Tag: news

Dance Of The Living Dead

Submitted by Grant’s Almost Daily

Globally, the stock of negative-yielding debt crossed a record $13 trillion on Thursday, according to data from Bloomberg. That represents 26% of global sovereign debt supply and 15.3% of nominal worldwide GDP for 2018. Stateside, the 10-year Treasury yield remains below 2%, down from 3.25% in November.

In a New York Times opinion piece last Sunday, Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley, discussed the fallout from the incredible shrinking interest rates. Citing a report from the Bank for International Settlements, which found that 12% of publicly listed companies around the world can be described as zombie firms (meaning they don’t earn sufficient profits with which to cover their interest payments), Sharma concluded that simple policy miscalculations are on display:

Once the crisis hit, governments erected barriers to protect domestic companies. Central banks aggressively printed money to restore high growth. Instead, growth came back in a sluggish new form, as easy money propped up inefficient companies and gave big companies favorable access to cheap credit, encouraging them to grow even bigger.

Other academic studies lend credence to Sharma’s, and the BIS’s claims. On January 22, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper examining the effects of low interest rates on economic dynamism. Incumbents will like what they see:

A reduction in long-term interest rates tends to make market structure less competitive within an industry. The reason is that while both the leader and follower within an industry increase their investment in response to a reduction in interest rates, the increase in investment is always stronger for the leader. As a result, the gap between the leader and follower increases as interest rates decline, making an industry less competitive and more concentrated.

When interest rates are already low, this negative effect of lower industry competition tends to lower growth and overwhelms the traditional positive effect of lower rates on growth.  

In January 2017, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released Working Paper No. 1372, which reached a similar conclusion:

Evidence of a decline in productivity-enhancing reallocation is particularly significant in light of rising productivity dispersion, which would ordinarily imply stronger incentives for productive firms to aggressively expand and drive out less productive firms. 

Instead, the productivity gap between frontier and laggard firms has risen, even while the forces bringing dynamic adjustment are waning. This tension is a red flag that something is wrong with productivity, but also points to a potential deterioration of the exit margin [meaning fewer firms are going to corporate heaven].

E-Z money likewise helps bring the dead back to life. As noted by Marty Fridson, chief investment officer of Lehmann, Livian, Fridson Advisors, LLC, during the Spring 2014 Grant’s Conference, the 2008-2009 default cycle was anomalously brief:

“We actually had the situation where the default rate went from a record level to below average the very next year. I would submit that is physically impossible, but it did actually happen.” 

Needless to say, the march lower in interest rates will help this encumbered group continue to walk the earth.  As compiled by Ben Breitholtz, data scientist at Arbor Research & Trading, LLC and noted in the March 8 edition of Grant’s, the proportion of zombie companies (defined here as those whose operating income fails to cover interest expense for three straight years) in the S&P 1500 Index rose to 13.6% at the end of January.  That’s up from 12.4% year-over-year and compared to less than 6% of that broad cohort in 1990. During that period, the yield on 10-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities declined to less than 1% from more than 14%. 

Breitholtz also spotted a key threshold for this undead cohort, telling Grant’s in March:

“We noticed that the closer the 10-year real yield gets to 1%, there is a hypersensitivity for a lot of these overleveraged companies.”

With the 10-year real yield now sitting below 20 basis points, the corporate undead continue to roam.  

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FA4TeC Tyler Durden

US Prosecutors Join Hunt For Shadowy International Insider-Trading Ring

American prosecutors are joining forces with prosecutors from several European countries to investigate an international ring of sophisticated traders who rely on insider tips to reap huge profits.

As Bloomberg describes it, the cabal of more than a dozen traders sounds like something out of a movie: The shadowy illicit traders are scattered across Europe and the Middle East. The group has used sophisticated techniques, which we detail below, to trade ahead of media reports, reaping tens of millions of dollars in profits.

Shadowy

The first sign of American involvement surfaced in November, when authorities in Serbia arrested one of the suspects, a Geneva-based trader, on a US warrant that alleged he committed securities fraud. He was extradited in May.

The group has a very clear MO: They cultivate sources who might have access to insider information, then they feed that information to the media.

Investigators suspect them of cultivating advisers, executives, lawyers and government officials with cash and gifts, the people said. These potential sources of confidential information are also being examined, they said.

One of the most interesting factors from the story is how the unnamed suspects played the financial press to their own benefit. The traders, according to Bloomberg, would pass along a tip to reporters, who would then independently verify the information. Before the story broke, the traders would position accordingly.

Bloomberg added that Bloomberg News was among the news organizations that received these tips. But one obstacle for prosecutors is that they have been reluctant to compel the journalists who received these (ostensibly legitimate) tips to cooperate in the investigation because of first-amendment issues.

US prosecutors are scrutinizing the traders’ use of the media, a crucial part of their strategy, according to the people familiar with the probe. By passing on tips to financial news organizations, including Bloomberg News, the traders hoped to benefit from a pop in the stock price when reporters independently corroborated the tip and published the news, the people said.

The Justice Department probe is focusing on the traders’ conduct, including attempts to use the media for their purposes. The investigators have been reluctant to compel journalists to cooperate because of First Amendment protections, the people said.

Bloomberg followed this by clarifying its policy for publishing tops from both named and anonymous sources: the organization won’t publish until the story has been confirmed by someone with direct knowledge of the matter. The policy also prohibits telling a source when a story will be published (though we imagine some vague details about timing probably dribbled out as reporters tried to build a rapport with their incredibly helpful sources).

Traders involved in the insider-trading syndicate used shell companies to cover their tracks. They also used encrypted chat apps like Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram to communicate, as well as burner phones without SIM cards over public wireless networks.

Some of the traders avoided using their own name by working through associates, wealth managers or brokers who traded without leaving a paper trail.

So far, the team doesn’t have too many strong leads: Aside from a low-level associate who has agreed to cooperate, prosecutors have little to go on. But with the integrity of global markets at stake, we imagine the combined resources of three G-10 governments (the UK and France, along with the US) will manage to win the day.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2J89ENM Tyler Durden

Don’t Watch This Week’s Democratic Debates

If we’re going to treat presidential elections as the political equivalent of the Super Bowl, is it too much to ask that we also treat the early Democratic debates like meaningless preseason football games?

That’s what the Democratic presidential debates taking place this week in Miami, Florida, really are. Like spring training baseball, these debates are about star players trying to avoid season-ending injuries while giving minor-leaguers a chance to show their stuff, even if they don’t stand a chance of making the opening day roster.

All but the most die-hard fans ignore these matches. Dear reader, I hope you do the same with this week’s debates.

Do anything else. Pet your dog. Talk to your spouse. Call a friend you haven’t seen in a while. Take a walk. Go to a ballgame, or at least watch one on TV. If you need a hit of patriotism, there’s a match tonight between the U.S. men’s soccer team and Panama that will provide all the red, white, and blue bunting you crave. Sure, soccer’s offside rule might not make sense, but neither does Bernie Sanders’ plan to cancel student loan debt—and the soccer game is sure to feature fewer own-goals than a debate that includes Bill de Blasio.

Or, go to a movie. If you want to see a rowdy bunch of weirdos challenge a big bad guy who has misguided ideas about how to create prosperity—well, I think Avengers: Endgame is still playing at some theaters.

The point is: you have options, and most of them are better than watching the first two Democratic debates.

Nothing that happens on stage in Miami this week is going to decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. How could it? We are more than 220 days from the very first votes being cast. Unless you live in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina, you have until March 2020 to make up your mind about which Democrat to support. Most of the people on stage this week won’t even be in the race by then. You will have forgotten their names, assuming you bothered to learn them in the first place (by the way, there are two “n”s and one “t” in “Michael Bennet”).

You want proof all this is starting too soon? In mid-June 2015—220-ish days before the first votes were cast in the last election cycle—Donald Trump had only just declared his candidacy. The first debate wasn’t held until August. That means someone at the Democratic National Committee looked at the clown show that was the 2016 presidential election and decided Hey, you know what the problem was? The campaign didn’t last long enough.

Bad ratings are the only way these folks are going to learn their lesson.

If you do plan to watch the debates this week, I hope you’ll ask yourself what there is to glean from watching former congressman John Delaney (polling at 0.4 percent) try to grab the spotlight for 30 seconds. Do you really believe that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D–Calif., polling at less than 0.1 percent) or writer/”spiritual guru” Marianne Williamson (also less than 0.1 percent) is going to blow your mind Thursday night?

If you watch, you are wasting your time. And time is money. In his excellent 2011 book The Ethics of Voting, Jason Brennan calculates that—under the most generous of circumstances—a vote in a national election is worth about 1/2,600th of a penny. Sure, you want that vote to be an informed one, but you can get informed without watching this week’s debates.

Read a book. Try out a new video game. Make pot brownies. Sit outside and stare at the sky. Any of those things will do more for your mental state, and the opportunity cost is so low it effectively doesn’t exist.

Voting in the Democratic primaries or the general election next year doesn’t require sitting through two nights of cattle-call debates more than six months before the first primary votes are cast. If one of the candidates comes to your town, go see what they have to say. Pay attention to the news, if you can bear it.

But when it comes to these made-for-Twitter democracy gameshows, you can wait to tune in until later this year, when the field has narrowed and there’s a chance for real clash and conflict between debate participants. If you must know what happens on Wednesday and Thursday night this week, all the important parts will be replayed ad nauseam for the next few days on cable news. (And of course, read our ongoing coverage here at Reason dot com!)

Check the box scores and watch the highlights—if you must—but please, please try to ignore politics for just a few hours tonight.

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Rabobank: Exposing The Fed’s Hypocrite-ic Oath

Authored by Michael Every via Rabobank,

The traditional form of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors of Western medicine swear starts with “First, do no harm”, or “Primum Non Nocere” as it used to be before little things like 2,500+ years of tradition went out of fashion because they were hard. It’s not bad advice: before trying to do anything to make things better, make sure you aren’t making things worse.

Yet it’s very hard advice to follow if you are looking after not just a human body, but a larger economic body. After all, who can say what the negative side-effects of any given policy will be?

For example, surely lower interest rates are good for us? They boost capital investment. They encourage spending. They ‘juice’ the economy! Well, yes. But in the same way, a shot of adrenalin can get you moving around quickly in an emergency situation – yet a long-run use of steroids is a great way to destroy one’s health. Outside you look amazing, but inside you can be in terrible condition.

Indeed, you can look at this “Disruption! Skyscrapers! 5G! Dow 2x,xxx!” global economy and see the sleek and well-oiled and muscular and bronzed parts if you want. Or you can think about the dangerous mood swings in financial markets, inequality, falling productivity, major organ damage to socio-economic stability, lethal debt levels, mostly in unproductive areas of borrowing, and the uncontrollable populist rage that flows from this all. If you opt to see the latter you would call in the doctor for your body-building friend and beg them to recall their Hippocratic Oath.

However, Fed Chair Powell spoke yesterday and suggested the Fed–like the ECB, and the RBA (etc., etc.,)–will soon be increasing the dosage of monetary-policy steroids even further. Not so much Pumping Iron as Pumping Stocks. Yet even then markets were unhappy as there was no syringe placed on the table, just a medical tool kit that might only have tiger balm for all their performance-enhancing-stimulant-addled minds know.

Ironically, in the background we also have news that the market should want to hear: the US is allegedly preparing to can-kick at the G-20. Bloomberg reports that a friend of a friend of this girl who knows a guy whose cousin works in the White House at some level has told them that the US is prepared to hold off on raising tariffs on another USD300bn of Chinese goods to 25% after this weekend’s summit. They will also agree to reopen trade talks again. However, they won’t remove any existing tariffs or commit to any other action. For its part, China has already stated it wants all tariffs removed as a precondition for restarting talks, which puts them in an interesting position of having to lose face a little. Yet that is probably achievable. So in short, we might end up with the status quo ante after the G-20. On which, several thoughts flow.

First, if I were Trump that would suit me ‘hugely’. He still has 25% tariffs on many products. He still sees Chinese supply chains shifting offshore. He still carries the threat of going ‘all in’. But he doesn’t have to actually pull that trigger ahead of the election – just the threat is enough. Please recall, as I have already written several times, that my first guess at what the US ‘should have done’ was to say “40% tariffs in 12 months from now”, forcing supply chains to move before prices were impacted.

Second, this suits Xi. China has a whole heap of problems. The demonstrations that will be held in Hong Kong during the G-20 to try to embarrass him is merely one of them. SHIBOR sub 1% and bank failures is another. So, yes, please, let’s kick that can!

Third, this is not even a Donaldtov-Xibbentrop Pact. It’s just a pause for breath as both sides focus on domestic problems for a little while.

Fourth, for global businesses it won’t mean they stop moving supply chains. Or it shouldn’t if they have any common sense. Like with Hard Brexit: do you wait for it to happen and then plan? Even Huawei is apparently trying to hive off its US business as a separate entity called ‘Futurewei’(!) I would suggest ‘Nowei’ would have been more apt unless all employees wear comedy Groucho moustache and glasses at all times so nobody notices what they are actually doing.

Fifth, for the steroid-selling Fed, what does that G-20 development mean? “Trade war”, the convenient get-out-of-jail card for everyone who didn’t see that our current economic paradigm was always going to end up in another slump and crisis, is going to be less of a threat. So how do you justify even more steroids when you don’t have the excuse of an obscenely-muscular body-building boogieman in budgie-smugglers to challenge you?

But don’t worry: at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.

The Fed are just going to let rip anyway in order to get us more ‘ripped’. Rates will be cut. QE will flow, etc. None of what the Fed, the ECB, and the RBA (etc., et.) say has to make any sense, and doesn’t…

…except to those who look at Austrian, Marxist, or other heterodox schools of economics who can interpret that central-bank speech will always translate into “lower for longer/do whatever it takes” eventually regardless.

It’s all a big Hypocrite-ic Oath.

So rip away. Until something tears.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KFgz4e Tyler Durden

Don’t Watch This Week’s Democratic Debates

If we’re going to treat presidential elections as the political equivalent of the Super Bowl, is it too much to ask that we also treat the early Democratic debates like meaningless preseason football games?

That’s what the Democratic presidential debates taking place this week in Miami, Florida, really are. Like spring training baseball, these debates are about star players trying to avoid season-ending injuries while giving minor-leaguers a chance to show their stuff, even if they don’t stand a chance of making the opening day roster.

All but the most die-hard fans ignore these matches. Dear reader, I hope you do the same with this week’s debates.

Do anything else. Pet your dog. Talk to your spouse. Call a friend you haven’t seen in a while. Take a walk. Go to a ballgame, or at least watch one on TV. If you need a hit of patriotism, there’s a match tonight between the U.S. men’s soccer team and Panama that will provide all the red, white, and blue bunting you crave. Sure, soccer’s offside rule might not make sense, but neither does Bernie Sanders’ plan to cancel student loan debt—and the soccer game is sure to feature fewer own-goals than a debate that includes Bill de Blasio.

Or, go to a movie. If you want to see a rowdy bunch of weirdos challenge a big bad guy who has misguided ideas about how to create prosperity—well, I think Avengers: Endgame is still playing at some theaters.

The point is: you have options, and most of them are better than watching the first two Democratic debates.

Nothing that happens on stage in Miami this week is going to decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. How could it? We are more than 220 days from the very first votes being cast. Unless you live in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina, you have until March 2020 to make up your mind about which Democrat to support. Most of the people on stage this week won’t even be in the race by then. You will have forgotten their names, assuming you bothered to learn them in the first place (by the way, there are two “n”s and one “t” in “Michael Bennet”).

You want proof all this is starting too soon? In mid-June 2015—220-ish days before the first votes were cast in the last election cycle—Donald Trump had only just declared his candidacy. The first debate wasn’t held until August. That means someone at the Democratic National Committee looked at the clown show that was the 2016 presidential election and decided Hey, you know what the problem was? The campaign didn’t last long enough.

Bad ratings are the only way these folks are going to learn their lesson.

If you do plan to watch the debates this week, I hope you’ll ask yourself what there is to glean from watching former congressman John Delaney (polling at 0.4 percent) try to grab the spotlight for 30 seconds. Do you really believe that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D–Calif., polling at less than 0.1 percent) or writer/”spiritual guru” Marianne Williamson (also less than 0.1 percent) is going to blow your mind Thursday night?

If you watch, you are wasting your time. And time is money. In his excellent 2011 book The Ethics of Voting, Jason Brennan calculates that—under the most generous of circumstances—a vote in a national election is worth about 1/2,600th of a penny. Sure, you want that vote to be an informed one, but you can get informed without watching this week’s debates.

Read a book. Try out a new video game. Make pot brownies. Sit outside and stare at the sky. Any of those things will do more for your mental state, and the opportunity cost is so low it effectively doesn’t exist.

Voting in the Democratic primaries or the general election next year doesn’t require sitting through two nights of cattle-call debates more than six months before the first primary votes are cast. If one of the candidates comes to your town, go see what they have to say. Pay attention to the news, if you can bear it.

But when it comes to these made-for-Twitter democracy gameshows, you can wait to tune in until later this year, when the field has narrowed and there’s a chance for real clash and conflict between debate participants. If you must know what happens on Wednesday and Thursday night this week, all the important parts will be replayed ad nauseam for the next few days on cable news. (And of course, read our ongoing coverage here at Reason dot com!)

Check the box scores and watch the highlights—if you must—but please, please try to ignore politics for just a few hours tonight.

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Tesla Targets In-House Battery Manufacturing Two Months After Panasonic Suspends Investment

We’re sure that news of Tesla developing a means to manufacture its own battery cells, as reported today by CNBC, has nothing to do with the company’s potentially strained relationship with Panasonic.

And certainly it could never mean that Panasonic may be done investing in Tesla’s Gigafactories for good, right?

Regardless, the headline today was that Tesla has a “secret lab” where they are working on trying to “offer cheaper, higher performance electric-vehicles than it does today” by taking battery cell production in-house. 

The battery components are easily the biggest cost in building electric vehicles. But despite CEO Elon Musk’s ambitions of becoming vertically integrated, a reasonable question is this: how is a company that can’t even manufacture cars properly, and is supposed to be going into the insurance, mining and robotaxi businesses, going to develop and run their own battery cell manufacturing?

Elon Musk, shown pondering how Tesla will make their own battery cells.

Employees are reportedly conducting their battery research at a “skunkworks lab” several minutes from Tesla’s Fremont, CA plant.

The company’s R&D teams are focused on “designing and prototyping advanced lithium ion battery cells, as well as new equipment and processes that could allow Tesla to produce cells in high volumes, employees and former employees said.”

Tesla has posted job listings over the last month for engineering positions that have aligned with this initiative. But employees familiar with the matter say the company has no intention of cutting its ties with Panasonic and LG anytime soon. Both companies are said to be involved with providing cells for the company’s Shanghai factory. 

At the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk had said the company had a plan to “scale battery production and get the cost per kilowatt hour lower” but that he wasn’t ready to “let the cat out of the bag” yet. 

CTO JB Straubel said during the meeting: “It’s more obvious now than I think it ever was, we need a large-scale solution to cell production.”

Recall, back in April, we reported that Panasonic had suspended its investments in Tesla’s Gigafactories. The two companies had previously planned to raise capacity at the Gigafactory 1 by 50% next year, but “financial problems” reportedly forced a rethink from Panasonic.

Panasonic is one of the largest producers of the batteries that power Tesla vehicles. The Gigafactory 1 has been making the batteries for the Model 3 since January 2017. Panasonic manufactures the cells for the batteries and Tesla assembles them into battery packs. Panasonic had said previously that it planned to expand the plant’s capacity to the equivalent of 54 GWh a year by 2020. Its capacity currently sits at 35 GWh, where it looks like it’s going to be staying. 

Tesla and Panasonic have collectively invested $4.5 billion in the plant. Back in October, Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga said the company would consider “further investment in North America, keeping in step with Tesla.” After “consideration”, it looks like they’ve decided to steer clear from further investments in the boy genius, Elon Musk.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KBxzs9 Tyler Durden

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Used To Hate Donald Trump. Now, He’s Kind of a Fan.

Before Donald Trump took office, it was hard to find a tougher critic of him than Patrick Byrne, the libertarian CEO of the online retailer Overstock.com. He called Trump a “disgrace to America” and rebuked the reality TV star for his comments about Mexican “rapists” and Sen. John McCain being captured during the Vietnam War.

“I don’t consider Donald Trump a businessman,” Byrne told Reason in October 2016. “[He] inherited $300 million and ran it all the way up to zero, went bankrupt four times…shafted bondholders…He’s a fake capitalist and fake businessman.” (To be fair, Byrne, who endorsed Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and bankrolled a documentary critical of the two-party system, was equally outspoken against Hillary Clinton, whom he said “should be in an orange jumpsuit.” 

But now Byrne has reconsidered his views on President Trump, who he says is dismantling the administrative state and deregulating the economy in powerful ways. Byrne, who wrote his Stanford doctoral dissertation on the limited-government philosophy of Robert Nozick, even says that Trump is right to challenge China on trade and that libertarians need to be willing to confront places where the world is more complicated than our theories allow. He says that while there are still many things that bother him about the president—especially his rhetorical style—it’s time to realize Trump is not only a far better president than Hillary Clinton would have been, but has moved things forward on issues such as tax reform, criminal justice reform, and school choice.

Often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, Byrne tells Reason‘s Nick Gillespie he will not be pursuing the nomination.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Used To Hate Donald Trump. Now, He’s Kind of a Fan.

Before Donald Trump took office, it was hard to find a tougher critic of him than Patrick Byrne, the libertarian CEO of the online retailer Overstock.com. He called Trump a “disgrace to America” and rebuked the reality TV star for his comments about Mexican “rapists” and Sen. John McCain being captured during the Vietnam War.

“I don’t consider Donald Trump a businessman,” Byrne told Reason in October 2016. “[He] inherited $300 million and ran it all the way up to zero, went bankrupt four times…shafted bondholders…He’s a fake capitalist and fake businessman.” (To be fair, Byrne, who endorsed Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and bankrolled a documentary critical of the two-party system, was equally outspoken against Hillary Clinton, whom he said “should be in an orange jumpsuit.” 

But now Byrne has reconsidered his views on President Trump, who he says is dismantling the administrative state and deregulating the economy in powerful ways. Byrne, who wrote his Stanford doctoral dissertation on the limited-government philosophy of Robert Nozick, even says that Trump is right to challenge China on trade and that libertarians need to be willing to confront places where the world is more complicated than our theories allow. He says that while there are still many things that bother him about the president—especially his rhetorical style—it’s time to realize Trump is not only a far better president than Hillary Clinton would have been, but has moved things forward on issues such as tax reform, criminal justice reform, and school choice.

Often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, Byrne tells Reason‘s Nick Gillespie he will not be pursuing the nomination.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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Trump Slams Mueller For ‘Illegally Deleting Evidence’ On Wiped Phones

President Trump on Wednesday claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller ‘illegally terminated’ texts between “The two lovers, the two pathetic lovers, those two lovebirds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. 

The two former FBI employees at the center of the agency’s early Trump investigation sent thousands of text messages to each other which revealed their extreme animus for the then-candidate Trump. 

“Robert Mueller, they worked for him … they had texts back and forth … Mueller terminated them illegally. He terminated the emails, he terminated all of the stuff between Strzok and Page … He terminated them. They’re gone. That’s illegal. That’s a crime,” Trump said. 

While Trump did not provide evidence for his claim, he was likely referring to a December report by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) which found that after he was fired from the Mueller probe, the special counsel’s office allowed Strzok’s phone to be wiped clean by the FBI before it was reassigned to another agent. 

It strains credulity to imagine that the special counsel’s office would ‘accidentally’ allow Strzok’s iPhone to be reformatted after he was fired for exchanging biased text messages on it. 

Page’s phone was similarly scrubbed. 

Separately, the OIG recovered approximately 19,000 Strzok-Page texts from their Galaxy S5 phones. The messages span a “gap” in text messages between December 15, 2016 and May 17, 2017. 

OIG digital forensic examiners used forensic tools to recover thousands of text messages from these devices, including many outside the period of collection tool failure (December 15, 20 I 6 to May 17, 2017) and many that Strzok and Page had with persons other than each other. Approximately 9,311 text messages that were sent or received during the period of collection tool failure were recovered from Strzok’s S5 phone, of which approximately 8,358 were sent to or received from Page. Approximately 10,760 text messages that were sent or received during the period of collection tool failure were recovered from Page’s S5 phone, of which approximately 9,717 were sent to or received from Strzok. Thus, many of the text messages recovered from Strzok’s S5 were also recovered from Page’s S5. However, some of the Strzok-Page text messages were only recovered from Strzok’s phone while others were only recovered from Page’s phone. -OIG Report 

In August 2016, Strzok and Page discussed an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won the election which many believe to be in reference to operation Crossfire Hurricane – the DOJ’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump and his campaign. 

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” wrote Strzok, adding “It’s like a life insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” 

In the home stretch of the 2016 US election, Strzok is fuming at Trump – texting Page: ” I am riled up. Trump is a f*cking idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.” He then texts “I CAN’T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY (redacted)??!?!,” to which Page replies “I don’t know. But we’ll get it back.”

No wonder Strzok’s iPhone was allowed to be scrubbed!

Mueller will testify in front of two House committees on July 17 in an open setting. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31XGOIw Tyler Durden

Iranian Government Cuts Off Power To Crypto Mining Until New Energy Prices Approved

Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Iranian government will be cutting off power to crypto mining until new energy prices are approved, according to a report by local news agency Iran Daily on June 24.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, an official at Iran’s Ministry of Energy, reportedly revealed that the country has seen a 7% spike of electricity consumption over a monthly period ending on June 21, 2019. 

Rajabi emphasized the unusual nature of the spike, as opposed to similar time spans in the past years, revealing that the country’s power grid had evidently become unstable. 

According to the official, the Iranian Ministry of Energy believes that the surge was caused by the growing number of crypto mining activity in the country, adding that the state will take necessary measures to prevent energy issues.

As such, Rajabi reportedly stated that crypto miners “will be identified and their electricity will be cut,” until the government approves the recent ministry’s proposal for a change in prices for crypto mining operations. Rajabi stated that the authority will have to enforce such an action since the current overconsumption of electricity is “causing problem for other users.”

On June 9, the deputy energy minister of Iran urged that electricity bills for the digital currencyminers should be calculated in accordance with real prices, or the same rates established for power exports. 

Iran, a country that was reportedly profiting from crypto mining despite the bear market of 2018, pays about $1 billion in subsidies annually to bridge the gap in real electricity costs and what consumers are billed, a discount that cryptocurrency miners have been taking advantage of with gusto amid economic turmoil and sanctions. 

The country’s attitude toward crypto mining had been largely positive since September 2018, with major state authorities accepting mining as an industry.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Xbvhq2 Tyler Durden