Visualizing U.S. Millionaires By State Of Residence

There are literally millions of millionaires in the United States.

In fact, as VisualCapitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, there are 7.1 million households in the country that have investible assets of $1 million or more.

Impressively, this gives the U.S. a higher total population of millionaires than any other country in the world, even though China’s rapidly rising wealth is also quite notable.

MILLIONAIRES BY STATE

Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it breaks down U.S. millionaires by state.

Source: HowMuch.net

Here are the states with the highest millionaire populations, in absolute terms:

Not surprisingly, states like California, Texas, New York, and Florida dominate this list. They all have high millionaire populations, but they are also the four most populous states in general.

MILLIONAIRE CONCENTRATION

When looking at millionaires per capita, aforementioned states like New York, Texas, and Florida all fall off the Top 10 list altogether.

The state of California, however, remains clinging on to the #10 spot:

As you can see, the states surrounding hubs like New York City and D.C. shoot up the rankings when looking at the data this way.

New Jersey and Connecticut are in two of the top three spots – and of course New York City is home to well over 300,000 millionaires itself.

Meanwhile, Maryland walks away with the title of most millionaires per capita. It may be surprising, but this is the seventh year in a row that Maryland has ranked number one in the country for this metric.

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“China’s Uber” Murderer Had Loans From 51 Lenders, Borrowed Heavily From P2P

Submitted by Investing in Chinese Stocks

China’s Uber, Didi Chuxing, has suspended service after a driver raped and murdered a young woman. The story is hitting many hot button topics in China these days including P2P lending. Investigators have learned the driver had borrowed from at least 51 lending institutions.

The killing of a 20-year-old passenger who rode in the Didi vehicle on Friday in the eastern city of Wenzhou is the second such incident since May, denting the image of the Beijing-based company, which is the world’s largest ride-hailing firm by number of rides and is expanding globally.

Police said a 27-year-old driver named Zhong was detained at about 4 a.m. on Saturday and confessed to raping and killing the passenger, who had used the Hitch service to book her trip. Her body was dumped over a guardrail and down a cliff, police said.

The latest attack triggered severe criticism of Didi on social media and prompted regulators to warn of industry-wide action.

“If a company is not compliant and self-disciplined, and takes its passengers’ lives as a game, the public will vote with their feet and the government will not just stand by,” the transport ministry said in a commentary on its website.

Some more details from the local press:

SCMP: Didi stops hitching service in China after second murder – and admits it was warned about accused driver

Didi Chuxing, China’s largest taxi hailing service provider, has said it will suspend its hitching service on Monday, after the second murder of a woman passenger in three months – and admitted it failed to investigate an earlier complaint from another woman about the driver accused of the killing.

..Its reaction came a day after police in Yueqing, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, said they had found the body of a 20-year-old woman surnamed Zhao and arrested a Didi driver who had allegedly confessed to her rape and murder on Friday.

According to the police’s official microblog, Zhao had entered a Didi carpool vehicle at 1pm on Friday, and sent a message asking a friend for help at around 2pm before losing contact.

Many netizens were left wondering how the driver passed basic screening tests such as a credit check. One site reported he had borrowed from 51 lenders and was overdue on many loans.

From iFeng: 滴滴杀人疑犯信用调查:曾向51家机构借款 多笔逾期已失信

According to the latest news from the police, the girl in the murder case of the Yueqing drip rider was forced to transfer more than 9,000 yuan to the driver Zhongmou WeChat before being killed.

Tim Seng Finance (micro-signal: tsfinance) found in the investigation that Zhong had previously borrowed from 51 institutions and had too many overdue. When Didi is reviewing its eligibility, whether to use its personal credit as an indicator of investigation is a question left to us to think about.

…The investigation found that Zhong, the driver of the Yueqing Drip and Windmill driver murder case, had borrowed from 51 institutions; he also applied for loans from four platforms within one week before the accident. Specifically, 51 lending institutions include car rental, consumer staging platforms, consumer finance companies, credit cards, microfinance companies, and P2P online lending. From traditional financial institutions to emerging online lending institutions, it can be said that Zhong has borrowed from almost every type of institution that can lend.

…The main borrowing institution of Zhong is P2P online lending institutions and consumer finance companies. The survey of Tiansheng Finance (micro-signal: tsfinance) found that the general borrowing rate of the P2P online lending industry is as high as 30% per year. There are also low interest rates, but the requirements for borrowers are very high. Generally, they are not required to use real estate mortgages, or they require borrowers to work in government and public institutions . These conditions are not available to Zhong.

…It is worth mentioning that there have been many overdue loans in the history of Zhong, and there were overdue records on November 13, 2017 and January 13, 2018. In the third-party inquiry system, Zhong’s personal credit evaluation results are displayed as “recommended rejection”.

…This is not the first time that Zhong has driven for Didi. According to his relatives, two or three years ago Zhong spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy the current car to drive for Didi, and has driven in the town and other places. After the Spring Festival this year, he went to Wenzhou with his parents. .

Is it true that people like Zhongmou, who are often untrustworthy, are suitable to serve as the Didi driver for the public? Can they be responsible for the safety of passengers? Do you use your personal credit as an indicator when reviewing their qualifications? Leave us thinking about the problem.

Didi said the suspect had no criminal record, had provided authentic documentation and passed a facial recognition test before starting work. However, it also said it failed to act on a complaint made against the driver on Thursday by a passenger who alleged the driver took her to a remote place and followed her after she got out of the car.

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“Exuberance Is Back:” Investing In Ferraris Better Bet Than Stocks

As US stocks hit record highs, a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO offered by RM Sotheby’s sold in Monterey, California on Saturday for a record $48.4 million – the highest price ever fetched at auction, and 25% higher than the previous record set in 2014 when a 1963 model sold for $38.1 million (a 1963 250 GTO reportedly sold in October 2013 for $52 million in a private transaction, however). 

The seller, early Microsoft employee Greg Whitten, bought the car in 2000 when similar Ferraris were selling for around $10 million, according to Bloomberg. Whitten made out like a bandit. 

Photos: Sotheby’s

And while markets are hitting record highs after a decade of taxpayer-fueled economic recovery, investors with the means and wherewithal to sink their money into Ferraris instead of the S&P 500 did far better, according to the Hagerty Ferrari price index which reveals that the majority of gains occurred between 2013 and 2015. 

Even with dividends reinvested, Ferraris commanded a faster increase in value than listed U.S. companies since the end of 2009. Gains on the iconic car, though, have largely petered out over the last three years and U.S. stocks have outperformed. –Bloomberg

Making the case that high-end buyers are still willing to pony up in a frothy market, Bloomberg highlights the December 2017 sale of a Leonardo Da Vinci painting for $450 million (bought by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, as it turns out), the most ever for a piece of fine art. 

Their takeaway? Watch out: 

It all shows market watchers should probably be getting worried, says Shane Oliver, a Sydney-based investment strategist at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., who wrote his PhD thesis on efficiency in markets and asset bubbles. –Bloomberg

Exuberance is back in a big way,” Oliver said. “The fact that people are paying record amounts for Ferraris and paintings and share markets are at record highs causes me to be a little bit more cautious” 

Since most people can’t exactly afford to invest in a $48.4 million Ferrari, much less insure it and god forbid even drive it – here are some more pictures of the recent sale via RM Sotheby’s

And just in case Ferraris aren’t your thing, there’s always a gold lambo!

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Retired Green Beret: Was Congo’s Ebola ‘Bungle-In-The-Jungle’ A Planned Mishap?

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

Malthusian theory holds that depopulation (or zero population growth) is a necessity to control a species (namely humanity) that reproduces and consumes natural resources without limits. This is a “New Age” mantra adopted early on by Communists as far back as Marx and Lenin. The ball has been carried successively by Edward House and Woodrow Wilson, and further exacerbated by such “gems” as Kissinger, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and so forth. Much of the public and almost all of the youth (a recent poll taken showed young people prefer Socialism to Capitalism) have fallen for this mantra.

The “problem” for them is how to push it along quickly: war is one answer, and disease is another.

There has been another outbreak of Ebola in the Congo, with WHO (World Health Organization) estimates as many as 1,500 people have been exposed to it. The Daily Mail has a good article on this that was posted on 8/17/18, titled to that effect. It is a good read, as it summarizes with brevity the parameters of the disease itself.

This is how they’re “setting the stage” for this planned “mishap” tied in to the recent outbreak. Read this excerpt very carefully to see the hidden agenda:

The World Health Organization said on Friday [8/17/18] that at least 1,500 people had potentially been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, where fear of local militia is preventing aid workers from reaching some areas. But it is expected more people to become infected and could not be sure that it had identified all chains by which the virus is spreading in the eastern part of the country beset by militia violence. The region is haunted in particular by the Allied Defence Forces, a Ugandan Islamist rebel group blamed for hundreds of civilian deaths over the past four years.

Now this is setting the script: the valiant doctors and aid workers are unable to break the flow and transmission of the disease because of those pesky Islamic rebels… the militia, to be specific. In addition, don’t forget to expect “more people to become infected!” We have had more than a few scares over the past couple of years with elaborate precautions to transport Ebola-infected patients into the U.S. for treatment: a preposterous action considering the potential for a release into this country.

When those patients were here, do you think that Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where the U.S.’s primary biological weapons research facility is located…do you think they received any blood samples from these patients?

You bet your bottom dollar they did. Read “The Hot Zone” and “Devil in the Freezer,” works that chronicle events with diseases such as Ebola, and Anthrax respectively regarding accidental releases and protocols of nations regarding biological warfare. A few years ago they resurrected frozen viruses in the Arctic region, amidst the protest of several scientists who (prior to being “muzzled”) argued about the potential lethality of these viruses even if not weaponized. No matter. Smallpox has been eradicated except by governments and their laboratory storage facilities: biological warfare and all of its associated researches, treatments, testing, and drugs (backed by pharmaceutical firms) is big business.

Regarding Ebola, a documentary was released in 1996 by NOVA, entitled Ebola: The Plague Fighters.” This graphic but excellently made film shows an outbreak of Ebola in Zaire in May of 1995 and the almost nonexistent medical conditions in the country, coupled with the ineffective actions of foreign doctors and aid-workers. Such squalid, primitive conditions, lack of facilities, and ineffective treatment exist in Congo today virtually unchanged from twenty years ago as shown in the documentary in Zaire.

If a government is going to release it, the disease (in this case Ebola) is still not as lethal as they need it to be. Rest assured, they’re all working on ironing out these “glitches” in order to follow the plan that originated with Thomas Malthus. We are seeing a controlled laboratory experiment proceeding in China regarding surveillance there: a total surveillance system that will be tested on their citizens and then adopted (and adapted) by other nations for use on their own citizens.

Conditions are perfect for this type of “lab,” as China is a controlled Communist country and the technology is high enough to be perfected as the society is already compliant and under complete governmental control. This kind of “lab” would not be feasible in African nations where power and running water alone are in short supply and cannot sustain all of the infrastructure needed for the surveillance grid-state in China.

For testing of biological weaponry, however, African nations (especially those such as Congo and Zaire) are perfect for the release of created viruses and other tailor-made bio weapons. Sound farfetched? Consider the releases of Bacillus subtilis by the U.S. government to “test” the spread of microorganisms in civilian mass-transit facilities such as subways and buses just a few years ago. Consider all of the times the government has tested nuclear and biological weapons on soldiers and civilians.

Africa is perfect for them to take existing diseases and structure them for even more lethality. When the time is right, quarantines could be ineffective and permit passengers that are infected to board aircraft and spread the disease in the course of travel. Or they could simply transport an infected patient and allow the disease to escape from quarantine and controlled lockdown.

If you doubt this potential, you have only to read about Bill Gates and his lovely wife’s belief in depopulation as a means of “fixing” the planet. This is the same Bill Gates, by the way, who (with a consortium of investment firms and tech start-ups) plans on placing 500 satellites into orbit to enable real-time monitoring of every inch of the surface of the globe…sometime next summer.

Ebola is a serious disease, but what is even more deadly and more serious is the group of people and moneyed interests that wish to form a global government. They have the political connections, the money, and the alliances to effectively alter every facet of a nation and even to destroy it militarily. No heinous action is outside of their reach.  Ironically, all of these people…all of them…believe that depopulation is the only way to accomplish this “utopian” global governance effectively.

These oligarchs and controllers view those not in their company and of their ilk as less than insects to be crushed, and at the most to be their slaves and servants. Depopulation is their goal, and a deadly disease would enable it without culpability. This Ebola outbreak is more likely a “planned mishap” in a laboratory with human beings as the test subjects. The results of these experiments may eventually be used against unsuspecting populations to reach the end-state of global rule, minus a few billion lives or so.

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Barclays Is First Bank To Sell Commercial Paper Linked To Libor Alternative

One month after Fannie Mae became the first issuer to sell debt linked to the Libor alternative, Barclays became the first commercial bank to issue commercial paper tied to the benchmark which regulators hope will replace the scandal-plagued London Interbank Offered Rate, the so-called secured overnight financing rate, or SOFR.

According to Bloomberg, on Friday the British bank sold $525 million of the short-term debt, linked to SOFR, Bloomberg reported and added that the borrowings took place via its flagship asset-backed commercial paper conduit, Sheffield Receivables Corp.

“Investor response was immediate, and fairly broad across different types of investors,” Joe Muscari, head of securitized portfolio management at Barclays, said about the bank’s commercial paper deal. “Our support of SOFR with these issuances is just a recognition that this is the direction the industry is headed.”

Commenting on the new bond issues, Barclays managing directors Chris Conetta told Bloomberg that “you should expect to see additional SOFR-linked deals across a broad spectrum of issuers. These will likely include bank issuers as well as other types of borrowers in the short-term debt markets. Both issuers and investors have a vested interest in seeing SOFR become an established and liquid market.”

SOFR, which was launched in April by the New York Fed as a dollar-market alternative to LIBOR, has gained traction recently with financial institutions. In addition to Fannie and Barclays, Credit Suisse and the World Bank have all sold other types of SOFR-linked debt, Bloomberg reports. In this case, the SOFR-linked debt was commercial paper, which typically matures in 270 days or less and is used to fund everyday activities such as rent and salaries.

SOFR was set at 1.95% for Friday, up 1bp from the previous day, and up 15bps from its inaugural rate of 1.80% set in early April. It overnight dollar Libor peer for the same day was 1.91888%.

The main difference between the two rates is that whereas Libor is derived from a once daily survey of several large banks that estimate how much it would cost to borrow unsecured from each other without putting up collateral – a process which it emerged had been rigged and manipulated by a cartel of traders for years – SOFR is calculated based on overnight loans collateralized by U.S. government debt, and is therefore virtually impossible to manipulate.

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Jacksonville Shooter Had Mental Health Issues, “Weird” Online Persona

With virtually all details about the perpetrator behind yesterday’s tragic Jacksonville shooting, David Katz, having been disclosed in the past 24 hours, one question remained: what was his motive to open fire at the Madden NFL 19 competition at the Jacksonville Landing entertainment complex, killing twp people and wounding 11 before taking his own life.

David Katz

One day later, the Associated Press reports that according to court records and people who knew him, Katz had a “weird” online presence and spent time in and out of psychiatric facilities as a teenager. and had been hospitalized for mental illness. Divorce filings from Katz’s parents say that as a teenager he was twice hospitalized in psychiatric facilities and that he was prescribed anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications.

The records show Katz’s parents disagreed deeply on how to care for their troubled son. Katz’s father claimed his estranged wife was exaggerating symptoms of mental illness as part of the couple’s long-running and acrimonious custody battle. They divorced in 2007.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Katz stayed in the Jacksonville area the night before the shooting, possibly at a hotel. He then went to the eSports competition carrying two guns but used only one during the attack, Jacksonville Sheriff Williams said. Investigators say the guns were purchased legally in Baltimore from a licensed dealer.

As previously reported, Katz allegedly got upset about losing the game, at which point he started shooting other contestant. Katz then died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Other gamers at the tournament said Katz was rather quiet. Shane Kivlen, a friend of one of the people killed, said Katz didn’t talk much with fellow gamers, either online or when they met face-to-face for Madden tournaments, the AP reports.

He said much of what he and others knew of Katz, they learned from his baffling style of playing the game.

“(Katz) would do kind of weird stuff online that other people wouldn’t do,” Kivien said. “He would catch a ball and just start jumping out of bounds and stuff when he could have gotten more yards, just hurting himself. I don’t know what he was doing.”

Kivlen said Katz was smart, “but something was off about him.”

He says Katz wasn’t known to trash talk with rivals. But after winning a championship last year, Kivlen says Katz “got up and let out the weirdest scream ever.”

EA Sports listed a David Katz as a 2017 championship winner. Katz had been active in eSports, tournaments where video game players compete and get seen on social media playing. He was believed to be known as “Bread” and won the February 2017 Buffalo Bills tournament of the Madden NFL football game.

On Monday, investigators said Katz specifically targeted other gamers. Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said during a news conference that video surveillance of the shooting shows 24-year-old David Katz of Baltimore walk past other patrons at a pizzeria and head to a back room where the tournament is being hosted before he opens fire.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Katz was a 2011 graduate of Hammond High School in Howard County, and also attended the University of Maryland previously, but was not a enrolled this semester, university President Wallace Loh said. He enrolled beginning in September 2014 and majored in environmental science and technology, a university spokeswoman said. He did not live on campus.

ATF and FBI agents searched a Baltimore home on the 1200 block of Harbor Island Walk on Sunday night in connection with the rampage. They arrived at the quiet row of nearly identical brick townhouses around 6 p.m. and searched the property for just over four hours, according to Baltimore ATF Public Information Officer Amanda Hils.

Steve Buchness, a bartender at Little Havana, a Cuban restaurant across the street from Katz’s neighborhood, said he heard the alleged shooter lived nearby, but he didn’t recognize photos of Katz he saw online.

“I bet you he’s a loner, but I don’t know,” he said. “You’ve got to come in a lot for us to recognize you as a regular. People are on some weird stuff these days, you know?” He said “So no, that doesn’t shock me.”

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Confusion Looms As Iran Claims Control Over Key Oil Waterway

Reuters headline early Monday sparked fears that Iran could be in control of the Strait of Hormuz, a key narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf through which about one-third of the global supply of oil passes. 

Reuters reported in its story headline, Iran says it has full control of Gulf and U.S. navy does not belong therewhile citing the head of the navy of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), General Alireza Tangsiri.

According to the report, “Tangsiri said Iran had full control of both the Gulf itself and the Strait of Hormuz that leads into it,” and further cited the general as saying“Closing off the strait would be the most direct way of blocking shipping”.

“We can ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and there is no need for the presence of aliens like the U.S. and the countries whose home is not in here,” General Alireza Tangsiri said in the quote, which appeared in English translation via Iranian state media.

This sparked subsequent reporting that Iran had effectively blocked the strait; however, a FOX story noted, “A check of conditions on MaritimeTraffic.com on Monday showed that conditions appeared to be normal, with heavy maritime traffic through the strait.”

Normal to heavy maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz as of Monday afternoon.

No Pentagon or other US official statement was immediately forthcoming in response to the Reuters or FOX alerts. 

But the elite IRGC naval commander’s words are likely to raise tensions with Washington further, after prior remarks from both President Rouhani as well as other IRGC generals in early July suggesting that should White House sanctions seek to devastate Iranian oil exports, then no oil at all should pass through the area

The Monday statement from General Tangsiri appears to be a reaffirmation Iran’s prior position of possessing sole “rights” over the strait. The United States for its part, has maintained a fleet in the Gulf seeking to protect oil shipping lanes even as Iran has ratcheted up military “show of force” exercises of late. 

Previously in the summer, the spokesman for the US military’s Central Command, Captain Bill Urban, told the Associated Press that US sailors and its regional allies “stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows”.

Washington has issued an ultimatum to countries dealing with Iran: halt all imports of Iranian oil from Nov. 4 or face punitive US economic measures with no exemptions. Rouhani has called these threats “crime and aggression” and an act of “self-harm” as the unwavering stance is “against U.S. national interests and the interests of other countries.” 

The Straight of Hormuz at its narrowest is about 31 miles wide and approximately 20% of the world’s seaborne oil passes through it, and the IRGC has in the past threatened the passageway by conducting war games, such as during a period of heightened tensions with the West over the straight in 2011 and 2012, and most recently in early August.

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Lanny Davis Refutes Lanny Davis, Admits Being Source For CNN Trump Tower “Bombshell” Fake News

The plot thickens…

On July 26th, CNN unleashed a “bombshell” report that Michael Cohen was claiming that candidate Trump knew in advance about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Then, last week, amid the deafening euphoria of the ‘anti-Trump’-ers, Davis told Anderson Cooper:

“I think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of the story.

Davis increasingly backed away from the story in recent days, telling the Washington Post that he is not certain if the claim is accurate, and that he could not independently corroborate it.

Destroying CNN’s “bombshell” story, crushing the hopes of millions of ‘not my president’-ers.

As Buzzfeed notes, after Davis publicly backtracked from the claims, the New York Post and the Washington Post outed him as their confirming source and published apologies from Davis

But, of course, CNN was giving up such a great story so easily (whether it’s true or fake news), and followed up anxiously by none other than Brian Stelter who gushed over Twitter in the face of Davis’ refutation of their entire story that:

” Re: CNN’s July 27 story about Cohen claiming that Trump knew in advance about the Trump Tower meeting: “We stand by our story, and are confident in our reporting of it.”

All of which brings up to date, safe in the knowledge that despite Davis’ denial that CNN’s story ever occurred, CNN has “a source” that confirmed it and that’s good enough for them.

BUT…

Now, after all that pre-amble, double-talk, and utterly bullshit fake news reporting, Lanny Daviswho we perhaps need to remind readers once again is an extremely well-paid f**king lawyer and communications expert – has  told Buzzfeed that he was the anonymous source in a July CNN story

Tonight, Davis told BuzzFeed News that he regrets both his role as an anonymous source and his subsequent denial of his own involvement.

Davis told BuzzFeed News that he did, in fact, speak anonymously to CNN for its story, which cited “sources with knowledge” — meaning more than one person.

“I made a mistake,” Davis said.

Regarding his comments about a month later to Cooper, he added, “I did not mean to be cute.”

As Buzzfeed concludes, Davis’ role in the CNN story also offers a window into the kind of anonymous sourcing common across newsrooms. Some news outlets have a policy to not let sources speak “on background” — that is, as a “person familiar with the matter” or some other unnamed moniker — and also be allowed to decline to comment on the record.

“We should address Lanny Davis’s comments in our reporting and be more transparent with our readers about our reporting,” one CNN staffer told BuzzFeed News.

And while Davis looks bad, it is CNN whose credibility is getting crushed (admittedly from record lows).

Indeed – but what will be more fun is CNN’s official response to this, Brain Stelter’s squirming, and President Trump’s tweet.

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Mueller Might Be Barred From Publishing Trump-Russia Report Thanks To Obscure Court Case

A six-decade old murder case working its way through a Washington D.C. Court of Appeals may set a precedent that would prevent special counsel Robert Mueller from publishing any information from stemming from the Trump-Russia investigation, reports Politico

Columbia University professor Jesus Galindez disappeared in 1956, and was believed to be possibly kidnapped to the Dominican Republic and murdered. His body was never found. The case inspired a 2003 film starring Harvey Keitel, “The Galindez File.” 

Attorney and author Stuart McKeever has been pursuing the case, and has asked the D.C. court to release secret testimony given to a DC-based grand jury, however the Department of Justice (DOJ) has argued that judges don’t have “inherent authority” to release said information unless Congress approves.

As Politico‘s Josh Gerstein notes, McKeever’s success or failure to obtain the documents may have far reaching implications for other investigations – including Mueller’s probe of President Trump and those in his orbit

 

[I]f a Washington appeals court set to hear the murder-related case next month sides with the Justice Department and rules that judges don’t have the freedom to release grand jury information that is usually kept secret, it could throw a monkey wrench into any plans Mueller has to issue a public report on his probe’s findings, lawyers following the issue said.

And it might even keep the special counsel from sending a report to Congress, shaking Democrats’ hopes that such a document could provide the impetus for impeachment proceedings against the president. –Politico

This means of course that if Mueller can’t nail Trump for anything outside of porn-star payoffs and parking tickets, he will conveniently avoid an embarrassing public disclosure after more than two years of DOJ investigation. On the other hand, if Trump is found guilty of being a Putin-puppet, it would similarly hinder public disclosure.

“It is a sleeper case,” says Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting. “If the D.C. Circuit were to accept the Department of Justice’s arguments…that would have potentially enormous implications for the future of the information from the Mueller investigation. That could close out a path by which that information becomes public.

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Colas: Here’s The Reason Why Stocks Surged To Record Highs After Powell’s Talk

Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research

Fed Chair Jay Powell spent 5 paragraphs of his Jackson Hole speech on Friday explaining why Alan Greenspan was right to keep rates low from 1995 to 1999. If you want to know why US stocks rallied to fresh highs on his talk, that’s pretty much all you need to know. But if you want the deep dive into the whole conference we have a fuller summary of Powell’s talk below, along with highlights from all the other presentations.

Powell: The Fault Lies In Our Stars

Equity markets like the cut of Fed Chair Powell’s jib, at least as far as that nautical reference relates to his Friday morning comments at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole conference. The S&P 500 finally broke to a new high and the NASDAQ similarly printed a new high water mark. Also, emerging market ETFs (like EEM) rebounded 1.9% on Friday pointing to some spillover potential at the start of Sunday night’s overseas trade.

Another maritime analogy was, in fact, at the core of Powell’s speech and its message was clearly equity-friendly. He compared long run macro economic concepts about unemployment (called “u star” by econo-wonks), interest rates (“r star”) and inflation (“pi star”) to the physical stars once used for celestial navigation at sea. His summary about this:

“Navigating by the stars can sound straightforward. Guiding policy by the stars in practice, however, has been quite challenging of late because our best assessments of the location of the stars have been changing significantly.”

The Fed Chair then shifted to dry land, and a concept investors use every day: risk management. Once you accept that your perceptions of reality may be wrong (the stars aren’t where you think they are), you build more uncertainty into your decision-making. Powell took 5 paragraphs of his talk to praise former Chair Greenspan’s do-nothing stance on rates in the mid-late 1990s as an example of sound intellectual risk management. Inflation was waning at the time, although many economists thought it would return with a vengeance. Greenspan, to Powell’s thinking, was wise to watch and wait.

If you want to pinpoint the one section of Powell’s talk that buoyed US stocks on Friday, his lauding of Greenspan’s inadvertent fueling of the late 1990s dot com bubble clearly qualifies. Yes, he did highlight that the past two recessions (2000 and 2008) saw “destabilizing excesses” and appeared “mainly in financial markets rather than inflation”. But there is no mention in his talk that current financial market conditions show any similar excess. This will either prove to be Powell’s first sin of omission as Chair or a great market call. Only time will tell.

* * *

While the rest of last week’s Jackson Hole conference will probably get little attention, the topics presented do outline a worldview sympathetic to a structurally go-slow Powell Fed. Here are brief summaries of each talk:

Increasing Differences Between Firms; Market Power and the Macro-economy

  • There is rising industry concentration across many major industrial sectors in the US and EU.
  • Larger firms are growing more profitable than smaller peers but the rewards are not flowing through to workers.
  • The root cause may be an increasingly “winner take most/all” dynamic due to globalization/new technologies, rather than regulatory/policy failures.

Understanding Weak Capital Investment: The Role of Market Concentration and Intangibles

  • Capital investment is not weak, as commonly thought. Rather, firms are investing in intangible assets like R&D, software and business processes.
  • These intangible assets can provide powerful competitive advantage and even enable a rise in industry concentration.

Panel on Changing Market Structure and Implications for Monetary Policy

  • There is very little academic research on how monetary policy makers should consider industry concentration in setting interest rates.
  • FinTech, a relatively new entrant in the market for financial services, may actually exacerbate wealth inequality by using Big Data algorithms to prey on less-educated consumers.

Reflections on Dwindling Worker Bargaining Power and Monetary Policy

  • Lunch presentation by Alan Krueger (Princeton and NBER). US wages are not growing as quickly as corporate profits due to structural factors, ranging from lower levels of unionization to the increasing use of anticompetitive practices on the part of employers.

More Amazon Effects: Online Competition and Price Behaviors

  • The growth of Amazon over the last decade has pulled US consumer prices lower in much the same way as Walmart’s growth in the 1980s/1990s reduced structural inflation.
  • Because Amazon’s prices are easily visible, other retailers quickly follow any changes there (usually lower) in pricing across a wide variety of goods. This give Amazon more influence in price-setting than its market position would imply.
  • Since Amazon charges one price nationally, this limits retailers’ ability to differentiate prices by region.

Competition, Stability and Efficiency in Financial Markets

  • Financial system regulation typically focused on cross-cycle stability (i.e. making sure banks have enough capital to withstand a severe recession without the need for government bailouts).
  • Policymakers need to consider the role of technology as financial services industry “disruptor” and create a regulatory framework to ensure the system remains stable.

Overview Panel (no unifying topic)

  • The current global debate over trade/tariffs could be damaging to the global economy.
  • The current boom in technological disruption is analogous to the last big macro trend of globalization. Policymakers need to explain the benefits of this shift to their citizens and address those left behind.
  • Among the final lines from the final speaker at Jackson Hole this year: “Digital technologies are disrupting central banking along with everything else.”

Summing up: Jackson Hole 2018 is the year the Federal Reserve accepted that the world really is different from 10 or 20 years ago, thanks to everything from technology to a changing political landscape. How much that realization dulls their appetite for aggressive monetary policy is now as important a question as where CPI or inflation goes in the next few years.

For links to all the papers presented and their authors (omitted from our summaries due to length constraints, click here: https://www.kansascityfed.org/publications/research/escp/symposiums/escp-2018

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