Tag: news

Authored by John Solomon via JohnSolomonReports.com

(emphasis ours)

There is a long way to go in the impeachment process, and there are some very important issues still to be resolved. But as the process marches on, a growing number of myths and falsehoods are being spread by partisans and their allies in the news media.

The early pattern of misinformation about Ukraine, Joe Biden and election interference mirrors closely the tactics used in late 2016 and early 2017 to build the false and now-debunked narrative that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

Facts do matter. And they prove to be stubborn evidence, even in the midst of a political firestorm. So here are the facts (complete with links to the original materials) debunking some of the bigger fables in the Ukraine scandal.

Myth: There is no evidence the Democratic National Committee sought Ukraine’s assistance during the 2016 election.

The Facts: The Ukrainian embassy in Washington confirmed to me this past April that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa did, in fact, solicit dirt on Donald Trump and Paul Manafort during the spring of 2016 in hopes of spurring a pre-election congressional hearing into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The embassy also stated Chalupa tried to get Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to do an interview on Manafort with an American investigative reporter working on the issue. The embassy said it turned down both requests.

You can read the Ukraine embassy’s statement here. The statement essentially confirmed a January 2017 investigative article in Politico that first raised concerns about Chalupa’s contacts with the embassy.

Chalupa’s activities involving Ukraine were further detailed in a May 2016 email published by WikiLeaks in which she reported to DNC officials on her efforts to dig up dirt on Manafort and Trump. You can read that email here.  

Myth: There is no evidence that Ukrainian government officials tried to influence the American presidential election in 2016.

The Facts: There are two documented episodes involving Ukrainian government officials’ efforts to influence the 2016 American presidential election. The first occurred in Ukraine, where a court last December ruled that a Parliamentary member and a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official improperly tried to influence the U.S. election by releasing financial records in spring and summer 2016 from an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities. The publicity from the release of the so-called Black Ledger documents forced Manafort to resign. You can read that ruling here.  While that court ruling since has been set aside on a jurisdiction technicality, the facts of the released information are not in dispute.

The second episode occurred on U.S. soil back in August 2016 when Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, took the extraordinary step of writing an OpEd in The Hill criticizing GOP nominee Donald Trump and his views on Russia just three months before Election Day. You can read that OpEd here.

Chaly later told me through his spokeswoman that he wasn’t writing the OpEd for political purposes but rather to address his country’s geopolitical interests. But his article, nonetheless, was viewed by many in career diplomatic circles as running contrary to the Geneva Convention’s rules barring diplomats from becoming embroiled in the host country’s political affairs. And it clearly adds to the public perception that Ukraine’s government at the time preferred Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election.

Myth: The allegation that Joe Biden tried to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian gas firm employer has been debunked, and there is no evidence the ex-vice president did anything improper.

The Facts: Joe Biden is captured on videotape bragging about his effort to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Biden told a foreign policy group in early 2018 that he used the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev to successfully force Shokin’s firing. You can watch Biden’s statement here.

It also is not in dispute that at the time he forced the firing, the vice president’s office knew Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, the company where Hunter Biden worked as a board member and consultant. Team Biden was alerted to the investigation in a December 2015 New York Times article. You can read that article here.

The unresolved question is what motivated Joe Biden to seek Shokin’s ouster. Biden says he took the action solely because the U.S. and Western allies believed Shokin was ineffective in fighting corruption. Shokin told me, ABC News and others that he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy that the Burisma investigation was not shut down. He made similar statements in an affidavit prepared to be filed in an European court. You can read that affidavit here.

In the end, though, whether Joe Biden had good or bad intentions in getting Shokin fired is somewhat irrelevant to the question of the vice president’s ethical obligation.

U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. Ethics experts I talked with say Biden should have recused himself from the Shokin matter once he learned about the Burisma investigation to avoid the appearance issue.

And a senior U.S. diplomat was quoted in testimony reported by The Washington Post earlier this month that he tried to raise warnings with Biden’s VP office in 2015 that Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian firm raised the potential issue of conflicts of interest.

Myth: Ukraine’s investigation into Burisma Holdings was no longer active when Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing in March 2016.

The Facts: This is one of the most egregiously false statements spread by the media. Ukraine’s official case file for Burisma Holdings, provided to me by prosecutors, shows there were two active investigations into the gas firm and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky in early 2016, one involving corruption allegations and the other involving unpaid taxes.

In fact, Shokin told me in an interview he was making plans to interview Burisma board members, including Hunter Biden, at the time he was fired. And it was publicly reported that in February 2016, a month before Shokin was fired, that Ukrainian prosecutors raided one of Zlochevsky’s homes and seized expensive items like a luxury car as part of the corruption probe. You can read a contemporaneous news report about the seizure here.

Burisma’s own legal activities also clearly show the investigations were active at the time Shokin was fired. Internal emails I obtained from the American legal team representing Burisma show that on March 29, 2016 – the very day Shokin was fired – Burisma lawyer John Buretta was seeking a meeting with Shokin’s temporary replacement in hopes of settling the open cases.

In May 2016 when new Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was appointed, Buretta then sent a letter to the new prosecutor seeking to resolve the investigations of Burisma  and Zlochevsky. You can read that letter here.

Buretta eventually gave a February 2017 interview to the Kiev Post in which he divulged that the corruption probe was resolved in fall 2016 and the tax case by early January 2017.  You can read Buretta’s interview here.

In another words, the Burisma investigations were active at the time Vice President Biden forced Shokin’s firing, and any suggestion to the contrary is pure misinformation.

Myth: There is no evidence Vice President Joe Biden did anything to encourage Burisma’s hiring of his son Hunter.

The Facts: This is another area where the public facts cry out for more investigation and raise a question in some minds about another appearance of a conflict of interest.

Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, was appointed to Burisma’s board in mid-April 2014 and the firm Rosemont Seneca Bohai — jointly owned by Hunter Biden and Devon Archer — received its first payments from the Ukrainian gas company on April 15, 2014, according to the company’s ledgers. That very same day as the first Burisma payment, Devon Archer met with Joe Biden at the White House, according to White House visitor logs. It is not known what the two discussed.

A week later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and met with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. During that meeting, the American vice president urged Ukraine to ramp up energy production to free itself from its Russian natural gas dependence. Biden even boasted that “an American team is currently in the region working with Ukraine and its neighbors to increase Ukraine’s short-term energy supply.” Yatsenyuk welcomed the help from American “investors” in modernizing natural gas supply lines in Ukraine. You can read the Biden-Yatsenyuk transcript here.

Less than three weeks later, Burisma added Hunter Biden to its board to join Archer. To some, the sequence of events creates the appearance that Joe Biden’s pressure to increase Ukrainian gas supply and to urge Kiev to rely on Americans might have led Burisma to hire his son. More investigation needs to be done to determine exactly what happened. And until that occurs, the appearance issue will likely linger over this episode.

Myth: Hunter Biden’s firm only received $50,000 a month for his work as a board member and consultant for Burisma Holdings.

The Facts: This figure frequently cited by Biden defenders and the media significantly understates what Burisma was paying Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Bohai firm for his and Devon Archer’s services. Bank records obtained by the FBI in an unrelated case show that between May 2014 and the end of 2015, Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s firm received monthly consulting payments totaling $166,666, or three times the amount cited by the media. In some months, there was even more money than that paid. You can review those bank records here.

The monthly payments figures are confirmed by the accounting ledger that Burisma turned over to Ukrainian prosecutors. That ledger, which you can read here, also shows that in spring and summer of 2014 Burisma paid more than $283,000 to the American law firm of Boies Schiller, where Hunter Biden also worked as an attorney.

Myth: President Trump was trying to force Ukraine to reopen a probe into Burisma Holdings and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky when he talked to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July of this year.

The Facts: Trump could not have forced the Ukrainians into opening a new Burisma investigation in July because the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office had already done so on March 28, 2019, or three months before the call.

The prosecutors filed this notice of suspicion in Ukraine announcing the re-opening of the investigation. The revival of the case was even widely reported in the Ukrainian press, something U.S. intelligence and diplomats who are now testifying to Congress behind closed doors should have known. Here’s an example of one such Ukrainian media report at the time.

Myth: Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko retracted or recanted his claim that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in 2016 identified people and entities she did not what to see prosecuted in Ukraine.

The Facts: In a March interview with me at Hill.TV captured on videotape, Lutsenko stated that during his first meeting with Yovanovitch in summer 2016, the American diplomat rattled off a list of names of Ukrainian individuals and entities she did not want to see investigated or prosecuted. Lutsenko called it a “do not prosecute” list. You can watch that video here. The State Department disputed his characterization as a fabrication, which Hill.TV reported in its original report.

A few weeks later, a Ukrainian news outlet claimed it interviewed Lutsenko and he backed off his assertion about the list. Several American outlets have since picked up that same language.

There is just one problem. I re-interviewed Lutsenko after the Ukrainian report suggesting he recanted. He adamantly denied recanting, retracting or changing his story, and said the Ukrainian newspaper simply misunderstood that the list of names were conveyed orally during the meeting and not in writing, just like he said in the original Hill.TV interview.

Here is Lutsenko’s full explanation to me back last spring: “At no time since our interview have I ever retracted the statement I made about the U.S. ambassador providing me a list of names of people and organizations she did not want my office to prosecute. Shortly after my televised interview with your news organization I was asked by a Ukraine reporter if I had a copy of the letter that Ambassador Yovanovitch provided me with the names of those she did not want prosecuted. The reporter misunderstood how the names were transmitted to me. I explained to the reporter that the Ambassador did not hand me a written list but rather provided the list of names orally over the course of a meeting.” Lutsenko reaffirmed he stood by his statements again in September.

It is important to note Lutsenko’s story was also backed up by State Department officials and contemporaneous memos before his interview was ever aired. For instance, a senior U.S. official I interviewed for the Lutsenko story reviewed the list of names that Lutsenko recalled being on the so-called do-not-prosecute list.

That official stated during the interview: “I can confirm to you that at least some of those names are names that U.S. embassy Kiev raised with the Prosecutor General’s office because we were concerned about retribution and unfair treatment of Ukrainians viewed as favorable to the United States.”

Separately, both U.S. and Ukrainian official confirmed to me a letter written by then-U.S. embassy official George Kent in April 2016 in which U.S. officials pointedly (and in writing) demanded that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down an investigation into several Ukrainian nonprofit groups suspected of misspending U.S. foreign aid. The letter even named one of the groups, the AntiCorruption Action Centre, a nonprofit funded jointly by the State Department and liberal megadonor George Soros.

“We are gravely concerned about this investigation, for which we see no basis,” Kent wrote the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office in April 2016. You can read the letter here. 

So even without Lutsenko’s claim, there is substantial evidence that the U.S. embassy in Kiev applied pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors not to pursue certain investigations in 2016.   

Myth: The narratives about Biden, the U.S. embassy and Ukrainian election interference are conspiracy theories invented by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to impact the 2020 election.

The Facts: Giuliani began investigating matters in Ukraine in late fall 2018 as a personal lawyer to the president. But months before his quest began, Ukrainian prosecutors believed they possessed evidence about Burisma, the Bidens and 2016 election interference that might interest the U.S. Justice Department. It is the same evidence that came to light this spring and summer and that is now a focus of the impeachment proceedings.

Originally, one of Ukraine’s senior prosecutors tried to secure a visa to come to the United States to deliver that evidence. But when the U.S. embassy in Kiev did not fulfill his travel request, the group of Ukrainian prosecutors hired a former U.S. attorney in America to reach out to the U.S. attorney office in New York and try to arrange a transfer of the evidence. The Ukrainian prosecutors’ story was independently verified by the American lawyer they hired.

So the activities and allegation now at the heart of impeachment actually pre-date Giuliani starting work on Ukraine. You can read the prosecutors’ account of their 2018 effort to get this information to Americans here.

First it was Baoshang Bank , then it was Bank of Jinzhou, then, two months ago, China’s Heng Feng Bank with 1.4 trillion yuan in assets, quietly failed and was just as quietly nationalized.

Today, a fourth prominent Chinese bank was on the verge of collapse under the weight of its bad loans, only this time the failure was far less quiet, as depositors of the rural lender swarmed the bank’s outlets in public, demanding their money in an angry demonstration of what Beijing is terrified of the most: a bank run.

Local business leaders, political cadres and banking executives rallied Thursday at the main branch of Henan Yichuan Rural Commercial Bank, just outside the central Chinese city of Luoyang, where they stood one by one before a microphone to pledge their backing for the bank, as smiling employees brandished wads of cash before television cameras to demonstrate just how much cash, literally, the bank had.

It was China’s latest, and most desperate attempt yet to project stability and reassure the public that all is well after rumors spread that the bank’s chairman was in trouble and the bank was on the brink of insolvency. However, as the WSJ reports, it wasn’t enough for 31-year-old Li Xue, who showed up for the third day Thursday to withdraw thousands of yuan of her mother’s life savings after hearing from fellow villagers that Yichuan Bank – which is the largest lender in Yichuan county by the number of branches and capital, and it is also a member of PBOC’s deposit insurance system, according to the local government – was going under.

Just like any self-respecting Ponzi scheme, the bank’s branch managers tried to persuade her to keep her money with them until March, when her mother’s three-year deposits would mature, yielding more than 10,000 yuan in interest. And then, just like any Ponzi scheme, to sweeten the offer, the bank managers also offered her even higher-yielding products, plus supermarket gift cards, just to keep her money there..

“Our bank is state-backed, and your money is insured by deposit insurance,” one female manager told her, but Ms. Li refused, her confidence in the state’s lies crushed.

“We really can’t afford to lose the money,” she said.

The bank run at Yichuan Bank, located in China’s landlocked province of Henan, makes it at least the fourth bank that authorities have rushed to rescue this year. It won’t be the last.

As we have documented previously, in recent month China’s banking sector has been dogged by a sudden surge in liquidity concerns, particularly among smaller regional banks that had expanded aggressively in recent years, and were now suffering a surge in bad loans, threatening their viability.

In May, regulators bailed out Baoshang Bank, in the country’s first bank bailout since the 1990s. That move led to widespread concerns about the health of other small lenders and financial institutions, squeezing liquidity in China’s interbank market. It also led to similar failures – and rescues – of Bank of Jinzhou and Heng Feng Bank, both smallish regional banks, yet big enough to convince the local population that something was very rotten with China’s financial system.

Prudently, Beijing has been careful not to announce any takeovers, although it has quietly brought in state-owned banks and asset management firms, as well as an arm of the nation’s sovereign-wealth fund, to inject fresh capital and stabilize wobbly banks, as it did most recently in the case of Heng Feng.

Try as Beijing might, however, the bailouts have not gone unnoticed, and culminated in what today has been a three-day bank run at Yichuan Bank.

Like with everything else in China, there is good and bad news.

The good news is that troubled banks accounted for just 4% of total assets in China’s banking system, according to a recent estimate by S&P Global that included poor quality rural institutions flagged by the Chinese central bank. An analysis by Barclays listed those banks that had delayed to disclose their 2018 annual reports: a clear indicator of imminent collapse. Three of the top four banks have already been nationalized or bailed out.

However, in this case size really does not matter, and the aggressive response from regulators to the developments at Yichuan Bank, a small lender with just 62.65 billion yuan ($8.9 billion) in assets, underscores the heightened concerns of contagion and social instability amid the loss of confidence in bank deposits, as the WSJ notes.

The bad news is that small banks are just the start of a wave that could eventually topple some of China’s biggest SOEs. Yichuan Bank is emblematic of the thousands of banks and cooperatives in China’s countryside that in recent years had scaled up its ambitions. In 2009, the rural cooperative became a commercial lender, attracting deposits primarily from farmers and county locals, according to the bank. It then kept growing at a tremendous pace, raking up billions in bad loans, until one day – like all Ponzi schemes – the new money stopped trickling in and the bank’s day of reckoning had arrived.

While Yichuan Bank has plenty of competition, including large state-owned banks in nearby Luoyang, an ancient capital of China known, Yichuan Bank accounted for 71% of deposits and 82% of loans in its county as of September 2018, according to China Chengxin International Rating Agency.

The problem, as hinted above, is that like most other small Chinese banks, Yichuan Bank suffered from a buildup of bad loans as the economy slowed in recent years, and struggled to retain deposits amid intensified competition from its peers.

That was the proverbial Minsky moment when every Ponzi scheme ends.

Then the warnings came: in July, analysts at China Chengxin flagged the bank for its lack of stable deposits and a rapid buildup of overdue and bad loans. Bad loans ballooned to 1 billion yuan at the end of 2018, a 10-fold increase in just three years, according to its financial statements. Overdue loans, meantime, grew to 28% of its total credit at the end of September 2018, the credit rating agency said.

That number, incidentally, is orders of magnitude higher than what the PBOC discloses as China’s average bad loan percentage, which in the past decade has stubbornly, and erroneously, been stuck in the mid-1% range. The true number is far, far higher, but Beijing guards it with its life, as the alternative is a bank run on the world’s largest bank system, which with $40 trillion in assets, is roughly double that of the US.

So far Beijing has been lucky, in that people tend to be notoriously bad with numbers. Ironically, what brought the bank down was news of trouble with Yichuan’s senior management that initially caught locals’ attention. Immediately thereafter, depositors started demanding their money back earlier this month; as speculation circulated on social media that the bank was on the verge of insolvency, the crowds at bank branches grew thicker, and so the bank run began.

By Wednesday, the problem – and its media coverage – was too big to avoid, and local authorities moved swiftly to stabilize the situation. In typical Chinese fashion, however, instead of fixing the underlying problem, they blamed the messenger and announced they had detained two women whom they accused of spreading false rumors; they also brought in the county’s deputy party secretary to take charge.

And since explaining to the people that China’s entire financial system is one giant house of cards, the authorities needed a scapegoat. They got it when they announced an investigation into the bank’s former chairman, citing a violation of discipline, a charge commonly used in corruption cases.

Meanwhile, having received a few truckloads full of cash, county authorities tried to ease depositor panic saying they had tens of billions of yuan in funds available, which the bank had already begun tapping, according to the bank.

So far this approach has failed to restore confidence, and bank officers, overwhelmed with withdrawal requests, put stacks of cash on display behind bank windows. They dangled various inducements, “including boxes of tissue, plastic chairs, tea thermoses and loose leaf tea” according to the WSJ, to persuade customers to keep their deposits with Yichuan.

And why not: cheap bribes almost worked in Spain in 2012, when the then-insolvent Bankia handed out Spiderman towels in exchange for a €300 deposit.

Surprisingly, it did not work in China, as people continued to show up, adamant about withdrawing their funds; the bank run was accelerating, and nothing officials did could halt, or reverse it.

Zhang Yanting, a 51-year-old farmer, decided after several days of trying to pull his money out of the bank that he would keep his account open to collect the few dollars in grain subsidies he receives each year from the government. But Zhang still wanted most of his 13,000 yuan in deposits back.

After hours in line Thursday, the bank cashier handed him a wad of cash, which he happily stuffed into his bag. Zhang was unmoved by the promise of gifts, save for a bottle of water that he sipped from while waiting.

“I’ve been with the bank for 10 years and have never seen service this good,” he said.

Zhang was a happy customer: he learned that when dealing with a collapsing Ponzi scheme, only those who pull their money first stand to recover anything. It’s those who foolishly believed the government that will be far, far angrier when they realize that it’s gone… it’s all gone.

Continuing the trend of Wall Street salaries shrinking alongside the workforce of highly paid traders, analysts and others as automation takes hold, pay for employees working in the securities industry fell 5.6% in 2018, when the average salary dropped to $398,600, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office. That’s down from $422,500 in 2017, which was the highest average pay for the industry since the financial crisis.

The salary drop was driven by a 17% decline in the average bonus. Bonuses are a critical component of pay for bankers – they can account for more than one-third of total compensation, for some.

Still, average pay for bankers working in the state (most of whom work in Manhattan, or elsewhere in the city) was five times higher than the average pay for other private-sector employees, which came in at $79,000. Though that pay gap has improved slightly since 2007, when securities-industry employees earned six times the average pay.

Here’s an interesting fact: Employment in the securities industry in NYC has increased during four of the past five years, though it’s still 4% – or 7,600 jobs – below its 2007 levels. Though a breakdown of those jobs isn’t given, we can tell from news reports and other studies that a growing number of those jobs are going to quants and coders, and fewer from the traditional banking channels.

As far as what’s driving the drop in pay, the Comptroller’s Office said market turbulence at the end of last year helped depress bonuses, while changes in federal law drove a transient increase in 2017.

New York counted 201,200 financial-industry jobs in 2018, more than any other state in the country, and in NYC, the industry accounts for 17% of the economy.  Interestingly enough (food for thought for those who insist that the industry doesn’t pay its fair share in taxes), Wall Street was also responsible for 17% ($13.2 billion) of State tax collections in State Fiscal Year 2018-2019.

Here’s an interesting stat: In 2017, the most recent year given, one-third of all finance jobs in the state were held by immigrants. Meanwhile, two-thirds of industry employees were White, 19%  were Asian, 8% were Hispanic and 6 % were African American, and men comprised two-thirds of the industry’s employees.

Though it might not seem that alarming in the grand scheme of things, there are some signs of more difficult times ahead: job gains in the early part of 2019 have been erased in recent months as investment banks slash headcounts in anticipation of an economic downturn. Early reports suggest bulge bracket banks like JPM didn’t hand out as many offers to interns. As of September 2019, the industry was on pace to lose almost 500 jobs in 2019. Last year, the industry added 4,700 jobs.

And that self-inflicted wound could still have an outsize impact. NYOSC estimates that 1 in 10 jobs in the city and 1 in 15 jobs in New York State are associated with Wall Street. The office also estimates that each job gained or lost in the industry leads to the creation or loss of three additional jobs in other industries in the State.

Authored by Zachary Petrizzo via The College Fix,

Move over cultural appropriation – now one apparently can’t even walk across campus to a Halloween party dressed as Friday the 13th’s “Jason Voorhees” without having the cops called on them.

Two George Mason University students late Tuesday night were questioned by campus police after someone called to report one of the students for his fake machete prop accompanying his Friday the 13th Halloween costume.

The GMU police department dispatched a total of three officers to the scene to investigate the costume prop.

Jawad Nahian wore a costume inspired by “Jason Voorhees” from the popular Halloween movie series Friday the 13th and his friend Akshay Chitre wore a “Robin Hood” costume.

The two were questioned by police after someone on the northern Virginia campus called the Voorhees costume prop in as a possible safety threat as the two students headed to a Halloween party on campus.

It’s unclear if a student called it in, but the two students had been traversing an area of campus flanked by dorms on their way to the costume party, an annual event co-hosted by the university’s Housing and Residential Life department.

Chitre and Nahian were behind Research Hall headed to “Once Upon a Scream” at President’s Park when they were intercepted by the officers. The College Fix was also on scene as the two were asked for photo ID and questioned.

Chitre told The College Fix it’s just a “fake plastic sword.”

“I kinda just want to get to the party, and it’s a prop,” Nahian added.

But the duo, although appearing slightly frustrated, also appear to take it in stride.

“Some guy or girl decided to report us, for wearing halloween costumes. Who carries a real machete? … I mean, c’mon people,” Nahian said.

“Some people probably don’t even know what Halloween is.”

One of the responding officers, Sergeant Donald Daniels, asked the two after inspecting the prop machete: “Do you see why this might be a problem right now?”

The students replied that while some might think it’s real, the officer is now aware it is not.

Sgt. Daniels, sounding sympathetic, advises the students that “in this day and age the best thing to do would be to like put this stuff in a bag … and then put it on when you get to the party, so you are not just walking around. … I understand it’s Halloween, guys. But we live in a society now where stuff like this …”

The officer told the students they could unveil the prop when they get to the party, but to keep it covered in a bag of some sort when they head to and from the party.

In an interview with The College Fix, Daniels explained “we live in a day and age where this stuff gets called in and we have to take it seriously because it could be real. And that is why we are here, to protect the public.”

“Do I find it ridiculous? Yeah, kind of. But I still have to come out and believe that it’s real until I determine that it’s not.”

He said he’s also compelled to do something, even if the sword is plastic, or some community members may still keep calling it in.

“I understand that it’s Halloween, I like Halloween,” he said. “… But in today’s society we have to treat everything like it’s real until we decide that it’s not real. And we try to make as many accommodations as we can.”

Eric Fowler, a spokesman for the university, told The College Fix “police responded to an incident, they had to check it out, and that’s it.”

He directed The College Fix to a Virginia state law, which prohibits people over the age of 16 from wearing of masks. Notably the law has a provision which states “the provisions of this section shall not apply to persons (i) wearing traditional holiday costumes.”

When asked about the provisions, Fowler stated that it’s up for “debate.”

The downward trajectory in the employment cycle has now affected one of America’s largest beermakers, that is, Molson Coors Brewing Co., the producer of Coors Light and Miller Lite, who is expected to lay off 500 employees across its international offices.

The bulk of the job cuts will be concentrated in the company’s international offices in North America.

As of 2018, the company had 17,500 employees, which means about 3% of its entire workforce will be laid off in the near term.

The restructuring plan will cost Molson Coors about $180 million through 2021. During the process, hundreds of employees will be laid off, and that number could increase during a recession.

Molson Coors, also announced it had begun a transitional phase of relocating its Denver headquarters to Chicago, but will keep its brewery open in Golden, Colorado.

“Our business is at an inflection point. We can continue down the path we’ve been on for several years now, or we can make significant and difficult changes necessary to get back on the right track,” CEO and president Gavin Hattersley said in a press release.

Beermakers, as a whole, are suffering from declining demand in North America in the last several years. Industry tracker IWSR said alcohol sales volumes have dropped since 2017.

Shares of Molson Coors dropped 2% by 1:00 pm est., but have fallen nearly 13% in the last four trading sessions. Wall Street’s earnings expectations for 3Q missed on Wednesday morning as revenue and profits dropped.

Anheuser-Busch InBev has also lowered its guidance for the next several quarters as sales volumes slump across the world.

Molson Coors, attempting to stop further hemorrhaging of sales, recently acquired a portfolio of “brewed beverages,” including tea, coffee, and beer.

In 1Q19, the brewer also started selling alcoholic coffee and canned wine.

With marijuana sales up across the US and alcohol sales moving lower, the consumer, with insurmountable debts, in the next recession, will be smoking their financial woes away, opposed to drinking themselves to sleep seen in prior economic downturns. Every bear market is different.

 

This year, 68 percent of people in the U.S. are planning to celebrate and as well as having a headache on Friday morning, most revellers will have a lighter wallet.

As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, on average, each American participating in Halloween will spend $83.26, according to the National Retail Federation with men ($96.13) spending more than women ($76.92).

You will find more infographics at Statista

Halloween is a major occasion for the American economy and this year, total spending is expected to reach $8.8 billion. That’s quite a contrast to a decade ago when people collectively spent $4.8 billion amid the financial crisis.

When it comes to how Americans plan to celebrate this year, the NRF found that 69 percent will hand out candy while 47 percent plan to wear a costume.

The most popular adult costumes this year are the witch, vampire and superhero.

A top National Security Council official who was present on a July 25 phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodomyr Zelensky, Tim Morrison, told House investigators on Thursday that he does not believe anything illegal was discussed, according to The Federalist.

“I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed,” said Tim Morrison, former NSC Senior Director for European Affairs who was on the July 25 call between the two leaders.

Morrison also testified that the transcript of the phone call which was declassified and released by the White House “accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call.”

Morrison testified that Ukrainian officials were not even aware that certain military funding had been delayed by the Trump administration until late August 2019, more than a month after the Trump-Zelensky call, casting doubt on allegations that Trump somehow conveyed an illegal quid pro quo demand during the July 25 call.

“I have no reason to believe the Ukrainians had any knowledge of the [military funding] review until August 28, 2019,” Morrison said. That is the same day that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chief anti-Trump inquisitor in the U.S. House of Representatives, disclosed on Twitter that funding had been held up. Politico also published a story that day, sourced to anonymous leaks, that military funding had been temporarily held up. –The Federalist

Notably, Morrison quit the day before his testimony.

Last week, Morrison was named during testimony earlier this month by William Taylor, Trump’s top envoy to Ukraine, according to Politico.

As we reported earlier today of Morrison, following the call, Morrison informed Taylor that it “could have gone better,” and that Trump suggested Zelensky and his staff meet with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.

Morrison’s hawkish views align with those of Bolton and he has been described as a creature of process by some close to him.

Bolton always told those who worked for him that process was their protector and sometimes you have to listen to the person elected — advice Morrison adopted, sources said.

Morrison is a lifelong Republican described as a Reaganite and is referred to as “‘Bolton’s Bolton,‘ he is really hard right,” according to one source familiar with Morrison. –CNN

“The NSC process does not allow anything that isn’t legal. It just, it would never get to the President. Certainly not any process that Tim was ever a part of,” said one source close to Morrison. “A piece of paper does not get to the national security adviser without first going through the lawyers, much less to the President.”

Taylor also said that Morrison witnessed Trump Ally Gordon Sondland convey a quid pro quo arrangement;

Taylor also described a conversation in which Morrison relayed word from Sondland that Trump had told Sondland directly that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky should publicly announce the investigations.

House impeachment investigators are exploring whether Trump conditioned nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine — and a White House visit for Zelensky — on Ukraine’s willingness to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Taylor told lawmakers that Morrison relayed concerns about Trump’s posture toward Ukraine to then-national security adviser John Bolton and to NSC lawyers. –Politico

According to Morrison, the national security process worked as designed.

“I am pleased our process gave the president the confidence he needed to approve the release of the security sector assistance,” he said, adding “I am proud of what I have been able, in some small way, to help the Trump administration accomplish.”

Earlier Thursday, House Democrats (all but two) approved impeachment procedures against President Trump. No Republicans voted for the measure.

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

It’s that time of the year again, the final OPEC+ meeting of 2019 has been scheduled and is ready to take place in December. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East are running high and so are worries about the balance between supply and demand. The top concern, however, is whether the production cuts agreed last December will be extended or deepened once again.

Russia is, of course, in the spotlight. The world’s second-largest oil producer has made it a habit of demonstrating reluctance about any final commitment until the last moment when it agrees to cut. This time is no exception.

Russia’s Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin this week told TASS in an interview it was too early to discuss deeper cuts. The news immediately ignited the not-too-dormant worry of traders that Russia could play OPEC and leave the cuts altogether—a not too far-fetched scenario given Russian oil companies’ general negative attitude towards the cuts. If the OPEC+ events from the last three years are any indication, Russia will not leave the cuts but may well use the meeting to politically maneuver.

But it’s not just Russia. Nigeria earlier this month struck a deal with OPEC that will allow it to produce more oil even under a production cut regime. Reuters reported the news citing unnamed OPEC officials and noting that the decision was not made public. This development raises one important question: how long before other OPEC members ask for similar special treatment?

Besides Nigeria, there are at least two OPEC members that want to boost their oil production: Iraq and Libya.

• Libya has been exempted from all production cut agreements so far and, as its National Oil Corporation chairman Mustafa Sanalla said in July, it must remain exempt from any future cuts as well. Libya plans to increase its oil output to 1.6 million bpd from the current 1.3 million bpd.

• Iraq is taking part in the cuts, but grudgingly, and it shows: OPEC’s number-two exporter has consistently failed to stay within its production quota. Yet overall compliance continues to excel because of the forced production declines in sanction-stricken Venezuela and Iran.

So, the obvious question is how long and how much OPEC+ will decide to cut. But there’s a less obvious one that was put forward by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee: why cut at all instead of turning the taps all the way back to maximum production?

Lee argued in a recent commentary that Saudi Arabia, for one, would benefit a lot more from a maximum-production approach than an extension of the cuts. U.S. shale oil growth is already slowing down because of international prices. If Saudi Arabia and its allies decide to reverse their price control approach, it will crash and burn.

Of course, as prices crash so will the Saudi dream of a $2-trillion valuation for Aramco, whose IPO is reportedly scheduled for a couple of days after the OPEC+ meeting. This means the otherwise perfectly reasonable scenario put forth by Lee and others is unlikely to play out. What is most likely to happen is either a preservation of the status quo or an agreement to extend the current cuts further into 2020.