exactly what happened to him). 

When DoD watchdog Roma Laster emailed an urgent warning over Bezos, noting that it was a “noteworthy exception” for Mattis himself to perform the ceremony, she was “shunted aside,” and removed from the innovation board. She filed a grievance which was denied. 

“I’ve been betrayed by an organization I joined when I was 17 years old,” said the 54-year-old Laster. “This is an organization built on loyalty, dedication and patriotism. Unfortunately, it is kind of one-way.”

Following Laster’s warning, Bezos’s swearing-in was canceled just hours before it was scheduled to occur, however he and Mattis still met later that day – during which Bezos made a hard pitch as to why the DoD needs the cloud, and why Amazon should provide it. 

They talked about leadership and military history, then moved on to Amazon’s sales pitch on why the Defense Department should make a radical shift in its computing. Amazon wanted the department to abandon its hodgepodge of 2,215 data centers, located in various Pentagon facilities and run using different systems by an array of different companies, and let Amazon replace that with cloud service: computing power provided over the internet, all of it running on Amazon’s servers. –ProPublica

The result of Bezos’s very direct lobbying? The lucrative $10 billion JEDI contract. 

The revolving door

The ‘grease’ in the gears for JEDI, so to speak, came from “several DOD workers who had previously worked directly or indirectly for Amazon and have since returned to the private sector,” according to the report. Chief among those is Sally Donnelly, “a former outside strategist for Amazon who had become one of Mattis’ top aides,” who “helped give Amazon officials access to Mattis in intimate settings, an opportunity that most defense contractors don’t enjoy.”

Donnelly organized a private dinner, never reported before, for Mattis, Bezos, herself and Amazon’s top government-sales executive at a Washington restaurant, DBGB, on Jan. 17, 2018. The dinner occurred just as the DOD was finalizing draft bid specifications for JEDI. 

…

It would be hard to find a purer embodiment of the proverbial revolving door — or a stealth influencer — than Sally Donnelly. For the past dozen years she has shuttled between the DOD and consulting firms, including at least once with Amazon as a client, that seek to influence the department. During her most recent government stint, Donnelly, 59, came to be viewed as the “fairy godmother” of the Big Tech advocates in the department, as one Pentagon official put it to ProPublica.

Donnelly is known as a superb crafter of narratives, a person who can present ideas in persuasive ways. –ProPublica

Meanwhile, Obama’s last defense secretary, Ashton Carter (who launched the Defense Innovation Board Bezos wanted in on), rented an office at Donnelly’s consulting firm prior to his involvement in the Obama administration. While he was Secretary of Defense, Donnelly was a DoD consultant. 

Mattis and Schmidt

Former Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt – who already sat on the Defense Innovation Board, also lobbied for the JEDI contract after gaining access to a vast swath of US defense systems for the purposes of analyzing possible tech improvements over current systems. 

Schmidt’s influence, already strong under Carter, only grew when Mattis arrived as defense secretary. Schmidt’s travel privileges at the DOD, which required painstaking approval from the agency’s chief of staff for each stop of every trip, were suddenly unfettered after Schmidt requested carte blanche, according to three sources knowledgeable about the matter. Mattis granted him and the board permission to travel anywhere they wanted and to talk to anyone at the DOD on all but the most secret programs.

…

In the spring and summer of 2016, he embarked, with fellow board members, on a series of visits to Pentagon operations around the world. Schmidt visited a submarine base in San Diego, an aircraft carrier off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and Creech Air Force Base, located deep in the Nevada desert near Area 51.

Inside the drone operations center at Creech, according to three people familiar with the trip, Schmidt observed video as a truck in a contested zone somewhere was surveilled by a Predator drone and annihilated. It was a mesmerizing display of the U.S. military’s lethal reach.

Yet as Schmidt and his colleagues studied the control panels and displays, they felt like they were witnessing technology frozen in the 1970s. –ProPublica

Following Schmidt’s visit to Creech, Google won a $17 million subcontract called Maven which would help the military use image recognition software to identify military drone targets. After Google employees revolted, the project was dropped. 

According to current and former Pentagon employees, Schmidt’s unfettered access to US defense infrastructure raised alarms – leading Roma Laster, a former Marine and military police officer in the 1990s, to take action. Unfortunately, she took on the wrong billionaire. 

Blunt and direct, she was hardly a pushover. But Laster had never encountered tech billionaires before, much less ones empowered by the head of her agency.

The trouble started after Laster sought a clarification of how to carry out Mattis’ sweeping travel directive. She was concerned that it could expose the department to accusations of giving vendors an unfair edge. Three members of the board worked directly or indirectly for Google and two for United Technologies, a major defense contractor.

Schmidt responded by threatening to go over her head to Mattis, according to her grievance. She was told to stand down and never again speak to Schmidt. According to the grievance, her boss told her, “Mr. Schmidt was a billionaire and would never accept pushback, warnings or limits.” –ProPublica

Schmidt, meanwhile, “was an effective advocate for the power of big data, which he argued had become as important a strategic resource as oil,” telling Mattis that Google’s lead over China in AI had shrunk from five years to six months. 

“Mr. Secretary, they’re at your heels,” said Schmidt, who wanted the DoD to adopt Silicon Valley’s philosophy of innovation, risk-taking, and moving fast. Chief among his recommendations – embrace cloud computing. 

In the summer of 2017, Mattis decided to investigate firsthand. He departed on a tour that would include visits to Amazon and Google headquarters and a one-on-one with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

At Amazon, despite the tempest about Bezos joining the innovation board, Mattis and the CEO hit it off. The two talked together for about an hour. Mattis gave a pithy sweep of lessons from military history and expressed his view on the perils of overreliance on technology. He noted how the British Navy, once famous for its derring-do, nearly lost the World War I battle of Jutland when ship captains hesitated, waiting for flag signals from their fleet commander. 

After the meeting, Bezos and Mattis walked to another conference room, where AWS executives made their case that the company’s cloud products offer better security than traditional data centers, according to three people who attended. As evidence, they noted that the Central Intelligence Agency had embarked on a $600 million, 10-year cloud contract with Amazon in 2013 and, they said, it was working. –ProPublica

Oracle and IBM left out in the cold

By March 2018, rumors were that the DoD contract for JEDI was custom-tailored for Amazon. For example, “the bid required that the JEDI contract could not account for more than half of the provider’s cloud data load. And it required that the provider have at least three physical data centers, each separated by more than 150 miles. Only a tiny handful of companies could fulfill those mandates.”

And what did other tech companies vying for JEDI do? IBM, Microsoft and Oracle banded together to form a coalition opposing JEDI. 

“This one-size-fits-all idea is, I think, limited to JEDI and promoted by Amazon, because it fits Amazon’s needs,” said Oracle’s top Washington executive, Ken Glueck. 

The DoD denies favoritism, claiming in a statement “The requirements were not designed around any one provider.” 

Oracle went one step further, using their own D.C. access to arrange a meeting for its co-CEO, Safra Catz, to attend a private dinner with President Trump and investor Peter Thiel – founder of defense firm Palantir. Catz complained that JEDI was slanted towards Amazon, after which Trump began voicing public opposition to the project. 

Two bidders — IBM and Oracle — were eliminated after they failed to meet the bid requirements. That has left only Amazon and Microsoft still standing in the JEDI competition.

Both IBM and Oracle filed protests. IBM’s protest was dismissed and Oracle’s was denied by the Government Accountability Office. Oracle sued the government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, asserting JEDI had been tainted by conflicts of interest. The judge in the case ruled against Oracle. He agreed with the contracting officer that Oracle lost the bid on the merits and that any “errors and omissions” were “not significant and did not give AWS a competitive advantage.” –ProPublica

After Oracle lost in court, the pushed forward – hiring former Trump administration members to make their case to key congressional committees. “Largely as a result, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee blocked the DOD from spending money on JEDI until it demonstrated it was using multiple cloud vendors,” according to the report. 

As it stands, JEDI has been put on hold (“shrouded in uncertainty,” as ProPublica puts it). 

The project might not survive in its current form, according to people knowledgeable about the DOD, but there’s little doubt that the agency will move its computing to the cloud in one form or another. –ProPublica

At the end of the day, Washington’s revolving door is as strong as it’s ever been – while Silicon Valley’s grip on government secrets appears to grow ever-stronger (such as the gmail address to which Hillary Clinton’s emails were blind-copied). 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MK1wHp Tyler Durden

A Fed hint here, a Trump tweet there, and a well-timed China headline is all you need to bypass fun-durr-mentals and send stock-buying-algos into a frenzy on a low-liquidity week…”Never gonna let you down!!”

Another sideways day for Chinese stocks unable to bounce back from early weakness (closed before the China trade headlines sparked a buying panic)…

Source: Bloomberg

Big positive day for Europe helped by the China headlines overnight…

Source: Bloomberg

European markets did get a jolt of excitement in the afternoon as ECB’s Knot suggested no need for more QE (but that didn’t last long)…

Source: Bloomberg

US equities ripped higher again (on another trade headline overnight, this time from China saying nothing new at all), erasing all of Trump’s trade tantrum losses from last Friday…

NOTE – Nasdaq and S&P unchanged from Thursday’s close, Dow/Trans higher, Small Caps red.

 

Futures show the big spike overnight when the China headlines hit…

 

Stocks rallied all the way up to a critical Fib 61.8% retrace of the early August plunge (erasing all of last Friday’s Trump trade-tantrum losses…

 

Another big short-squeeze started the day off well…

Source: Bloomberg

Financials outperformed the market once again, decoupling from the yield curve…

Source: Bloomberg

The timing of the China trade headlines was oddly perfectly-timed with the VIX opening, which punched lower, sparking panic-buying in the thin futures pre-market…

 

30Y Treasury yields are once again “more attractive” than stock dividend yields…

Source: Bloomberg

Bond yields and stocks entirely decoupled again this week (rebalancing?) as stocks shrugged off all of last week’s worries but bonds did not…

Source: Bloomberg

 

A really ugly 7Y auction sparked some pain in Treasuries and we suspect more rebalancing, but in the end yields were only marginally higher (except the long bond ended unch)… A late-daye bid for bonds took them all lower for the week…

Source: Bloomberg

30Y Yields rose modestly, testing back above 2.00% intraday but each time a bid appeared…

Source: Bloomberg

And in case you wondered why the bids – look at positioning in the Ultras…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve steepened with 2s10s testing back toward 0 but quickly fell back in the afternoon…

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg

Before we leave bond-land, we note that traders looking for a reason to bet against the epic run in Treasuries might want to consider that the rolling 30-day correlation between 10-year Treasury futures and the MOVE Index, a gauge of underlying volatility, rose to a record this week. As Bloomberg’s Robert Fullem notes, market theorists say a surge in volatility may mark an end to a trend, suggesting it could be best to avoid Treasuries at these levels. The price-volatility correlation, which has generally been negative, rose above the prior peak seen in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008.

 

The Dollar rallied once again…

Source: Bloomberg

The Broad trade-weighted dollar is at an all-time record high…

Source: Bloomberg

The Argentine Peso crashed to a new record low at the open (above 60/USD) but like yesterday was rescued by ARG auction bids…

Source: Bloomberg

But, as the currency was rescued, traders dumped ARG bonds like a syphillitic hooker…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos extended losses overnight from the late-day plunge but saw a bid in the US equity market session…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin extended losses below $10k…

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

Gold slipped back into the red for the week but well off the lows from before Trump’s tantrum…

 

While gold is the best-performing precious metal YTD, Platinum has exploded this week…

Source: Bloomberg

Big roundtrip in WTI over the last two weeks…

 

And finally, the big question is – Will 2019 be like 1998 or 2013?

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

 

 

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PourCZ Tyler Durden

Could President Trump be poised to dramatically draw back the heavy US military and foreign aid investment in Ukraine that his administration inherited from the Obama White House? Since the US-backed coup against Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovich on the back of the Euromaidan protests in 2014, Washington has given Ukraine over $1 billion in security assistance to bolster its national armed forces as they clash with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east. 

And now CNN reports a possible drastic reversal: President Trump has “seriously considered for the past several weeks cutting $250 million the United States is providing in military assistance to Ukraine.” The original Politico report which broke the news said the White House has already notified Congress and multiple US agencies of its intent to cut the aid. 

Trump is said to be concerned whether the funds are being used “in the best interest” of the United States, and ordered his national security team to review the program, known as the the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

Congressional leaders as well as mainstream media pundits are already signaling that a bipartisan uproar is sure to follow any cut in funding, given it will be seen as a major concession to Putin, who the US president is seen as “soft” on especially after Trump this week argued at the G7 summit in France that Russia ought to be invited back to the (formerly G8) group as Moscow remains directly involved in many world crises under discussion as a major player. 

Ukraine has of course been at the heart of rapidly deteriorating US-Russia relations, something which Trump has recently said he wanted to improve. This after the administration initially unveiled the proposed additional $250 million in defense-related funds in June, and following a 2017 decision to provide lethal weapons shipments to Ukraine, which was reported to have included Javelin portable anti-tank missile systems.

This also comes after the White House dropped a plan last week to drastically roll back foreign aid across the globe, which would involve cutting over $4 billion across 10 areas of foreign assistance.

It’s part of Trump’s broader theme of ensuring other countries are not their dumping global security burdens on the United States, per Politico:

The senior administration official, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss internal matters, said the president wants to ensure U.S. interests are being prioritized when it comes to foreign assistance, and is seeking assurances that other countries are “paying their fair share.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper and national security adviser John Bolton are among the officials reviewing the Ukraine security funding.

Also interesting is that Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has long pushed for Kiev to investigate Vice President Joe Biden’s attempt in 2016 to get the country’s top prosecutor removed at a crucial moment during an ongoing investigation into Burisma Holdings — the Ukrainian natural gas company advised at the time by Biden’s son Hunter.

As the The New York Times reported previously, during the final year of the Obama presidency, Vice President Joe Biden “threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor” — Viktor Shokin — “who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.” 

Crucially last week Giuliani was reported to have again raised the issue with Ukrainian officials, according to CNN. As CNN cynically put it in its latest report, this suggests “the former New York mayor is making a renewed push for the country to investigate Trump’s political enemies.”

But then again maybe it’s as simple as the US not actually having a deep national security interest in propping up Ukraine’s military at a moment when international missile treaties with Russian are unraveling and the war in Donbass is at a bloody stalemate. 

The looming potential for a controversial cut in aid to Ukraine will make Trump’s upcoming meeting with still relatively new “political outsider” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set for next week all the more interesting. A final decision on the military aid is expect after this crucial meeting.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32eyOlK Tyler Durden

Authored by Horus Hughes via CoinTelegraph.com,

Bitcoin price has been everywhere and nowhere lately. As price consolidates analysts are concurrently screaming bull and bear. The noise is leading to confusion for the average investor who is finding it difficult to separate it from the signal. 

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Let’s take a comprehensive view of Bitcoin price action to gain clarity on the bullish and bearish scenario with special focus on three indicators: Crypto Fear & Greed Index, the Bitcoin Golden Ratio Multiplier and Bollinger Bands. 

Is $10K the new $1K for Bitcoin price?

Earlier this month, popular Bitcoin market analyst PlanB tweeted that:

“Bitcoin’s 3 month struggle to break the magical $10k feels like begin 2017 struggle to break $1k…we all know what comes next.”

The same question appears to be on the minds of many investors and the uber bullish sentiment of the previous two months seems to be taking a hit as traders wonder: 

• Why isn’t Bitcoin price exploding as the digital asset was supposed to function as a store-of-value hedge against market volatility? 

• Why aren’t alts proving 100%+ gains to kick off a new alt season since Bitcoin is consolidating and slowly becoming bearish? 

• Why haven’t we seen a slow roll rally right after the Bakkt announcement of its platform launch next month? 

Up until January 2, 2017, Bitcoin had traded below $1,000 for 1,124 days. Once above $1,000, the following $1,000 hurdles were lept over at an ever-quickening pace. The number of days between $1,000 and $2,000 was reduced to 23. By the time Bitcoin price reached $5,000, the number of days it took to secure another $1,000 gain had dropped to 10. 

As of right now, Bitcoin has spent the past 2 weeks in a struggle to stay above $10,000 and traders like PlanB are beginning to wonder if $10K is the new $1K. 

More experienced traders familiar with Bitcoin’s trading history and character will advise calm. But that’s not enough to allay the worries of those who might have purchased Bitcoin from $12,900 to $11,500, especially if there’s a possibility that Bitcoin could enter a prolonged accumulation phase that will last until Q1 of 2020. 

Crypto Fear and Greed Index at record lows

Sentiment has been proven to play a significant role in Bitcoin price action and PlanB is certainly onto something.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, investor sentiment is measured by the Crypto Fear and Greed Index (CFGI) and multiple hedge funds, firms and crypto-analysts across the sector draw insight from the index. 

The index maps investor sentiment on a scale of 1 to 100 where 1 represents investors’ sense of doom and 100 reflects sheer optimism and greed. 

According to the creators, a low reading tends to represent buying opportunities and high readings could be a sign that a correction is in store. As of August 22, the indicator had dropped to 5, the lowest level measured since December 2018.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index Source: Alternative.me

Currently, the CFGI stands at 30 (fear), which is an improvement over last week’s reading of 11 (extreme fear). 

Given that BTC/USD has plotted lower highs and lower lows as volume dries up and the trading range tightens near the all-important $10K mark, it seems sensible to infer that traders are growing increasingly reluctant to take a position as many are afraid support at $10k will finally give and eventually lead to a new local low below $9,000. 

It takes more than just a hunch

Obviously, sentiment is not the singular driver of any asset’s price action and some discussion of Bitcoin’s technical setup and current market structure is required. 

On the weekly time frame, one can see that the Moving Average Confluence Divergence (MACD) indicator plotted a bearish crossover for the first time since the bottom was reached in February 2018 and the MACD crossed bullish. 

The MACD (blue) crossed below the signal line (red) over the weekend and dipped below 0 (baseline). One can also see that the histogram has turned negative and dipped into what could be interpreted as bearish territory. It should be noted that the MACD is a lagging indicator that does not accurately reflect an asset’s current price action. 

Some traders such as Murad Mahmudov will rely on this point to invalidate a conclusion suggesting that Bitcoin has lost momentum and turned bearish. Over the weekend Mahmudov tweeted:

“People out here be talking about the Weekly MACD ‘bear cross’ like it’s some kind of doom verdict. Ironically it marked the local bottom every single time during the last bull cycle.” 

After posting the above chart to support his argument, Mahmudov said: 

“I repeat for the last time. This is a BULL market.” 

While we are less confident about speaking in absolutes — especially given Bitcoin’s tendency to go against analyst’s interpretations and rip investors’ shirts off — it is worthwhile to consider bullish and bearish possibilities in order to make wise decisions and have a gameplan in case a trade goes belly up. 

Bollinger Bands are tightening

Over the short-term, data from the daily Volume Profile Visible Range (VPVR) suggests BTC could drop to 8,750 to $7,500. The $7,500 level is a short distance away from the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at $7,250. A number of analysts have stressed the importance of the 61.8% fib retracement level, especially after assets correct from a parabolic advance. 

Sell volume is outpacing purchasing volume on the daily and 4-hour chart but overall volume is drawing down and the Bollinger bands are tightening. This usually happens before Bitcoin price makes a sharp move. 

Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to consolidate within a symmetrical triangle and a bull break could see BTC set daily higher high at $11,400 followed by an attempt at $11,790, which aligns with the upper arm of the larger bull pennant. 

Golden Ratio Multiplier suggests accumulation in full swing

A more comprehensive indicator to use when assessing Bitcoin’s maco market structure and price action is Philip Swift’s Golden Ratio Multiplier. The tool tracks Bitcoin’s long-term price action along the 350 daily moving average, then multiplies the 350 DMA by the golden ratio (1.68) and numbers in the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,21). 

According to Swift, the Golden Ratio Multiplier achieves the following: 

• Accurately and consistently highlights intra-cycle highs and lows for Bitcoin price;

• Picks out every market cycle top in Bitcoin’s history;

• Forecasts when BTC/USD will top out in the coming market cycle.

Bitcoin Golden Ratio Multiplier: Source: Philip Swift

Currently, Bitcoin is pinned beneath the green (350DMA x 1.6) and red (350DMA x 2) averages with red representing a “low bull” phase and green standing for “accumulation.” Given that BTC is trading near $10,200 and riding along the green line at the time of writing, the indicator suggests that Bitcoin is still in an accumulation phase. 

Historically the red (350 DMA x 2) average has functioned as a good point to take profit and most recently the tool called the $13,800 and $12,900 M top for Bitcoin. 

The Golden Ratio Multiplier seems well suited to momentum (swing) traders who prefer not to stare at charts day-trading all day. 

According to Swift: 

“Using three moving average lines (350DMA x 1.6, X2, X3) has allowed us to pick out almost every single intra-cycle price high in Bitcoin’s history.” 

Indicators converging on the Bakkt launch date

Taking a quick glance at Bitcoin’s daily chart, 4-hr and 1-hr chart and one will see a procession of bull pennants (symmetrical triangles) and ascending wedges in all variety of sizes. At the moment Bitcoin trades within a massive pennant extending from the June 26, 2019-high at $13,800 until the current price near $10,000. 

Interestingly, following the triangle arms to their convergence point brings one to September 23, the same day Bakkt officially launches. 

Bitcoin price neatly consolidates within the symmetrical triangle and if one takes time to zoom in on the 4-hour and 1-hr time frame, they will find breakouts and breakdowns have been the result of smaller bull pennants and bearish ascending wedges. 

The second pennant within a pennant that we will focus on extends from $11,500 until the current price at $10,115. Consolidation within the triangle is just as neat as its larger counterpart and traders anticipate a strong move as BTC price narrows toward the triangle vertex. 

Coincidentally, the termination of this pennant aligns with the current state of indecision within the market from a technical and sentiment-based point of view. Bitcoin is on the verge of doing something big, but it is difficult to calculate whether the move will be bullish or bearish. 

Bullish scenario

A bullish scenario could see Bitcoin price drop to lower triangle arm ($9,685), which is closely aligned with the lower arm of the Bollinger band indicator at $9,500. 

An oversold bounce and purchasing volume from this point could see Bitcoin begin its journey back to the 20-MA of the BB ($10,570) and an encouraging move above this point would see Bitcoin set a daily higher high at $11,400 which is close to the upper arm of the BB indicator. 

Extending a tad bit further would allow Bitcoin to touch the upper arm of the symmetrical triangle. 

Bearish scenario

A bearish move would see Bitcoin price drop from the pennant, below the lower BB arm (below $9,500). 

The VPVR shows a lack of buyer demand in this zone and this suggests that a dip below $9,500-9,100 could bring BTC below the 61.8% Fib retracement for a possible oversold bounce near $8,200. 

Barring a reversal at this juncture, BTC could then drop to the next demand zone at $8,000 to $7,650. 

3 key indicators to consider

Of course, no man has a working crystal ball. But referring to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, the Bitcoin Golden Ratio Multiplier and Bollinger Bands to analyze the market on multiple time frames does assist with anticipating the direction of the next move. 

Technical analysis is merely a guide, not a fortune-telling method. It’s the duty of each investor to conduct their own research and determine which choice is most appropriate for their appetite for risk. 

This is the dilemma all investors are faced with isn’t it?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZmR5jL Tyler Durden

Shocking new claims about Michael Bloomberg’s treatment of women have surfaced in a new upcoming book, “The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg: Innovation, Money and Politics”, that is set to be released on September 10, according to the Daily Mail.

The 77 year old, who is worth upwards of $55 billion, was once accused of telling a female employee to “kill it” after she revealed she was pregnant. He reportedly also said he would “do her” about a woman while in a deposition and was accused by another woman of calling women “meat”. 

“If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s’,” Bloomberg is also reported to have said. 

In fact, the book claims that Bloomberg’s sexist jokes and sayings were so ubiquitous around the office that a “joke compendium” of them was passed around by his employees. Called “Borscht Belt Standbys”, his jokes were often dismissed as blunders by his aides. 

The book claims that in private, Bloomberg could be “raunchy with a full repertoire of old jokes that were sometimes edgy and sometimes slipped over the edge”. It claims Bloomberg would comment about “women’s cleavage” and “proclamations  that females need to wear high heels”. 

It also details how, in the 1990’s, four women filed sexual harassment suits against Bloomberg LP, including a sales executive who claimed Bloomberg told her to to “kill” her unborn baby. Bloomberg was supposedly upset that she was the 16th woman at the firm to go on maternity leave. 

Bloomberg also, when seeing the woman’s wedding ring, asked her:

“What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?”.

After a week, he apparently told the same woman:

“Still engaged? What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him to get rid of you?”

Bloomberg LP said that Bloomberg had denied saying “kill it,” taken a lie detector test and passed.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Bloomberg LP in 2007, claiming that the company “fostered and perpetuated” a hostile environment for women. The Federal lawsuit was thrown out 4 year later, although some claims were allowed to continue, with the case ending in 2015. 

“[Chief] Judge [Loretta] Preska would dismiss charges of discrimination against Bloomberg in a sweeping and pointed sixty-four page order,” the book says. 

When Bloomberg ran for Mayor in 2001, he came under scrutiny when his rival pointed out a book, “The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg”, that was created in-house at Bloomberg’s firm. It was a compilation of quips, including Bloomberg saying about the British royal family:

“The (British) Royal family – what a bunch of misfits – a gay, an architect, that horsey faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up Koo Stark for some fat broad.”

He also reportedly said:

“The three biggest lies are: the check’s in the mail, I’ll respect you in the morning, and I’m glad I’m Jewish.”

Another line said: “I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.”

During his term as mayor, his “comedy act” continued. He reportedly said at a book signing for the city’s gay media elite:

“I haven’t seen so many guys since there was a Ricky Martin book signing.” 

“You should see what’s in my closet,” he continued, talking about a pink sweater he was wearing at the time. 

Former New York city speaker Christine Quinn also claimed that Bloomberg once made degrading comments about her appearance, stating:

“Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it’s three with the gray.”

According to a male journalist, Bloomberg once said, “Look at the ass on her,” about a woman in a tight gown. 

But he didn’t seem to deny everything, however, with his staff saying in a statement to the Daily Mail:

“People should buy the book and read it for themselves to see why historian Doris Kearns Goodwin calls it a ‘first rate study of leadership in business, politics and philanthropy.’ As stated in the book, these charges were either denied or dismissed many years ago.”

Apparently, Bloomberg actually likes the book so much that he is sending it to friends and urging them to read it. 

Bloomberg is best known for the Bloomberg Terminal software, which revolutionized Wall Street by giving traders faster access to data. The Bloomberg name has also expanded into a news wire service, a TV channel and philanthropy, which has given away more than $8 billion. 

For more on the book, you can read the Daily Mail’s full longform writeup. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zw6v64 Tyler Durden

Two days ago, we reported that the Russell Clark, the CIO of Horseman Global, “the world’s most bearish hedge fund”, had one big question in his latest investor letter: “why are people not more bearish?” Here one could argue that just like Ray Dalio (whose Pure Alpha fund has been suffering from a variety of wrong-way bets), Clark is merely talking his book: after all, being down 22% YTD would certainly prompt questions why more people don’t see the world in a similar way.

And yet his question is legitimate: after all between Hong Kong, the US-China trade war, Germany in recession, Europe on the verge of recession, a no-deal Brexit, renewed Italian political chaos, a record amount of negative yielding debt, and central banking facing an existential moment, one may also ask how anyone has a bullish view on risk assets.

Addressing just this issue is Nomura’s quant strategist, Masanari Takada, who in a note published overnight asking “Why a risk-off mood is not gaining traction”, points out that investor sentiment has been ebbing and flowing (although he does caution that if historical patterns in sentiment are anything to go by, we think sentiment is at risk of heading lower through around 2 September). That said, his impression is that it is hard to get a good read on the direction of sentiment, “as there seems to be just as little incoming negative news as positive news.”

In an attempt to answer this overarching question, one has to look at the positioning of the various speculative actors in the market. Here, a survey of the supply/demand landscape among various short-term market participants reveals that “trading stances are still far from uniform even within a given strategy.”

Instead, “a precarious balance has emerged”, with pessimistic trades by CTAs (selling stocks, buying bonds) at the moment being “neatly countered by opposing trades made by global macro hedge funds and other investors that trade mainly on fundamentals”, according to Takada.

Meanwhile, the fact that risk-parity funds are refraining from deleveraging seems to be lending some stability to the credit market. What this tells Nomura, is that a risk-off mood that might otherwise have developed is failing to gain traction on account of:

1. surprisingly healthy incoming macroeconomic data; and
2. the risk of a credit crunch being systematically contained.

A deeper dive into the positioning of key market players reveals the following:

The stance of trend-chasing CTAs is still to sell equity futures and buy bond futures. The volume of trend-following trading is gradually increasing. Of course, the short positions in Hong Kong equities and the long positions in US bonds are starting to look like cases of momentum herding. Nevertheless, we do not expect to see much systematic unwinding of these positions unless the Hang Seng index approaches 26,640 (our estimate of the break-even line for net selling since late July) or 10yr UST yields approach 1.56% (the break-even line for net buying of TY since the beginning of August).

In terms of factor trends, factor-oriented investors are staying away from high-beta names (although trading on 28 August marked an exception to the pattern). It appears they are quietly and gradually adjusting their positioning on the assumption of a coming global economic slowdown.

Global macro hedge funds, on the other hand, are still bullish on fundamentals, seemingly skeptical of the idea that a global recession is on the way. One reason for this, presumably, is that macroeconomic indicators have been holding up surprisingly well in the US and in the Asia-Pacific region (manifesting in improvement in the economic surprise index). Global macro hedge funds are for the moment closing out existing short positions in Asian equities (Japan excepted).

It appears that risk-parity funds are not engaging in much deleveraging. By increasing what they allocate to high-yield bonds, risk-parity funds are making purchases that appear to be keeping the credit market less agitated than it might be otherwise.

So with major trading groups apparently deadlocked, how can one assess the risk of a second “vol-up” wave, of the kind Nomura predicted last week, is coming?

While it is true that trading signals are not perfectly consistent within any given trading strategy, Takada writes today that “it does seem that thin trading has allowed opposing strategies to leave the market deadlocked.” As a result, any second vol-up wave would depend on trend-following players getting out in front with pessimistic trades, in response to either fresh negative news or a combination of a pullback in the bullish stance of fundamentals-oriented investors and deleveraging by risk-parity funds. However, if a second vol-up wave were to stay away, then CTAs and other investors waiting for a stock sell-off could lose patience and wind down some of their pessimistic trades.

So absent negative shocks is the market set to soar? Not necessarily, because one of the key marginal price-setters, hedge funds, are unlikely to go all in as their “risk appetite seems likely to remain low.” According to Nomura, when looking at hedge funds as a whole, “risk appetite is likely to remain low.” That is unlikely to change as Takada is not seeing any of the three events that would likely be interpreted as game changers, namely i) realistic expectations for a US-China trade agreement, ii) a virtual promise from the Fed to cut its policy interest rate by 50bp or more, or iii) the cobbling together of a coordinated fiscal policy response.

Meanwhile, with the market stuck in a tight range…

…. a growing number of short-term investors also look to be waiting on the sidelines, and as the bearish Nomura quant trader concludes, “we continue to believe that these investors are more likely to chase trends in a risk-off direction than in a risk-on direction.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HxSDML Tyler Durden

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

Two comments last week highlight the dangerous security impasse in which Iran and the U.S. find themselves.

The first was from Iran’s spiritual leader, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, that maritime security will remain at risk if its oil exports continue to be compromised.

The second was from U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, that sanctions may be applied on any country that helps the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya 1 as it makes its way back to Iran through the Mediterranean, having been released by the U.K. overseas territory of Gibraltar.

“Iran’s view is now that the U.S. will not launch the full-scale military attack that was previously expected, that the U.S. is increasingly isolated in its actions against Iran among its allies in Europe and even in the U.K.,” a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week.

“At the same time, Iran believes it can lever the U.S. back into a newly renegotiated nuclear deal involving the removal of all sanctions,” he added.

Up until a couple of months or so ago, the U.S. was actively considering a full-scale military operation against Iran and was “98 per cent ready” for such an all-out attack, according to senior political sources in Washington and London spoken to by OilPrice.com last week.

“The remaining two percent involved the final movement of men and materiel into attack positions and finalising the technology and software involved,” said one.

“At that point, [John] Bolton [U.S. National Security Advisor] was the dominant voice in [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s ear, and this meant moving at least 120,000 troops into position to augment the [U.S.S Abraham Lincoln aircraft] carrier group that was already in place.”

“At about the same point, though, some of the President’s very close longstanding personal advisers and very senior CIA figures persuaded him that it would be an utter disaster, both militarily and economically, given the scale of the Iranian military and the terrain involved, its ability to launch guerrilla warfare anywhere in the world through its military proxies Hezbollah and Hamas and others, and its ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz,” one of the sources added.

“In short, it was put to him that such a [full scale] military attack on Iran would lead to consequences potentially of a least the same length as the Afghanistan conflict and of at least the severity of Islamic State’s peak power,” he added.

As it now stands, the U.S. side is still split. On the one hand, there are the ultra-hawks Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence, the latter of whom notably said that:

“The world missed an opportunity last time to confront the regime, but not this time.”

Their less war-centric remarks on the subject still find backing from Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, OilPrice.com understands.

He and the lesser hawks still prefer the option currently being used of changing the regime in Iran by crippling its economy to such a degree that popular unrest removes the current power structures in the country, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). To this end, the past few weeks have seen the U.S. end all waivers on importing oil from Iran, designate the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation, and sanction 14 individuals and 17 entities linked to Iran’s shadowy Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (‘SPND’ initialism in Farsi).

Senior political sources in Washington have highlighted to OilPrice.com that the SPND, working together with the IRGC, has become quite the expert in continuing its nuclear weapons research under the cover of a range of quickly-changing front companies. These can operate unhindered in the international business community by pretending that they are engaged in legitimate non-sanctioned business activity, including accessing traditional finance, credit and banking facilities.

Opposing Bolton and the other hawks in the U.S. are some of the most senior figures in the U.S. intelligence community. One of these, Dan Coats, left his position as Director of National Intelligence U.S. National Intelligence – purportedly over differences with others in the Trump administration over Russia and North Korea – but also shortly after even he testified to a Senate Committee prior to the withdrawal of the U.S from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal that there was no indication that Iran was attempting to develop a nuclear weapon and that Tehran remained in compliance with the deal.

Another notable exception to the pro-attack view, OilPrice.com understands, is the CIA’s Head of Iran Mission Center, Michael D’Andrea. Known as ‘the Dark Prince’ for his work in the U.S.’s sharp-end counter-terrorism operations after the ‘9/11’ attacks, and even the key figure in organising the elimination of one of Hezbollah’s leaders, Imad Mougniyeh,  in Damascus, in 2008 – when D’Andrea was Head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (from 2006) – he has voiced concerns over such an overt military strategy.

According to various intelligence analysts spoken to by OilPrice.com, D’Andrea is in favour of dialogue with Iran’s non-IRGC leadership. He is even said to be in favour of talks with Iran’s foremost military leader and the architect of its strategy to create and sustain a ‘crescent of Shia power’ running from Lebanon and Syria through to Iraq and Yemen through asymmetric warfare tactics, the long-serving head of Iran’s al-Quds (‘Jerusalem’) Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani.

The weapons that Iran could use in an asymmetric war are considerable, including further upsetting oil flows (and thus the broader economy and the all-important gasoline prices in the U.S.), undermining the U.S.’s plans in Iraq and Turkey by destabilising the Kurdish populations of each, and increasing tensions between the U.S., China and Russia. They also include fracturing the U.S.’s relationships with its NATO partners in Europe, and upping the tempo of direct attacks against the U.S.’s principal partner in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, through its Houthi allies, who control the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and much of the north of the country.

“Trump is isolated in his position on the Saudi actions in Yemen against the Houthis already, which Iran knows, but by taking the war directly into Saudi sovereign territory, as indicated that they can do at will by the drone attack on the major Shaybah oilfield [which produces around 1 million barrels of oil per day] and refinery complex, this position of backing the Saudis becomes more and more untenable,” the Iran source told OilPrice.com.

Iran is looking to push its advantage, the source exclusively told OilPrice.com last week, by agreeing to the opening of a Houthi embassy in Tehran, manned initially by 25 Houthi staff. This follows the unofficial appointment in the last few days of Ibrahim Mohammed Mohammed Al-Dailami as an ambassador ‘for the republic of Yemen to the Islamic Republic of Iran’, according to Houthi media sources. “This is all part of [General] Soleimani’s strategy of ‘a thousand short daggers making a thousand cuts against the U.S. for as long it sanctions us [Iran],” the source added.

Isolating the U.S. from Europe has long been at the core of this Iran strategy and the recent vetoing by the U.K. of the U.S. ‘suggestion’ to detain the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya 1 points to a much deeper opposition to the current U.S. strategy on Iran by the key European states. This has been the case form the very moment that the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA.

This was made worse by the recent revelation by the U.K.’s former ambassador to the U.S., Sir Kim Darroch – that has been disputed by Trump’s team – that Trump abandoned the nuclear deal just to spite former President Barack Obama. Obama was not only the architect of the deal but also a figure who Trump has personally despised since Obama ridiculed him at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, a key catalyst in Trump’s deciding to run for president in the first place, according to multiple reports.

When there were just rumours that the U.S. was going to withdraw from the JCPOA, the European Union’s (E.U.) foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, stated: “This [the JCPOA] is not a bilateral agreement,… so it is clearly not in the hands of any president of any country in the world to terminate [it],…The President of the United States has many powers, but not this one.” After the U.S. withdrew from the deal last May, the E.U. invoked the ‘Blocking Statute’ that effectively bans European companies from following the U.S.’ sanctions on Iran. Concomitant with this, Mogherini said that Brussels would not let the JCPOA deal with Tehran die, adding that: “We are encouraging small and medium enterprises in particular to increase business with and in Iran as part of something that for us is a security priority.”

The then-German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, added at that time that:

“We also have to tell the Americans that their behaviour on the Iran issue will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the U.S.A.”

Shortly afterwards, the E.U. – under the leadership of Germany – moved to solve the problem of how to deal with payments accruing from business between the E.U. and Iran by creating the Instrument for Trade and Exchanges (INSTEX). 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2L7rsuJ Tyler Durden

Just when you thought it was safe to buy buy buy because of ‘odd’ headlines from both US and China about “talks,” The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, U.S. prosecutors are looking into additional instances of alleged technology theft by Huawei.

The Journal reports that among the situations being examined are episodes in which Huawei was accused of stealing intellectual property from multiple people and companies over several years, as well as how the company went about recruiting employees from competitors.

The move is an escalation as the inquiries, which include a subpoena for documents from Huawei by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, suggest that the government is investigating aspects of Huawei’s business practices that weren’t covered in indictments of Huawei issued earlier this year.

The algos did react very modestly to this headline but it’s coming back relatively quickly…

Will we get another tweet from the President proclaiming how well talks are going?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Pmp9YM Tyler Durden

Offering a glimpse of complications that are arising from Washington’s campaign to stamp out ‘national security’-related issues emanating from the Chinese telecom sector, WSJ reported on Wednesday about a major project to lay high-speed fiber-optic cable across the Pacific that would increase the Internet connectivity between China and the US. The project, known as the Pacific Light Cable Network, involved laying 8,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, creating a new link between the US and Hong Kong.

The project, which is already in its final stages, with most of the cable having already been laid, is being financed by Facebook, Google-parent Alphabet and a major Chinese telecoms company.

But now, a committee of US officials responsible for granting the project final approval are getting cold feet, and the project’s backers are worried it might not pass its final ‘national security’ review led by the DoJ, DHS and other US federal agencies. These agencies make a recommendation to the FCC, which makes the final decision whether to allow the project will receive a license to operate.

Years ago, when the project started, the feeling was that increasing connectivity between Hong Kong and the US wasn’t controversial. But now, with Beijing seeking to exert more control over the territory as pro-democracy protests rage, officials at the DoJ have changed how they feel about this distinction. Moreover, although the project is being managed by a Hong Kong company, one of its backers is Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group, mainland China’s fourth-largest broadband provider. The company faces scrutiny in the US because it participates in the Chinese government-mandated censorship and surveillance of the Chinese population.

Right now, the project is operating under a temporary license. But that license expires in September, and although Washington could extend that temporary permit, that outcome is seen as unlikely. If the FCC refuses to grant a permanent license because of national security concerns raised by the DoJ-led committee, it’s unclear what would happen.

Right now, the cable is one of roughly 380 submarine cables that transmit nearly all of the world’s intercontinental Internet traffic.

But the possibility that Washington could withhold a permanent operating license highlights the fact that American tech giants have been helping Asian firms lay thousands of miles of fiber optic cable to improve connectivity between Asia and North America, and haven’t exactly thought through how the changing political landscape might impact some of these projects.

Contacted by WSJ, the company managing the project, which affirmed that it has already installed nearly 7,000 miles of fiber optic cable, said it hasn’t heard about any opposition from Washington. Google, meanwhile, gave a comment that made it sound like the company knows the project is doomed.

Pacific Light Data Communication Co., the Hong Kong company managing the cable project, said it has already installed more than 6,800 miles of the cable system, which will be ready for service by December or January. Senior Vice President Winston Qiu said he hadn’t heard of any U.S. regulatory problems. “We didn’t hear any opposition,” he said.

A Google spokeswoman said the company has “been working through established channels for many years in order to obtain U.S. cable landing licenses for various undersea cables. We are currently engaged in active and productive conversations with U.S. government agencies about satisfying their requirements specifically for the PLCN cable.” A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment.

So, what might happen if the FCC doesn’t grant the license? Would all that cable go to waste? Probably not. Presumably, just like Chinese owner of Grindr was forced to do after CFIUS raised issues about the sale of the LGBTQ-focused hookup app, the Chinese owners would presumably be forced to divest their stake. 

But that would leave the project vulnerable to the whims of the market. And if the Chinese telecoms giant is forced to brook a significant loss, it could have a chilling effect on future projects like this one.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2L2ElG9 Tyler Durden

In a world with $17 trillion in negative yielding debt, and the US increasingly the only source of safe, positive yielding debt…

… it’s not surprising that foreigners have found US Treasury paper especially attractive. But that’s not all: apparently foreigners have been attracted to all kinds US “paper” especially America’s currency.

As the IMF’s blog points out, a curious thing has happened in US currency: the $100 bill recently overtook the ubiquitous $1 bill in circulation volume, for the first time in history. In other words, the most valuable banknote in the United States has also become the most widely circulated.

As shown in the next chart based on the latest Fed data, there are now more $100 bills circulating now than ever before, roughly doubling in volume since the global financial crisis.

The $100 bill became the most circulated currency in the world in 2017, overtaking the $1 bill for the first time ever.

Looking at broader aggregates reveals that while the amount of total currency in circulation – the value of all dollar bills outstanding – had plateaued around $800BN heading into the Global Financial Crisis, since then the pace of currency growth has almost doubled, and as of today there is roughly 1.75 trillion dollars in the form of various banknotes.

What explains this boom in Benjamins, as the bills are known, especially when considering the establishment’s push to herd as many people as possible into cashless and other electronic “options”? Or, as the IMF asks, “in this age of digital everything, are Americans suddenly growing nostalgic for greenbacks in high denominations?”

The answer is two fold: i) no, it is not Americans who are nostaglic for cash, in fact it is not Americans who are behind this surge in currency demand; and ii) the real reason why the world is suddenly drowning in hundred dollar bills is the desire to evade punitive, negative interest rates.

Indeed, while overall demand for US currency is indeed on the rise, most $100 bills are held abroad. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, nearly 80% of $100 bills—and more than 60% of all US bills—are overseas, up from roughly 30% in 1980.

Besides drug money – by one estimate in the early 1980s, several percent of all outstanding US currency was to be found in the estate of one Pablo Escobar – geopolitical instability could be a reason behind the surge in $100 bills, according to Fed economist Ruth Judson. “Overseas demand for US dollars is likely driven by its status as a safe asset,” Judson told the Richmond Fed’s Econ Focus in 2018.

According to a 2017 paper by Judson, international demand for US dollars increased over the 1990s and into the early 2000s, and then stabilized or declined after the 2002 debut of the cash euro. This decline in demand continued until late 2008, when the global financial crisis triggered renewed demand for US banknotes.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that all this cash demand is strictly legal: Harvard University’s Kenneth Rogoff says big banknotes and illicit activity are closely linked. “Worldwide, high-value currency notes are mainly used to avoid taxes and regulation, and for illegal activity,” he observes. “Apartments and houses in major cities all over the world are paid for with suitcases of cash every day, and it is not because the buyers are afraid of bank failures.”

One other reason for suitcases of cash: to avoid parking your money in a bank that will impose negative interest rates on it and lead to the total amount shrink year after year. As such, foreigners are simply parking their money in US bank notes to avoid NIRP, which is nothing but legal wealth confiscation. Rogoff agrees: “Underground demand for paper currency has been surely rising in part because interest rates and inflation are exceptionally low.”

But why the dollar? Its role as the dominant international reserve currency may be the key, according to Rogoff. Of course, if Mark Carney (and Donald Trump) gets his way, that won’t last very long…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32cN2mW Tyler Durden