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A day after taking similar action against Facebook, Apple has unleashed developer-hell on Google by pulling important app-development tools from the internet giant for breaking the iPhone-maker’s rules.

Bloomberg reports that Google employees can’t access test versions of iPhone apps they’re making, or use internal apps related to transportation scheduling and food, the people said. Security alerts are limited too, one of the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

“We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon,” a spokeswoman at Alphabet Inc.’s Google said in a statement. Apple restored Facebook’s privileges on Thursday.

This comes less than 24 hours after Facebook’s app development was hobbled in a similar way in a sign that many say suggest Apple is wielding power as operator of the most-lucrative U.S. app store to push its approach to user privacy.

Apple offers an “enterprise certificate” that helps some companies work on iPhone apps without going through the usual app review process. Facebook and Google used this to collect data on user activity for internal research.

Bloomberg notes that when this was reported earlier this week by TechCrunch, both companies stopped the activity. Apple said Facebook had broken its rules and pulled the social-media company’s certificate until Thursday. It’s now punishing Google, too.

And specifically, Google and Facebook rely on the enterprise certificate to test the iPhone versions of the apps they’re making. Without this option, some of the companies’ most important app-development work is disrupted.

“They have no problem flexing their power with us,” Paulo Andrade, a software developer who builds apps for Apple operating systems,said.

“It’s a good sign. It’s Apple drawing the line with these big companies.”

But, there may be more to this sudden show of force by Tim Cook (who has rarely missed an opportunity in the past year to hit Facebook about its privacy issues. As NBC News reports, some observers of the two companies believe the fight has become personal between Zuckerberg, the 34-year-old from New York who founded Facebook, and Cook, 58, an Alabama native who was a largely anonymous tech executive until he took over Apple in 2011.

“The heart of this is ego. These two hate each other,” said Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor and author of “The Four,” a book about the dominance of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google.

At its core, NBC points out that the disagreement speaks to a growing philosophical rift in the tech industry between companies that make money off personal data, and those that do not. Apple is on one side (companies should not exchange privacy for services), while Facebook is on the other ( data-targeted ads are a small price to pay for connecting the world).

“We’ve got one cowboy on the platform side, and another cowboy on the service side, standing off and pointing guns at each other.”

Consumers expect tech companies to get along, said Rene Ritchie, a senior analyst at Mobile Nations, a media company that focuses on the tech industry.

“You count on everybody to be on their best behavior,” he said.

It seems – as times get tougher for Tim Cook that flexes his platform’s muscles is they way to demonstrate his company’s worth (oh and signal some virtue too) – but as Scott Galloway so eloquently concludes:

“There was Ali-Frazier. Now there’s nerd vs. nerd,” he said.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WxHJwx Tyler Durden

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

In theory, it is always so simple. For China, it was intended that RRR cuts are stimulus. By allowing banks to use more of the reserves they’ve built up over the years it is meant to add to overall interbank liquidity. From there, banks flush with RMB supported by robust RMB money markets will lend and undertake more direct economic transactions.

Voila, stimulus.

The theory gets complicated by a very different kind of reality, one which pressures RMB markets from two sides. The first is the direct result of the overriding issue. The eurodollar market malfunctions, forcing China to deal with a “dollar” shortage by having its central bank (and others) intervene out of its own stockpile of FX reserves. Simple accounting, the PBOC’s asset side shrinks which must be met by the same on the money side.

So, RRR cuts already begin from inside a domestic monetary hole. To even get to the position of adding liquidity, banks have to mobilize more of their reserves than the central bank has pulled back in its own.

The second liquidity problem is just that: banks have to mobilize meaning actually use more of their reserves. The Economics textbook simply says that if given the opportunity no bank will refuse the license. Policy says, bank books do. In theory.

In practice, banks have to operate in the real world. If the PBOC is in a situation already where it feels compelled to respond to less-than-ideal effective conditions via an RRR cut perhaps it really isn’t a conducive time for banks to be so generous? Reserve operations of this type don’t usually happen unless things are already dicey, a factor bank managers are going to be pretty well aware.

Therefore, RRR cuts may not lead to the flood of non-public liquidity the theory assigns. Chinese banks, especially the biggest institutions, may opt to hoard that liquidity instead. If they do, then RRR measures cannot be stimulus especially having begun at first in the central bank hole.

When Chinese banks hoard, obviously nothing good will result. The illiquidity is not contained within China’s borders, either, as these kinds of financial irregularities flow into the real Chinese economy and are then transported to the rest of the world (further amplified by more negative feedbacks in the eurodollar system).

This was Euro$ #3’s devastating global downturn story of 2015 and early 2016.

We are on the lookout for evidence of China bank hoarding so as to figure a possible repeat here well within Euro$ #4. From the very first we see just that sort of difficulty in real-time market prices, in this case SHIBOR and other RMB money rates. The correlation is ridiculously obvious; RRR cuts have unleashed volatility and instability rather than what would look like monetary stimulus.

Chinese banking statistics back up the negative association – with an added wrinkle (more on that below).

Since the first 2018 RRR cut back in April last year, the big banks aren’t really lending more in the unsecured interbank markets. They are, however, borrowing more from them; a lot more. The difference is almost surely the reason for harmful volatility in domestic money.

The biggest banks are draining liquidity (net) from unsecured RMB rather than contributing more to them. The relationship with volatility in SHIBOR is established.

The primary reason is equally evident: this is the same period in which bank reserves have been declining. The PBOC’s eurodollar squeeze leading to the systemic limit on its money (liability) side is being echoed by the majority of the domestic banking sector.

Without a liquidity cushion either in that money remainder (growing bank reserves) or in terms of robust central bank RMB expansion at its liquidity windows (such as MLF) there just isn’t any appetite for banks to add anything to these crucial interbank spaces.

The wrinkle in all this is repo. We know why the biggest institutions are borrowing more unsecured – they are barely borrowing (sources) in repo! Depending more and more on unsecured interbank transactions instead of the repo market, you can start to appreciate why these particular banks are perhaps more than a little skittish no matter what policy the PBOC might undertake.

If conditions worsen in China, more economic slowing and therefore higher perceived overall risk, being reliant in greater proportion on unsecured markets for so much marginal funding isn’t an ideal liquidity situation. To put it mildly.

The question is why they aren’t in repo. It may be that China’s authorities told us last month when they began to really champion the issuance of perpetual bonds to be used along with the central bank bill swap. It certainly seems to fall in line with what we see here; if the big banks are in a collateral crunch, why not just create collateral out of thin air (first the perpetual and then the swap into usable repo instruments).

I wrote about this just a few days ago:

To aid the situation on both counts, the PBOC last month hit upon a two-part scheme. The central bank would encourage the use of perpetual bonds that meet the definitions for being included as bank capital. Any Chinese bank that issues these securities will be able to boost their ratios, making it seem like it has more loss absorption capacity (which, in theory, it would).

The second part is this bill swap program. Perpetual bonds are illiquid therefore unacceptable in repo…

To circumvent these technical deficiencies, the PBOC will allow banks who issue perpetual bonds to swap them with its own holdings of central government debt bills which they can then use either in private repo or even in targeted MLF at that particular monetary policy window.

This data can’t, unfortunately, tell us why a collateral crunch seems to have developed. Such a negative outcome would further explain the hoarding of liquidity along with the greater desperation on the part of monetary authorities – escalating official responses that don’t seem to get anywhere. China’s money hole across a couple dimensions seems to be bigger than we already think.

It is, as Abraham Lincoln once said, the equivalent of shoveling fleas across a barnyard; not half of them get there. “There” being RMB liquidity. This isn’t monetary stimulus indicated here, hoarding is instead, a huge and growing monetary deficiency which seems to be squeezing the Chinese economy. Again.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2FXKUII Tyler Durden

Just days after we reported that the Massachusetts Attorney General is suing the makers of OxyContin, the deadly nature of America’s opioid crisis has again reared its ugly head: US border patrol agents just made the largest Fentanyl bust in the country’s history, confirming that this nationwide epidemic is worse than ever.

On his show this week, Tucker Carlson reported: “Well, the U.S. border patrol has made the biggest fentanyl bust in history. An enormous amount, enough fentanyl to kill—they estimate—57 million people. That’s more than the combined population of the states of Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. It’s a lot.”

Reporter Hillary Vaughn on Fox News broke the story, stating: “We got our hands on an internal memo from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that details this bust. The biggest fentanyl seizure in U.S. history. According to the memo, four days ago in Nogales, Arizona, at the port of entry, CBP officers stopped a tractor-trailer crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into the U.S. with enough fentanyl to kill 57 million people.”

The Fentanyl shipment – which was found under the floor of the trailer – consisted of a whopping 114 kgs of the drug – compare this to the just 2mg that is considered to be a fatal dose. Agents also seized 179 kg of methamphetamine. The total seizure was said to have a street value of $102 million.

The smuggler, a Mexican national, was a member of the DHS trusted traveler program (FAST) and was arrested at the border. 

This comes just days after the Massachusetts attorney general declared that the family behind the drug Oxycontin is responsible for the opioid epidemic ravaging the United States. Purdue Pharma and eight members of the Sackler family who own the company, are being accused of personally starting the opioid crisis by deceptively selling Oxycontin.

According to CBS News, MA attorney general Maura Healey alleges the Sackler family hired “hundreds of workers to carry out their wishes.” Those wishes included pushing doctors to get “more patients on opioids, at higher doses, for longer, than ever before” all while paying “themselves billions of dollars.” In her lawsuit, Healey names eight members of the family that own Purdue Pharma, alleging they “micromanaged” a “deceptive sales campaign.” 

In the conclusion to the complaint, Healey said the Sackler family used the power at their disposal to engineer an opioid crisis.

You can watch the entire Tucker Carlson segment on the bust here:

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2S4DrOv Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The debt crisis in the United States of America has reached apocalyptic proportions.  A new and horrifying report out details the reason why 63 of America’s largest cities are completely broke: debt and overspending.

According to a recent analysis of the 75 most populous cities in the United States, 63 of them can’t pay their bills and the total amount of unfunded debt among them is nearly $330 billion. Most of the debt is due to unfunded retiree benefits such as pension and health care costs.  That means those depending on that money, likely won’t see a dime of it. 

“This year, pension debt accounts for $189.1 billion, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) – mainly retiree health care liabilities – totaled $139.2 billion,” the third annual “Financial State of the Cities” report produced by the Chicago-based research organization, Truth in Accounting (TIA), states. TIA is a nonprofit, politically unaffiliated organization composed of business, community, and academic leaders interested in improving government financial reporting.

“Many state and local governments are not in good shape, despite the economic and financial market recovery since 2009,” Bill Bergman, director of research at TIA, told Watchdog.org.

The top five cities in the worst financial shape are New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Honolulu, and San Francisco. These cities, in addition to Dallas, Oakland, and Portland, all received “F” grades. In New York City, for example, only $4.7 billion has been set aside to fund $100.6 billion of promised retiree health care benefits. In Philadelphia, every taxpayer would have to pay $27,900 to cover the city’s debt. In San Francisco, it would cost $22,600 per taxpayer.

By the end of Fiscal Year 2017, 63 cities did not have enough money to pay all of their bills, the report states, meaning debts outweigh revenue. In order to appear to balance budgets, TIA notes, elected officials “have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers.”

–Hartford City News Times

To say that more simply: your children have been sold into debt slavery and owned by the governments; both local and federal. The government is officially punishing the unborn for their inability to handle money.

What a time to be alive…

One major problem area TIA identifies is that city leaders are lying. (What a shock! A lying politician…) These political masters have acquired massive debts despite the balanced budget requirements imposed on them by scamming the public and enslaving them.

“Unfortunately, some elected officials have used portions of the money that is owed to pension funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs,” TIA states.

“This is like charging earned benefits to a credit card without having the money to pay off the debt. Instead of funding promised benefits now, they have been charged to future taxpayers. Shifting the payment of employee benefits to future taxpayers allows the budget to appear balanced, while municipal debt is increasing.”

It’s only a matter of time until this system built on debt and theft comes crashing to the ground.

How prepared are you?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HHtl1a Tyler Durden

Starbucks has instructed its employees on how to handle political questions about CEO Emeritus Howard Schultz, who has all but announced his intent to run as an independent in the 2020 US election – a move immediately criticized by Democrats who fear he will split the left’s vote and hand Donald Trump the election.

The coffee chain known for its progressive corporate culture offered suggestions  in its “Barista Need-To-Know” weekly newsletter on how to “diffuse the situation” if anyone “shares aggressive political opinions” in the store. 

“Employees may be asked questions by customers or hear media speculation about Howard’s potential political intentions,” reads the notice clearly written by lawyers. Employees should know that “we respect everyone’s opinion. Our goal is simply to create a warm and welcoming space where we can all gather, as a community, over great coffee.”

If asked specifically about Schultz, employees are advised to say: “Howard’s future plans are up to him.” 

A Starbucks employee told the Huffington Post on Thursday that her store’s management took things one step further in a way that bothered her. 

“We were told not to talk to customers about it,” said the employee, who added “if we are asked about his political goals or our opinions on it that we’re to say he was a great CEO to work for but that’s where our opinions end.”

The rephrased instructions irked the employee, who saw them as part of a pattern of stifling employees’ opinions. The shift supervisor felt similarly about the written instructions, finding it frustrating that Schultz was able to publicly discuss his politics when he worked at Starbucks while they were not.

“[I wish] we would be given the same opportunity to express our beliefs,” the supervisor said. –Huffington Post

Schultz has faced intense criticism from the left after he said he was weighing a 2020 run as an independent. His detractors include David Axelrod, HBO host Bill Maher, The View’s Joy Behar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). 

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, called for a Starbucks boycott if Schultz enters the race, tweeting: “Vanity projects that help destroy democracy are disgusting. If he enters the race, I will start a Starbucks boycott because I’m not giving a penny that will end up in the election coffers of a guy who will help Trump win.”

In fact, the criticism has been so vociferous, it has left some Democrats believing that Schultz, who is currently on a book tour, won’t end up running for the White House. 

“Democrats will not have to pressure Schultz to drop out of the race,” said Robert Zimmerman, a prominent Democratic donor. “When his books move to the $1 discount bin at bookstores, he will get the message.”

Erin McPike, a spokeswoman for Schultz, said all the blowback this week “shows he is resonating.” –The Hill

During an interview at a New York Barnes & Noble this week, a protester shouted at Schultz “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire asshole.”

Here’s the video. A heckler shouts at Howard Schultz during an event in New York: “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire asshole.” Via CNN pic.twitter.com/oabwfNnsmp

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 29, 2019

He’s clearly resonating…  

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2TuKEEt Tyler Durden

After the Arctic polar vortex brought temperatures in parts of Canada to record lows that, in some places, rivaled the temperatures on the surface of Mars (not to mention leaving nine people dead), the infamous Arctic air has notched another milestone: It has shut down a nuclear reactor due to an extremely rare phenomenon called ‘frazil ice’.

Never heard of frazil ice? Neither had we.

According to Bloomberg, Public Service Enterprise Group, shut a reactor early Thursday at unit at its Salem nuclear plant in southern New Jersey after screens on its intake froze over, restricting the flow of water needed to cool off the reactor, according to spokesman Joe Delmar.

A second unit at a station on the Delaware river was temporarily closed for the same reason.

The 60-foot-tall intake screens help guard the reactor against debris like floating wood. But Under extreme conditions (like those witnesses this week), overnight low temperatures at the station can fall into the single digits (or lower), creating frazil ice – small crystals of frozen mist – which can collect on the screens, thicken, and form a cement-like coating that completely blocks the flow of water into the reactor, causing circulators to shut down.

The blockage prompted the Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group to take the plant offline.

“We had the heaters running, we had folks out there, and we lost the four circulators within five minutes,” Delmar said. He wouldn’t say when Salem 2 is expected to go back into service.

The last time the Salem unit was shut for frazil ice was in 2010. Regular ice formations typically don’t completely block off the flow of water, but because of the frazil ice’s ability to make the reactor completely inaccessible, operations must be shut down.

“I would characterize this as a rare occurrence,” said Chris Earls, senior director of regulatory affairs at the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute. “Once it warms up a little bit, it takes care of itself.”

The plant is expected to come back on line as temperatures are expected to climb into the 40s on Saturday.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2CXUIi3 Tyler Durden

In a sign that Russia might soon be deploying those new hypersonic missiles that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been showing off lately, Reuters reported that the US is preparing to suspend compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing four US officials, opening the door to the reintroduction of medium-range ground-based nuclear arms in the area around Russia.

The officials said the the suspension will kick off a six month countdown that could lead to the dissolution of the treaty. However, Washington could opt to remain a part of the pact if Moscow decides to become compliance with the 1987 Cold War-era treaty.

The decision comes after the US and Russia revealed on Thursday that they had failed to work out their differences on the treaty, something that analysts have warned could be the first step in a new Cold War-style arms race – or worse. Both sides have accused the other of violating the terms of the historic treaty, which called for a ban on all land-based missiles with a range of between 310 and 3,400 miles, according to NBC News.

This latest step comes after the Trump Administration repeatedly warned Russia that it would leave the treaty if Moscow didn’t comply with the family by Feb. 2. Both sides have been meeting in Beijing, but Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that the talks had failed.

“Unfortunately, there is no progress,” he told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti according to a translation by Reuters. “As far as we understand, the next step is coming, the next phase begins, namely the phase of the United States stopping its obligations under the INF, which will evidently happen this coming weekend.”

Andrea Thompson, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, said Washington would most likely announce the suspension of the INF Treaty in the coming days.

“The Russians still aren’t in acknowledgment that they are in violation of the treaty,” she  said. However, Thompson did add that “diplomacy is never done.”

Of course, this doesn’t bode well for renegotiating the New START arms control treaty that calls for the mutual reduction of the US and Russia’s nuclear arsenals.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HR5b4K Tyler Durden

Via Dana Lyons’ Tumblr,

U.S. stocks recently registered the 2nd most overbought condition in their 150-year history…

Temperatures wrought by the polar vortex here in Chicago have truly reached ludicrous levels. Today’s low is projected to be minus 26 degrees Fahrenheit — without the wind chill. That got me thinking — is that the coldest temperature ever recorded in the city? After 20 seconds of digging, I discovered that it was not the record. It has actually been colder here before — ONCE. 34 years ago, on January 20, 1985, temperatures reached a record cold reading of minus 27.

That near record had me thinking about the stock market — specifically, the degree to which stocks, on a long-term basis, are stretched, or “overbought”. Yes, the recent correction relieved much of the prevailing shorter-term overbought condition. But on a long-term basis, it has hardly made a dent. That’s because, coming into the correction the stock market may not have been at the most overbought condition of all-time — but it was at the 2nd most overbought of all-time.

How did we determine that? We are using the inflation-adjusted S&P Composite data available from Robert Shiller’s site. This composite is essentially the current S&P 500 with re-engineered pricing prior to its inception in the 1950’s with available stock prices from the time. We then used exponential regression smoothing to find the “best fit” trend line on the series since 1871 (h/t to Doug Short for the concept.)

After finding the best fit trend line for the composite, we can measure how far above or below prices are at a given time. As it turns out, this past September saw the composite reach 122% above the trend line, i.e., it was 122% “overbought”. In nearly 150 years, the only months that saw prices more overbought than that were those encompassing the 1999-2000 market top — the most excessive, bubbly top in U.S. market history.

So what does it mean? We aren’t going to go into a long essay on its implications. We posted an excerpt the other day from our 1st Quarter Client Letter about the longer-term risk embedded in the market. Suffice it to say, the stock market is extended. Can it stay extended? The past few years prove that it can.

However, we will emphasize that it is likely not the best time to commit a lot of long-term capital to the U.S. stock market. Sure, the market remained stretched to these levels for more than a year during the 2000 top. So it is possible that the market continues higher unimpeded. However, looking historically, that period was an anomaly. If you are willing to bet on it happening again, go for it. If not, you may consider adopting measures, or managers, to aid in managing risk.

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If you are interested in an “all-access” pass to our research and investment moves, we invite you to further check out The Lyons Share. Given an treacherous emerging market climate, there has never been a better time to reap the benefits of our risk-managed approach. Thanks for reading!

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UzSxbN Tyler Durden