“Because officers lied, people died,” Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg said today at a press conference where she announced a grand jury indictment of two former Houston narcotics officers who were involved in a January 2019 drug raid that killed a middle-aged couple in their home. The indictment confirms the state charges filed last August against Gerald Goines, who is accused of lying to obtain the warrant for the raid, and Steven Bryant, who is accused of subsequently backing up Goines’ false portrayal of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas as dangerous heroin dealers.
Both men are accused of tampering with a government document, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Because Goines’ misrepresentations caused two deaths, he is also charged with two counts of felony murder, which could result in a life sentence.
“The grand jury held officers of the law responsible for killing innocent people and their dog in their home,” Ogg said in a press release. “Our Constitution guarantees that Americans should not have to fear their government—and when agents of the government violate our rights, they will be held accountable. Our investigation continues, and we anticipate presenting additional evidence to additional grand juries in the future.”
Ogg said the second phase of her investigation will focus on additional allegations against Goines, a 34-year Houston Police Department (HPD) veteran who has been accused of stealing money and framing other people, as well as possible wrongdoing by other members of the HPD Narcotics Division’s Squad 15. Her office is reviewing some 14,000 cases developed by the 11-member squad, looking for inconsistencies suggesting that people were arrested or convicted based on false information. Dozens of cases already have been dismissed.
“If anyone out there is a victim or has information about somebody else who may have been harmed by Officer Goines or any other person associated with this investigation,” Ogg said, “please contact the district attorney’s office.” Ogg mentioned one such case: Otis Mallet, who was arrested by Goines for crack dealing in 2008 and served two years in prison, has long maintained that Goines fabricated the case against him. During a hearing last week, Mallet’s lawyer presented an affidavit from the prosecutor who was initially assigned to that case. She said she had recently become aware of inconsistencies between Goines’ expense reports and his trial testimony that would have justified dropping the charges against Mallet.
The third phase of Ogg’s investigation will focus on the raid itself, which began when an officer crashed through the front door without warning and immediately used a shotgun to kill a dog. According to the HPD, Tuttle responded to this assault by firing at the officers with a revolver, and the officers fired back. Tuttle and Nicholas were killed, and four officers, including Goines, were wounded by gunfire, although the source of those rounds remains unclear.
A forensic expert hired by Nicholas’ family disputed key parts of the HPD’s account, including the claim that Tuttle fired at the officers as they entered the house and the claim that they shot Nicholas because she was trying to disarm the officer with the shotgun. “We are looking at the involvement of everyone in the squad,” Ogg said. “Each officer on that squad, including those seriously injured, understands that they are under a prosecutorial microscope.”
Goines and Bryant also face federal charges related to the raid. According to a federal indictment unsealed in November, Goines began investigating Tuttle and Nicholas based on a false tip from Patricia Ann Garcia, who lived across the street from the couple. To justify a search warrant, Goines later admitted, he invented a “controlled buy” of black-tar heroin by a nonexistent informant—a fiction that Bryant, who was mentioned in the warrant affidavit, helped confirm after the raid, which found no evidence of drug dealing. The federal indictment charges Garcia with conveying false information to the police, Bryant with obstructing justice by falsifying documents, and Goines with violating Tuttle’s and Nicholas’ Fourth Amendment rights under color of law.
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Venture capital funding for early-stage U.S. companies saw a dramatic reduction in late 2019 thanks to the combination of inflated valuations, the WeWork implosion, and IPO meltdowns.
CB Insights and PWC published new data that showed venture capital-backed companies raised $23 billion in 4Q19, down 42.5% Y/Y.
On a much larger timeframe, WeWork’s ridiculous $47 billion valuation likely marked the top of the VC bubble in late 2018/1Q19.
Despite VC firms pulling back on funding because valuations were stretched, startups in 2019 received approximately $108 billion in funding, making it the third-largest year ever, even dating back to the Dot Com bubble.
At the end of 2019, there were more than 199 U.S.-base unicorns, and these are startups with valuations over $1 billion, which was up from 149 at the end of 2018.
Large funding rounds over $100 million also dropped in 4Q19 to 38 with a total of $7.3 billion raised, opposed to 54 in 4Q18, with a total of $25.3 billion.
WeWork’s implosion, IPO disasters, and the pricking of the VC bubble are all coming at a time when central banks are plowing trillions of dollars into global markets and cutting interest rates at a pace not seen since the last financial crisis. Maybe the VC bubble cracking is a sign that a market top is nearing.
The drama in Virginia has escalated again as Governor Ralph Northam declares an official State of Emergency before January 20th’s “Lobby Day” protests.
Citing violence that erupted in Charlottesville during a Unite the Right rally in 2017, Northam said that there are credible threats that “armed militia groups plan to storm the Capitol” during Monday’s rally. In an executive order, he announced he is banning all weapons from Capitol Square for the day.
Credible intelligence gathered by Virginia’s law enforcement agencies indicates that tens of thousands of advocates plan to converge on Capitol Square for events culminating on January 20, 2020. Available information suggests that a substantial number of these demonstrators are expected to come from outside the Commonwealth, may be armed, and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection. Assuring that Virginia’s Capitol Square and surrounding public areas are sheltered safe places for those who come to participate in the democratic process, as well as those who work on or near Capitol Square, is my greatest priority.
The anticipated effects of the potential convergence of tens of thousands of demonstrators on Capitol Square, some of whom may not come to assemble peacefully, constitutes an emergency as described in § 44-146.16 of the Code of Virginia (Code).
Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution of Virginia, by §§ 2.2-103 and 44-146.13 et seq. of the Code, as Governor and Director of Emergency Management and Commander-in-Chief of the Commonwealth’s armed forces, I proclaim that a state of emergency will exist starting on January 17, 2020 through January 21,
2020. Accordingly, I direct state and local governments to render appropriate assistance to prepare for this event, to alleviate any conditions resulting from the situation, and to implement recovery and mitigation operations and activities so as to return impacted areas to pre-event conditions as much as possible. Emergency services shall be conducted in accordance with § 44-146.13 et seq. of the Code. (source)
The Executive Order doesn’t only ban guns, but also includes helmets, shields, and more.
“No weapons will be allowed on Capitol grounds,” said Northam, a Democrat.
“Everything from sticks and bats to chains and projectiles…. The list also includes firearms. It makes no sense to ban every other weapon but allow firearms when intelligence shows that armed militia groups plan to storm the Capitol.” (source)
The rally had been planned as an open carry event and the turnout is expected to be massive. Monday, the state’s congress is expected to vote on a number of incredibly unpopular anti-gun laws, discussed here and here. While one of the most alarming bills has been pulled due to overwhelming opposition, there are plenty more to take its place.
According to a press release from Northam’s office, “credible intelligence gathered by Virginia’s law enforcement agencies indicates that tens of thousands of advocates plan to converge on Capitol Square for events culminating on January 20, 2020. Available information suggests that a substantial number of these demonstrators are expected to come from outside the Commonwealth, may be armed, and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection.”
Specifically, Northam said they’ve received threats including people detailing plans to storm the Capitol Building, use weaponized drones, and more. A state official cited one posting that included a photo of an AR-15 with a caption that said there are “great sight angles from certain buildings” near Capitol Square. (source)
Who is sponsoring the rally?
It’s interesting to note that throughout nearly every article on the mainstream media about this topic, you’ll find multiple references to “white nationalists,” making it seem as though the event is being hosted by white supremacists instead of law-abiding gun owners who have no intention of kowtowing to unconstitutional mandates. It’s particularly interesting that it’s Governor Northam making most of these references, given his part in a recent “blackface” scandal.
Here are some examples:
From NBC: “Northam’s declaration will also ban items like helmets and shields, items that some white nationalists carried in Charlottesville. “
From USA Today: “Northam said the decision was a response to threats, some of them made online in forums hosted by hate groups and white nationalists. The governor called on rally organizers to dissuade out-of-state groups from coming to the rally and encouraged a “peaceful day” for Virginians.”
From NPR: “Northam is raising concerns about a reprise of the deadly violence surrounding the white supremacist march in Charlottesville in August 2017. He said state intelligence analysts have identified threats and rhetoric online that mirrors the chatter they were picking up around that time.”
But in actuality, the group sponsoring the rally is Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, a group dedicated to “defending your right to defend yourself in Virginia.”
This isn’t the first tyrannical move in Virginia this week.
An extremely popular Facebook post that has been shared thousands of times reads:
So Virginia introduces a bundle of radical laws to destroy 2A rights, militias, sale transfer and registration bills, and the People of Virginia says no, and we’re going to vote you all out next term.
Virginia government responds by introducing a bill to eliminate voter ID.
Virginia says we’re not going to wait, we’ll petition your removal from office and gets almost a 3rd of the 240K signatures to remove the governor and starts petitions to remove deligates.
Virginia govornment responds by introducing a bill to raise the amount of signatures from 10% of the prevailing vote, to 25%.
Folks, this is the a textbook example of tyranny. “We’re the government, and we’ll do anything we want, whether you like it or not. We won’t let you vote us out, we won’t let you remove us from office…. And if you can’t possess the weapons that a militia would need to force us out, of office, then there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it” (source)
I guess we can add this Executive Order to the list of tyrannies above.
What happens now?
On their Facebook page, they said of Northam’s emergency declaration:
VCDL is going to have our attorneys investigate this situation once we hear Northam’s statement on Wednesday and we will let you know what we find out. (source)
Any struggling millennials desperate to escape a cycle of poor wages and crippling student debt (unemployed digital journalists, we’re looking at you) take note: Citigroup’s investment banking unit is joining the ranks of financial firms hiring thousands of coders as the ranks of equity analysts and other traditional i-banking jobs continue to thin.
Citi’s decision follows an August report that rival Goldman Sachs would shun its traditional MBA hires in lieu of an army of coders, signalling a profound shift away from hiring mostly business school graduates (who are now irrelevant in a world in which fundamental analysis is no longer meaningful), to hiring computer geeks, math PhD and others whose only contribution is making an existing tech process more efficient (read: faster frontrunning, replacing humans with algos, etc).
According to Bloomberg, Citigroup is planning to hire 2,500 programmers this year to join its investment banking unit, the latest stop in a trend of hiring more data scientists and computer experts as Wall Street struggles to fend off the onslaught of technology firms trying to force their way into traditional financial services businesses (if you need to be reminded of the stakes here, take a look at what Quicken Loans has accomplished with its popular “Rocket Mortgage” product).
Banks are also struggling to find savings anywhere they can (even among the ranks of senior management, as State Street showed us this time last year) using automation, AI and machine-learning. Citi has already used its tech workforce to automate news, analytics, pricing and trade ideas, using material gleaned from exchanges between employees and clients.
In search of savings elsewhere, the biggest US banks have amped up their spending on technology over the past decade, with the biggest banks now spending billions on tech. Citigroup spends roughly $8.5 billion on technoloy annually, about 20% of total expenses. JPM, meanwhile, spends $11 billion on tech every year, making it the industry leader.
According to Stuart Riley, Citi’s global head of operations for Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, last year, roughly 75% of trade order’s taken by the bank’s salespeople were executed electronically. Bloomberg reports that ICG will hire programmers in cities from New York to Chennai.
The hires reflect “what we are building in technology and why we are focused on making salespeople and traders more effective at servicing our clients,” Riley said in an interview at Citigroup’s Canary Wharf office in London. “Technology is augmenting what humans do by making better use of data.”
According to Riley, the new recruits will focus on building new “solutions” in the equities and fixed income businesses, coming as the bank shrinks the ranks of its traders.
In a sign that the heavy spending on tech will likely continue unabated, Citi says it’s already started to reap the benefits of its investments in recent years. The bank says it’ll save as much as $600 million in 2020 thanks to its tech investments. Translation: the company will pay $600 million less in bonuses.
The bank, which already has 23,000 technology specialists in its ICG business globally, including roles in London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Pune and Chennai in India, as well as Tampa.
Citi’s announcement means that the battle for tech talent in New York is about to get much more fierce, now that Amazon is planning to increase its presence in Manhattan (leasing a space that will house 1,500 workers), and Facebook said it’s planning to hire more than 3,000 people over the next three to five years in the city.
Most importantly, Citi’s push to expand its tech workforce comes as it shrinks overall headcount, which means tech is one of the few areas where Citi is actually hiring. Citi’s global employee headcount shrank to 199,000 at the end of the third quarter. That’s down 18% from five year earlier.
Meanwhile, demand for coders is soaring: two years ago, the bank ran a Python coding class for employees that had 30 spaces. Management was inundated by requests, and it has now trained 1,600 front-office staff in the computer language.
“The delineation between traders and technologists in markets is disappearing,” he said.
If coding isn’t your cup of tea, banks also plan on growing their ranks of data scientists, making a master’s degree or PhD in that field even more valuable.
Greenwich Associates said in a study published Monday that data scientists will take up more seats and accumulate more clout on trading desks this year.
“One could argue that most, if not all, of the market’s evolution over the past decade has come because of access to data and the ability to put it to work,” Kevin McPartland, head of research in Greenwich Associates’ market structure and technology group, said in the study. “So it should come as no surprise that experts in that field are taking over.”
It used to be that prospective i-banking analysts needed little more than a rudimentary knowledge of Excel and a basic allotment of soft skills to be competitive. But soon enough mastery of Python won’t just be a differentiator –it’ll be a requirement.
In the run up to the end of the year during December, a remarkable sight emerged across Germany – long lines of customers queuing up outside the country’s precious metals shops and gold dealer showrooms.
Was it seasonal gift buying by Germany’s citizens, a population well-known for its love of physical precious metals? Or perhaps the onset of panic about negative interest rates in Europe’s largest economy?
As it turns out, panic it was, but of a different type, with the long lines triggered by the realization that from 1 January 2020, new national legislation was to take effect that would dramatically reduce the threshold on anonymous buying of precious metals from the existing €10,000 limit (US$ 11,150) to a far lower limit of €2000 (US$ 2,230), all under the guise of money laundering prevention.
With a staggering 9,000 tonnes of gold held by the German population, 55% of which is in the form of physical gold bars and gold coins and the rest in gold jewelry, Germany’s citizens are savvy about gold and are active savers and investors in the yellow precious metal. Add to this the fact that the German bullion market is one of the most sophisticated and developed in the world, supporting an extensive set of industry participants from banks and gold refineries, to nationwide gold dealers and distributors, to smaller regional and local bullion retailers.
Panic buying – “We are being overrun”
So when the German government throws up restrictions on such a fundamental right as anonymous buying of gold and other precious metals, Germany’s citizens were going to sit up and take notice and do what any rationale economic actor would do in the circumstances – buy as much gold as they can get their hands on before the 1 January deadline. Hence the queues and long lines outside the gold shops including some of Germany’s biggest gold dealers such as Degussa and Pro Aurum.
“Large gold traders such as ProAurumand Degussa are currently experiencing massive bottlenecks in gold products, and customers are literally buying their shelves empty.“We are currently being overrun,” says Raphael Scherer, managing director at Degussa Edelmetalle.“The queues go up into the street.”
It is similar with Pro Aurum.Like Degussa, the company is one of the largest gold traders in Europe.“We are currently seeing a tripling of the normal order volume – both online and in the branches,” says Robert Hartmann from Pro Aurum”.
Deutschland steht die nächste Währungsreform bevor. Vor Degussa in Köln bildet sich eine Schlange derer, die anonym #Gold kaufen, bevor das ab 1.1.20 dank #Groko nur noch bis 2.000 statt 10.000 #Euro möglich ist. So werden die Bürger gezwungen, im wertlosen Euro zu bleiben. pic.twitter.com/Fju8aJW4Cn
“These long lines are based on the lowering of the cash limit. 98.5 percent of customers want to buy gold for less than 10,000 euros without registering. Few are buying jewelry any other gift.”
The situation was similar at Pro Aurum in Munich which it documented on its website:
“Many Pro Aurum employees in Munich cannot believe their eyes…the line of waiting customers extends to the on the sidewalk in front of the building. In the freezing cold, people persevere to buy physical precious metals. You take everything that is still available with you – but the product range is shrinking day by day, because the demand is simply overwhelming.”
Line of customers queuing up outside Degussa’s gold shop in Frankfurt, 24 December
Germany goes beyond the EU Directives
To understand why this is truly part of a war on gold by the German government, we must understand the background to this legislation. The European Union (EU), of which Germany is a member, regularly issues legal Directives on all manner of subjects. These directives, although they are required to be reflected in the national law of member states, don’t dictate how they should be reflected in national law, and so member states have flexibility in how they implement the directives within their national legislations. One such body of Directives are the EU Anti Money Laundering Directives, which the EU claims are to protect the financial system from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing.
In mid-November 2019, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, enacted a German federal government bill which implemented a European Union (EU) amendment to the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive. This amendment, known as the fifth EU Money Laundering Directive, was introduced by the EU in 2018, and then EU member states had until 10 January 2020 to reflect the changes in their national law via domestic legislation. The German Federal Council then passed the Bundestag’s act on 29 November and the law came into force on 1 January 2020.
But on this occasion, the German government in its legislation, went much further than the requirements of the latest EU Money Laundering Directive. Specifically, as regards transactions in precious metals, the new German law passed in November (a draft of which is here in pdf) lowered the threshold on where precious metals can be bought without identity checks (anonymous transactions) from €10,000 to €2,000 per transaction.
In Germany, anonymous transactions such as these are known as “Tafelgeschäfte”. Generally speaking, the German concept of “Tafelgeschäfte” can refers to any over-the-counter transaction for an investment or security that a customer can receive in physical form. This could include bearer bonds or an equity security with attached dividend coupons, as well as physical precious metals bars and coins. In these literally “over the counter” or across the counter transactions, customers do not need an account to perform the transaction, and customer identity remains anonymous, e.g. in the case of gold, the customer pays cash, and the dealer or bank hands over gold bars or coins.
But while the 2018 EU Directive said nothing whatsoever about precious metals, this did not stop the German federal government from dramatically lowering the anonymous threshold for precious metals transactions in its 2019 version of its domestic bill, a bill that it claims reflects the fifth EU Money Laundering Directive.
Long lines outside a gold shop in Stuttgart, Germany, on 30 December. Source
Its also important to note that the existing €10,000 threshold limit on anonymous precious metals transactions in Germany (Tafelgeschäfte) had only been in existence since 2017. Prior to that, the reporting threshold was €15,000. This threshold reduction from €15,000 to €10,000 was also rail-roaded through in German legislation which supposedly reflected the 2015 EU-Directive against Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing (a.k.a. the fourth EU AML-Directive). But again in that instance, while the 2015 EU Directive said nothing about precious metals, the 2017 German legislation defined a list of ‘high value goods’ including “precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum”, “gemstones” and “jewelry and watches”, deeming that:
“All goods dealers who make or receive cash payments of 10,000 euros and more (previously 15,000) will have to fulfill the obligations of the Fourth Money Laundering Directive”.
When it becomes serious, you have to lie
Fast forward to the 2019 German bill and out of nowhere it states that:
“The findings of the national risk analysis have shown that, especially in the area of gold trading, heavy cash transactions are taking place just below the current threshold for identification obligations of 10,000 euros, … The threshold of EUR 2,000 envisaged in the draft law aims to prevent or significantly limit this bypass trade.”
And also that:
“In the area of precious metals trading, strong cash transactions can be observed below the threshold amount of 10,000 euros that was applicable under the previous legal situation. At the same time, there is an increased risk of money laundering in the area of precious metals trading. The regulation is necessary to prevent possible evasion and smurfing.”
Strong cash flows observed by who, you might ask? Certainly not the bullion industry. According to, Raphael Scherer, managing director at Degussa Edelmetalle in a December interview with Borse Online:
“gold traders must already report suspected cases of money laundering. ‘We also reject customers who think they can buy Eur 9999 multiple times from us to get around the threshold’ said Scherer. ‘There are such cases, but these are isolated cases.'”
The lack of concrete evidence put forward by the Federal government for lowering the transaction threshold was also not lost on German parliamentary deputies, some of whom submitted questions government asking for details. The following selection of questions are from Frank Schäffler, Christian Dürr, and Dr. Florian Toncar of the FDP, and the answers from the government are shocking to say the least:
Q 1. To the best of the knowledge of the Federal Government, what is the value of the precious metals held by private individuals in Germany?
Answer: The Federal Government has no knowledge of this.
Q2. What was the annual volume of trade in precious metals in Germany during the last five years, according to the Federal Government (please break down the answer according to the individual years and precious metals)? How much of this is accounted for by private individuals?
Answer: The federal government has no information on this.
Q3. To the knowledge of the Federal government cabinet, what was the annual volume of cash transactions for precious metals in Germany in the last five years (please break down according to the individual years)?
Answer: Money laundering supervision of the trading of precious metals in the non-financial sector is the responsibility of the Länder. Therefore, the government cabinet has no information on the annual volume of cash transactions in precious metals.
Q3 a) How many people living in Germany have bought precious metals using anonymous cash transactions in the past five years?
Q3 b) How many individual transactions of this type (cash for precious metals below Eur 10,000) have been carried out in the past five years?
Answer: The federal government has no information on this.
Q3 c) What proportion of these cash transaction business for precious metals is accounted for by trading in gold, silver or platinum?
Answer: The exact share of gold, silver and platinum Tafelgeschäfte (anonymous over the counter transactions) is not known to the federal government. The findings available to the federal government from the competent supervisory authorities of the Lander suggest that the vast majority of them in the non-financial sector involve trading in gold. In contrast, the trade in silver and platinum is considerably lower.
Q4. To the knowledge of the federal government, how many precious metal dealers are there currently in Germany?
Q 4 a) How many of them do transactions of cash for precious metals below the Eur 10,000 limit?
Answer: The money laundering supervision of trading in precious metals in the non-financial sector is the responsibility of the Länder… The federal government therefore has no findings.
Q4 b) According to the federal government, how many precious metal traders have been involved in money laundering or terrorist financing over the past ten years?
Answer: Reference is made to the answer to question 6b
War on Gold – War on Truth
The answer to question 6b makes incredible reading and really torpedos any claim that the German government need to target precious metals transactions for money laundering.
Q6 b) In how many reporting or criminal cases was there a reference to precious metals?
Answer:
In 2017, of 59,845 suspicious transaction reports that were recorded by the Central Office for Financial Transaction Investigations (FIU), 64 related to precious metals.
In 2018, of a total of 77,252 suspicious transaction reported to the FIU, 175 related to precious metals.
So over the most recent two year period, of 137,097 suspicious transactions reported to the Central Office for Financial Transaction Investigations, only 239 cases related to precious metals. That’s just 0.17%. But wait! It gets more ridiculous. Of these 239 cases reported to the FIU in which precious metals were involved, only 4 of these involved amounts below the already applicable € 10,000 threshold. Just 4 cases.
According to Bundestag deputy, Frank Schäffler:
“If the government lowers the threshold forTafelgeschäfte [over the counter transactions] only because of four specific cases, it shows the absurdity of the tightening.”
The questions continue:
Q6 c) To the best of the knowledge of the Federal Government, how often and to what extent over the past ten years have anonymous cash transactions for precious metals been used for money laundering
Answer: No statistical data are available about the frequency of the use of so-called “Tafelgeschäfte” for the purpose of money laundering
Q7. What information does the Federal Government have “that especially in the area of gold trading, a strong cash flow just below the current threshold for identification requirements of 10,000 euros takes place”?
Answer: The reduction in the threshold amount is based on the findings of the national risk analysis of the federal government, in which the supervisory authorities of the federal states as well as the police and law enforcement and security authorities contributed findings.
In the area of precious metals trading, a strong cash traffic below the current legal situation threshold amount of 10.000 euro was observed. At the same time, in the area of precious metals trading there is an assumed increased risk of money laundering.
As a product – comparable to cash – precious metals offer a high degree of anonymity and are suitable for the investment of large amounts with above-average value stability, easy transportation and global acceptance.
In other words, these statists detest all the positive characteristics of gold and their true colors are being shown in the above statement.
The questions continue:
Q8. What benefits does the federal government expect from lowering the threshold on anonymous over the counter transactions?
To what extent does the federal government estimate that money laundering transactions would be prevented by the new upper limit [lower threshold]?
Answer:…The regulation is particularly necessary in order to avoid possible circumvention and to prevent the artificial splitting of transactions (“Smurfing”).
Due to its arbitrary denomination of transactions without loss of value and its high acceptance as a means of payment, trading in gold is particularly vulnerable to money laundering.
With this reduction, a threshold amount is being chosen at which it can be assumed that it will be economically unattractive for refineries and traders to reduce the delivery weight [of metal] with the aim of falling below the threshold [economically unattractive in smaller bars or coins]
Q11. What is the upper limit for panel laws is provided to the knowledge of the Federal government, at least?
Q 11a) Why does the federal government go beyond the minimum ceiling of EUR 10,000 in the fourth EU money laundering Directive (2017)
Answer: The new 2019 Germany act reduces the threshold because it’s a risk-oriented extension of the due diligence obligations of precious metal traders. The reduction of the threshold amount is based on findings from the National Risk Analysis of the federal government. These national findings provide no basis for an EU-wide scheme.
In other words, the German government has gone far beyond any EU Directive and is explicitly targeting gold transactions and gold ownership with no mandate from any EU Directive.
Q 12. What is the federal government’s assessment of the last amendment to the Money Laundering Act of 26 June 2017, in which the upper limit for anonymous precious metal transactions was lowered from Eur 14 999.99 euros to EUR 9 999.99 ?
Q12 a) How did the last change affect the over the counter cash transactions business in Germany impact?
Q12 b) to what extent could money laundering via precious metal be prevented by this, according to estimates by the federal government?
Answer: The money laundering supervision of the trade in precious metals lies in the responsibility of the Länder (German states). The Federal government has no regulatory insights into questions a) and b) on the development of over the counter cash transactions and the prevention of money-laundering cases. Otherwise, refer to the answer to question 7.
So in less than three years, the German government has reduced the threshold on anonymous cash transactions for physical precious metals from €15,000 to €10,000 and now to €2000. That’s 7.5 times less. But where did such a view come from? Certainly not from Germany’s gold dealers, nor from any studies by the federal government. And they have now lowered the limit from €10,000 to €2,000 on the basis of 4 possibly suspicious FIU cases i.e. on no evidence at all.
The entire confidence trick of the Federal government on justifying the lowering of the precious metals threshold refers to the “national risk analysis”. This risk analysis, however, is just a bunch of management consultant-speak claims lacking in any evidence that directly target cash and gold transactions, and where the only thing it says about gold is the following:
“Anonymity: It goes without saying that those involved in money laundering and terrorist financing wish to remain anonymous. The assessment has shown that criminals prefer to use cash over other payment methods, since cash payments leave fewer traces.
Cash is not only popular among criminals; it is also favoured among law-abiding citizens. Coins and banknotes are the most commonly used means of payment in Germany. Nonetheless, accepting cash payments remains risky because the cash could have been obtained by criminal means…
Because criminals also use gold and other precious metals in their illegal dealings, such cash-like assets are also associated with an increased risk of money laundering and terrorist financing.”
And there you have it. This direct attack on both cash and gold from the ‘national risk analysis’, without a shred of evidence, but implemented into the new German law, has now taken Germany one more step closer towards the lose of freedom that gold provides.
Next Stop €1000
And there is more. The reduced threshold of €2000 now means that even the purchase of a 50 gram gold bar in Germany cannot be done anonymously and is now above the reporting threshold, not to mention the 100 gram and 200 gram gold bars that are very popular among German gold buyers.
Last September, the German Federal Council (government cabinet), when commenting on the draft law, even wanted the reportable limit for precious metals to be lowered to €1000, not €2000, saying that:
“although the reduction in the threshold from EUR 10,000 to EUR 2,000 is a step in the right direction, in practice it would be just as ineffective against money laundering as the previous threshold of 10,000 euros, since the cash payments for the usual trade size of one ounce (a little over 1 000 euros) can still be divided into anonymous invoices.
Incredibly, these statists admit that lowering the limit to €2000 will not combat any money laundering, but they now want total control, with all gold transactions identified, including the purchase of the popular 1 oz gold coin:
“The lowering of the threshold value to 1,000 euros would mean that dividing the cash payment into gold coins below the threshold value of 1,000 euros would be economically uninteresting because disproportionate stamping costs are incurred.” (by this they mean higher premiums on smaller coins)
This time around, the Federal government (who were bringing the legislation) replied to the Federal Council (Cabinet), that they want to first wait and, in due course, check to see how reducing the threshold from EUR 10,000 to EUR 2,000 turns out. But with the Federal Council beating the drum for an even lower limit of EUR 1,000, it appears that Germans will soon not even be able to buy an ounce of gold without providing identification.
Conclusion
For thousands of years, gold and silver have been a real form of money and savings, and a trusted store of value. Unlike fiat cash, which time and again erodes in value as historical experience has demonstrated. But how the gold crazy German citizenship has allowed this situation to happen remains unclear. Apart from panic buying in December in the run up to the new lower threshold, there does not seem as if there has been any popular political backlash against the new law.
With this latest attack against saving in gold and other precious metals, the disinformation of the German government has been laid bare, and as you can see, there is no evidence that over the counter cash purchases of precious metals have anything to do with money laundering in Germany.
If a proper national risk analysis wanted to uncover possible money laundering in Europe, there is plenty of potential evidence closer to home, at for example the giant Deutsche Bank or neighboring Danske Bank in Denmark. Likewise, the European Commission in a recent study has already stated that “restrictions on payments in cash would not significantly prevent terrorism financing”. So this new German law against paying cash for gold has nothing to do with terrorist financing.
But just as governments and their intelligence agencies are often the biggest sources of terrorist financing and use the trumped-up War on Terror as an excuse to erode civil liberties, governments are also constantly implementing new ways to restrict the use of cash and invade citizen privacy, as this latest example from Germany shows.
The true colors of the Germany government in its war on gold and war on citizen privacy are now obvious for all to see. Precious metals dealers in Germany will now have to keep details of all transactions above €2,000 for a statutory retention period of 5 years, and dealers must grant access to these records should supervisory authorities request them. Like all statists, with the data now being recorded, the authorities will in future have a temptation to ask for it. And expect that as soon as next year, Germany will outlaw anonymous gold purchases above EUR 1,000.
50 Million Americans Are Still Paying Down Debt From 2018 Holiday Shopping Season
American consumers are some of the most debt-burdened and financially irresponsible on the planet – and it’s not just because of the stagnant wages and hefty student loan burdens. Truly, millions of Americans are addicted to easy credit provided by the credit card companies, and the low interest rates available over the past decade have only made things worse.
As we reported back in October, nearly half of American consumers report that their incomes simply don’t cover their expenses.
But the latest staggering stat about Americans’ seemingly endless capacity to take on debt comes to us from Magnify Money. Last year, MM carried out a survey of Americans who took on debt during the holiday season.
They found that the amount Americans spent in 2018 eclipsed the previous three years.
But in a scoop provided to the Today Show, MM reports that just under half of those it surveyed last year – roughly 48% – haven’t finished paying off that debt.
The average American racked up $1,230 in debt over the 2018 holiday season, and going into last year’s buying season, 48 million Americans were still paying it off!@SRuhle is here with financial fitness tips to get you out from under that debt. pic.twitter.com/JSRvYQuSQv
I suppose it is necessary, considering the bleak and humorless times we live in, to immediately start by acknowledging that the headline is meant as satire, what Webster defines as a form of “ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.”
In other words, nyet, the Kremlin does not have a hotline to the American brain that can trigger card-carrying Democrats to enter a catatonic trance on Election Day and vote against Joe Biden, or any of the other flawless Democratic gems for that matter. By this time, especially following the release of the Mueller Report, you would think that conspiracy theories involving Russia and American democracy would have subsided; instead they’ve only escalated as the U.S. enters the hot end of the 2020 presidential election campaign.
“U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter…
Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there.”
So how exactly does Russia, in a scene straight out of A Clockwork Orange, tap into the frontal lobe section of the U.S. electorate and cause them to lose all confidence in their political favorites?
“A signature trait of Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘is his ability to convince people of outright falsehoods,’ William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in a statement. ‘In America, [the Russians are] using social media and many other tools to inflame social divisions, promote conspiracy theories and sow distrust in our democracy and elections.’”
Yes, somehow those dastardly Russians have outsmarted the brightest and best-paid political strategists in Washington, D.C. by brandishing what amounts to some really persuasive memes over social media, and for just rubles on the dollar. The techies at Wired went so far as to call this epic assault on the fragile American cranium, “meme warfare to divide America.” By way of evidence, it cited a very creative meme that screamed, “F*CK THE ELECTIONS,” which was intended, as the ironclad argument goes, to cause a number of impressionable Americans to throw up their hands in a fit of collective exasperation and say, ‘Ok, that’s it. I’m staying at home on Election Day.’
Yes, it’s really that easy! Imagine all the money the Russians and their radical new political technologies could have saved guys like casino tycoon, Sheldon Adelson, who showered the Trump campaign with $100 million dollars.
Many of those divisive Russian messages wormed their way onto Facebook, purportedly, where God only knows how many voter brains’ turned to maggots and mush just staring at them. Yet one individual who actually recalls seeing one or two of these dangerous memes was Rob Goldman, former Vice President for Advertising on Facebook, who revealed via Twitter, another infected social media platform, some interesting information:
“Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.”
Clearly, Goldman seems to have been under the sway of some folk Russian brainwashing technique, probably passed down from the time of Rasputin. In any case, Donald Trump himself took great satisfaction from that particular revelation, retweeting it to his millions of minions.
Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.
Incidentally, it may or may not be relevant, but Goldman retired from Facebook in October 2019 after seven years with the company.
Russia, the gift that keeps on giving
Not only have the Democrats been able to use the Russia bogeyman as their excuse for losing the White House in 2016, they are able to summon this distant nuclear power whenever they wish to curb internet freedoms, which is pretty much every day now.
Now, fun-loving memes are under attack and may soon go the way of the DoDo bird (“A small office of Russian trolls could derail 241 years of U.S. political history with a handful of dank memes and an advertising budget that would barely buy you a billboard in Brooklyn,” screamed insanely The Guardian). At the same time, the freedom of speech is getting destroyed by vapid accusations of ‘hate speech,’ which, unless used to incite violence, is a totally meaningless term used to eliminate any conversation that is undesirable to the elite.
Meanwhile, only the mainstream media these days are permitted to dabble in ‘conspiracy theories’ even as their own false narratives have contributed to the pulverization of entire nations, as was the case in Iraq, for example, which sustained a full-blown U.S. military invasion in 2003 following debunked claims that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction. That was the mother of all conspiracy theories that was pushed unchallenged by the mainstream media.
So back to Joe Biden.
Do intelligent Americans really need help from Russia to prove that just maybe the former Vice President is mentally and physically unfit to stand for the White House? Probably not. From whispering sweet nothings into the ears of any female within groping distance, to sucking on his wife’s fingertips at a political rally, something just doesn’t seem altogether right upstairs with Joe Biden. So what is the real story for dragging Russia, once again, into the internal swamp pit known as Washington, D.C.?
The Bloomberg article provides a big hint: “This time around, the narrative about Biden and Ukraine is … well-publicized and being advanced by Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and the president’s Republican allies in Congress.”
And that “narrative” has everything to do with not only the Democrats’ frozen impeachment proceedings against the U.S. leader, which promises to have major connections to Ukraine, Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and quite possibly dozens of other top Democrats. In other words, the Democrats understand that pushing ahead with impeachment could be their ultimate downfall.
Although few Americans seem to remember that back in May of 2019, Trump granted U.S. Attorney General William Barr “full and complete authority” to investigate exactly how claims that Trump was ‘conspiring with the Kremlin’ in the 2016 presidential election had originated, the Democrats certainly have not.
Their bogus ‘Russian collusion’ claim provided the rationale for a four-year-long ‘witch hunt’ that began when the Democrats, relying on the flimsy findings contained in the so-called ‘Steele dossier, managed to get approval from the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign. Now, some top-ranking Democrats – never imagining Hillary Clinton would actually lose in 2016 – are understandably nervous as to what Barr and his assistant, federal attorney John Durham will divulge to the public in the coming months.
With so much riding on the line in 2020, is anyone surprised that Bloomberg, the news affiliate owned and operated by Democratic contender Michael Bloomberg, is now reporting “U.S. officials are warning that Russia’s election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election.”
In other words, the racist ploy used by Democrats to explain their monumental defeat in 2016 did not end with the Mueller Report.
The conspiracy theory, promulgated by a media that is in effect just another branch of the Democratic National Committee, is being primed to explain not only possible criminal charges aimed at top Democrats in the coming months, but how Democrats, like Michael Bloomberg, failed once again to beat the seemingly unstoppable incumbent, Donald Trump.
‘Trans’-Gression: “Female” Activist Who Flipped Out When Women Refused To Wax His Balls Attacks Reporter
Just when you thought you finally get a read on someone as a calm, collected and thoughtful person – like the trans activist Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv who flipped out when women refused to wax his genitals– they go and attack a reporter.
Yes, the “well known trans activist” Yaniv is at once again, caught on camera attacking a journalist outside of a court in Surrey, B.C. earlier this week.
Jonathan Jessica was filmed on January 13 leaving a courthouse by The Rebel reporter Keean Bexte, who posted video of Yaniv punching him.
J. Yaniv just punched me in the back of the head. Just spoke to police. Luckily there are two security cameras directly overhead at the courthouse. I need an advil. pic.twitter.com/3hfm2CfYhq
“J. Yaniv just punched me in the back of the head. Just spoke to police. Luckily there are two security cameras directly overhead at the courthouse. I need an Advil,” his tweet said.
The video shows Yaniv running what looks to be about 15 feet away from where he/she was walking to confront the reporter, flailing his/her arms wildly before throwing a couple of punches at the reporter.
The video clip has gone viral and now has over 1 million views.
Bexte says police are “reluctant” to charge Yaniv: “Within several seconds, Yaniv charged me and punched the back of my head while holding me down. Police have been reluctant to charge him before, and so I’m speaking to legal counsel to figure out my options to make sure this menace sees justice.”
He/she was in court on a prohibited weapons charge to begin with after displaying a taser to another transgender activist during a social media debate about Yaniv’s complaints to the BC Human Rights Tribunal about the beauticians that wouldn’t wax him – a “ball” of a story that we covered here.
“I don’t need to be scared in my own house, that I’m going to get (expletive) attacked,” he said during the debate, wielding a taser.
But perhaps it isn’t Yaniv that needs to be cautious, according to LifeSiteNews.com:
The Gender Trender blog alleged that in May, June, and July 2018 a number of teenage girls took to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to claim Yaniv “pretended to be transgender” in order to access private Facebook groups for adolescent girls “where he spewed his creepy sexual fetishes about young women, menstruation, toilet and locker room fantasies.”
Last July, Jessica Rumpel filed a child sexual exploitation report against Yaniv with CyberTips for allegedly sexually harassing her when she was between the ages of 14 and 15.
Meanwhile, the BC Human Rights Tribunal ultimately ruled that: “Human rights legislation does not require a service provider to wax a type of genitals they are not trained for and have not consented to wax.”
As the United States seemed to teeter on the edge of yet another war, this time with Iran, the biggest concern was just how much support the government had for its mass-murdering schemes. But psychologists say that that is no mistake. As Americans, we have been conditioned for war all of our lives.
Americans have been programmed to accept the violence and domination with a belief that the mass murders are done for some kind of “good.” Propaganda has been widely used along with patriotic images to make even those who consider themselves peaceful cheer for death, violence, and destruction.
Americans are taught from a young age to accept their country’s militarism without question. This conditioning has numerous ingredients. Themes of nationalism and militarism are frequently injected into public life through the media and other institutions, for example, as is a sense of righteousness, a rarely challenged belief that the country is almost always a force for good.
Fear is also a major element in conditioning minds for war. Americans of all ages are often reminded, by their government and the media, that perceived enemies pose a constant danger. The Soviet threat was used to justify military spending and adventurism around the globe for much of the later twentieth century, validating the warning given by President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech of the growing influence of the “military-industrial complex.”
More recently, through constant reminders of the “war on terror,” Americans are effectively conditioned to see evildoers as always looming. There is little to no debate about whether slaughtering people and killing others thousands of miles away is right or wrong. Militarism and force through mass murder is always the conclusion drawn by most Americans.
Anti-intellectualism seems to be an important ingredient in conditioning the American mindset for war, with the system relying on a population motivated by fear and forgoing critical thinking. We can see this anti-intellectualism taking shape even in the way society molds young minds. The United States is the only developed country that expects schools to regularly conduct a loyalty oath (a “Pledge of Allegiance”). This kind of exercise does nothing to encourage critical thinking or an understanding of the complexities of contemporary geopolitics but may go far in solidifying a sense of national greatness that can subsequently be used to portray aggression as justified.
The fact that those who question American militarism are seen by many as troublemakers is further evidence of how the national mindset has been conditioned for war.
The surest sign of successful conditioning is a population that not only complies with the desired outcome but does so without question. We see this every time a new president is elected. Whether the laws are “right” or “wrong” morally, Americans will, by and large, see them as moral and acceptable if their master was chosen to rule the slaves. Morality is out the window. We’ve been taught to just accept that the ruling class has authority over our lives and we have two choices: obey or have violence used against you.
What’s worse, is we are taught to glorify the government and that just because the U.S. isn’t as violent and tyrannical as say, North Korea, we are to accept our fate as slaves to powers that shouldn’t be.
Larken Rose makes this behavior rather apparent in his book, Most Dangerous Superstition. The primary threat to freedom and justice is not greed, or hatred, or any of the other emotions or human flaws usually blamed for such things. Instead, it is one ubiquitous superstition that infects the minds of people of all races, religions, and nationalities, which deceives decent, well-intentioned people into supporting and advocating violence and oppression. Even without making human beings one bit more wise or virtuous, removing that one superstition would remove the vast majority of injustice and suffering from the world.
Start thinking for yourself. Ask yourself one question: who owns you?
The leader of all this insanity is Telsa, the biggest money-losing company on Wall Street, has soared 120% since the Fed launched ‘Not QE.’
Tesla investors are convinced that fundamentals are driving the stock higher, but that might not be the case, as central bank liquidity has been pouring into anything with a CUSIP.
The company has lost money over the last 12 months, and to be fair, Elon Musk reported one quarter that turned a profit, but overall – Tesla is a blackhole. Its market capitalization is larger than Ford and General Motors put together. When you listen to Tesla investors, near-term profitability isn’t important because if it were, the stock would be much lower.
The Wall Street Journal notes that in the past 12 months, 40% of all US-listed companies were losing money, the highest level since the late 1990s – or a period also referred to as the Dot Com bubble.
Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, provided The Journal with a chart that shows the percentage of money-losing IPOs hit 81% in 2018, the same level that was also seen in 2000.
The Journal notes that 42% of health-care companies lost money, mostly because of speculative biotech. About 17% of technology companies also fail to turn a profit.
A more traditional company that has been losing money is GE. Its shares have plunged 60% in the last 42 months as a slowing economy, and insurmountable debts have forced a balance sheet recession that has doomed the company.
Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence shows for small companies, losing money is part of the job. About 33% of the 100 biggest companies reported losses over the last 12 months.
Among the smallest 80% of companies, there has been a notable rise in money-losing operations in the last three years.
“The proportion of these loss-making companies rose after each of the last two recessions and didn’t come down again afterward. The story should be familiar by now: Many small companies are being dominated by the biggest corporates, squeezing them out of markets and crushing their ability to invest for growth,” The Journal noted.
