another site
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2fPJPUF
via IFTTT
CNBC’s cheerleading staff had a very difficult time finding the silver lining in retail investing this morning as they relentlessly pressed Sam Zell on the value of commercial real estate. Asked to offer up his thoughts on where retail real estate is headed over the next five years, Zell highlighted the significant excess inventory in the U.S., 4-5x more per capita than Europe, and said investing in the space right now is like catching a “falling knife.”
“Like a falling knife. You start with the fact that the U.S. has 4 or 5 times the amount of square footage per person of retail as anywhere else in the world. So we start with an enourmously large inventory of retail.”
“3 years ago your could buy an 8% mall…you could buy a B-mall and it was probably an 8% cap rate. The same mall, 3 years later, is now selling at 13% and 14%. So you’ve seen enourmous erosion of value.”
“When the knife falls there’s going to be plenty of opportunities for people to step up and say ‘what are alternate uses?'”
Pressed on whether now just might be the time to take a contrarian view on the collapsing retail space, Zell again was unable to satiate the desires for positive news from his eager hosts.
“An area that’s in this much disarray, with so many weak players, is not an area where I would want to deploy capital at this time. And I’m generally a contrarian but I think what we’re dealing with here is very significant.”
Of course, things only went from bad to worse for the CNBC hosts when Zell offered up some positive commentary on Trump’s presidency. Per CNBC:
Corporate America is willing to invest money on a longer-term basis under President Donald Trump than the previous “anti-business administration” of Barack Obama, real estate mogul Sam Zell told CNBC on Tuesday.
“Bluntly, the only way I can square anything is I focus on what gets done, not what’s said,” the billionaire said on “Squawk Box.” “On a measure of what’s gotten done, I believe there’s been very significant change since Trump was elected in November, and change that is positive.”
Zell points to deregulation and promises of tax cuts and massive infrastructure spending as major positives for business.
“Just think that all of a sudden there are no industries that are pinata[s] of the president,” Zell said, referring as an example to what he called Obama’s campaign against fossil fuels.
“I’m more optimistic than I was six months ago. But I’m not ready to party,” Zell told CNBC on Tuesday, adding the current business environment is not one of buy anything and win. Investors need to pick carefully, he added.
Meanwhile, the most shocking part of the interview segments above is that CNBC didn’t encounter any “technical difficulties” as Zell offered up his positive comments on the Trump presidency while taking a shot a Obama.
via http://ift.tt/2wjWVzI Tyler Durden
Republican Senator Bob Corker on Tuesday announced he will not run for reelection next year, and will retire at the end of 2018 .
“After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018,” Corker said in an emailed statement.
The Senator, who last year was ranked the 23rd richest member of Congress with a net worth of roughly $18 million…
… and who as recently as March of last year was the subject of an insider trading probe which predictably has gone nowhere, said that “I have always been drawn to the citizen legislator model, and while I realize it is not for everyone, I believe with the kind of service I provide, it is the right one for me.”
Corker also said that “the most important public service I have to offer our country could well occur over the next 15 months, and I want to be able to do that as thoughtfully and independently as I did the first 10 years and nine months of my Senate career.”
via http://ift.tt/2wScovk Tyler Durden
The Department of Homeland Security wants to include “social media handles and aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results” in the alien files, or “A-Files,” it maintains for everyone who has gone through the immigration system, including naturalized citizens.
In a notice posted to the Federal Register last week, the department said it would use “publicly available information from the internet” as well as public records and commercial data providers to obtain the information.
The files—which also include information on immigration status, professional accreditation, and family, travel, education, employment, and criminal history—are shared with other government agencies, revealing the intimate connection between onerous immigration enforcement and the architecture of a police state.
Critics of the proposed rules point out that social media information has been found to be pretty unuseful for any kind of vetting or other immigration investigation. But the government likes collecting information whether or not it’s useful. The National Security Agency, for example, is overwhelmed with the data it collects on American citizens.
Though the information may be useless for any legitimate government function, it is ripe for abuse, whether by individual government employees or by an unaccountable agency.
The DHS’s rules change notice is open for public comment for three more weeks. Immigrants and naturalized citizens can actually request their A-Files; for information on how to do that, go here.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2xDx2hu
via IFTTT
After hitting a two-decade low in 2015, marijuana arrests in the United States rose by 1.6 percent last year, according to FBI data released yesterday. The total, about 653,000, was still 25 percent lower than the 2008 peak of 873,000, although it was three times as high as the number of pot busts in 1991.
The FBI’s 2016 report makes it harder than usual to figure out how many people were arrested on marijuana charges, listing total drug arrests but omitting the table breaking them down by substance. That change was part of a broader reduction in the number of tables published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, from 81 to 29. Marijuana Majority Chairman Tom Angell obtained the more detailed drug arrest data from the FBI. As usual, the vast majority of marijuana arrests involved possession rather than sales or cultivation.
“Arrests for marijuana are on the rise,” Angell notes, “even as more states legalize it.” And that is without taking into account whatever impact having an old-fashioned pot prohibitionist as attorney general may have on marijuana arrests, almost all of which are the work of state and local law enforcement agencies. As I noted earlier this month, 28 states still treat simple possession of marijuana as a jailable offense.
“Arresting and citing [more than] half a million people a year for a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol is a travesty,” says Morgan Fox, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project. “Despite a steady shift in public opinion away from marijuana prohibition, and the growing number of states that are regulating marijuana like alcohol, marijuana consumers continue to be treated like criminals throughout the country. This is a shameful waste of resources and can create lifelong consequences for the people arrested.”
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2xJHcxF
via IFTTT
No healthcare reform, a hawkish Yellen, and dismal housing and confidence data… equity markets jump…presumably because the world did not end… but did dump into the close
"and… it's gone"
All major equity indices gained on the day (with Trannies and Small Caps extending their exuberance) and Nasdaq the laggard on the week still… (NOTE – rebound on EU close, rebound on Yellen remarks, but weak close)
S&P was 'managed' around the key 2500 level, thanks to another VIX crush to a 9 handle…BUT that failed…
FANGs ended the day positive but not by much…
It looks like the AAPL buyback machine was turned back on today…
Will Fang catch down to AAPL?
Banks continue to outperform the market even as the yield curve continues to flatten drastically…
Treasury yields ended the day modestly higher – not quite erasing yesterday's gains…
The Dollar Index rose once again, tagging the Aug 16th FOMC Minutes lows…
WTI/RBOB sank on the day (ahead of tonight's API inventory data)…
Gold dropped back to $1300 – erasing any North Korea concerns – with some noise from a hawkish Yellen…
And finally, Swiss National Bank stocks crashed 35% in the last few days (back below Bitcoin)…
via http://ift.tt/2wSpk4c Tyler Durden
Former Fortress Principal Michael Novogratz left the firm's colossal macro hedge fund almost two years ago, but has been discussing investments in virtual currencies since 2013 when he told a UBS conference…
"Put a little money in Bitcoin…Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot."
He was of course correct, Bitcoin was trading around $200 at the time and as recently as three weeks ago was worth $5000…
The last time we heard from Novogratz was in June 2017, at the CB Insights Future of Fintech conference in New York, where he told attendees that he has cut holdings (in Bitcoin and Ethereum) after the cryptocurrencies' latest "spectacular run," warning that "Euthereum had likely hit its highs for the year," and "cryptocurrencies were likely the biggest bubble of his lifetime."
However, while this all sounded desperately downbeat, Novogratz was still very "positively constructive" on the space overall. He should be – he has 20% of his net worth invested in the sector… and now, as Bloomberg reports, Mike Novogratz is reinventing himself as the king of bitcoin.
Novogratz has had a very good run. Aside from his epic call in Bitcoin, he has done extremely well in Ethereum, as Bloomberg details…It started with a late-2015 visit to a friend’s startup in Brooklyn.
“I expected to see Joe, a dog and one assistant. Instead I saw 30 dynamic young people crammed in a Bushwick warehouse, coding, talking on the phone, making plans for this revolution,” Novogratz said.
“Macro guys are instinctive. My instinct was, ‘I want to buy a chunk of this company.”
He decided instead to invest in ether, the cryptocurrency token used on the Ethereum network.
Novogratz bought about $500,000 at less than a dollar per ether and left on a vacation to India. By the time he returned a few weeks later, the price had risen more than fivefold. He bought more.
Over the course of 2016 and into 2017, as ether surged to almost $400 and bitcoin topped $2,500, Novogratz sold enough to make about $250 million, the biggest haul of any single trade in his career.
He said he paid tax on the profits, bought a Gulfstream G550 jet and donated an equal amount to a philanthropic project for criminal justice reform.
Novogratz was hooked, and according to a person familiar with his plans, Bloomberg reports that the outspoken macro manager is starting a $500 million hedge fund to invest in cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings and related companies. Novogratz will put up $150 million of his own money and plans to raise $350 million more by January, mainly from family offices, wealthy individuals and fellow hedge fund managers.
“This is going to be the largest bubble of our lifetimes,” Novogratz said.
“Prices are going to get way ahead of where they should be. You can make a whole lot of money on the way up, and we plan on it.”
At that size, the Galaxy Digital Assets Fund would be the biggest of its kind and signal a growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether as legitimate investments.
Where others see volatility and liability, Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs partner, smells opportunity.
“In a lot of ways, this is a market like any other market,” Novogratz said.
“You see the psychology of fear and greed in the charts the same way you’d see it in charts of the Indonesian rupiah or dollar-yen or Treasuries. They’re exaggerated because of less liquidity and because you can’t get short.”
“I sold at $5,000 or $4,980,” he said.
“Then three weeks later I’m trying to buy it in the low $3,000s. If you’re good at that and you’re a trading junkie, it’s a lot of fun.”
And bubble or not, "Novo" as his friends call him, concluded eloquently on the extreme nature of cryptocurrencies' potential…
“Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said.
“The railroad bubble. Railroads really fundamentally changed the way we lived. The internet bubble changed the way we live. When I look forward five, 10 years, the possibilities really get your animal spirits going.”
via http://ift.tt/2fOpyin Tyler Durden
With Equifax shares having plunged by a third since the company announced a historic corporate cyber-breach, which released the personal records of over 143 million Americans to still unknown hackers, losing some $5 billion in market cap, today the company’s CEO was the latest rat to leave the sinking ship, a move which failed to prompt a jump in the stock and was widely panned by the analyst community as indicative of further troubles ahead.
And while the surprising “retirement” of CEO Richard Smith was briadly perceived as controversial, public anger is only set to grow when the general public realizes that the disgraced former Chairman and Chief Executive may be due a parting bonus of no less than $7.6 million, and potentially far more, payable early next year, as part of the company’s long-term incentive plan that was supposed to align executives with shareholders.
While Equifax previously said Smith would not receive any annual bonus specifically for 2017, Bloomberg’s Steven Gandel calculates that he is in line to receive a 73,392-share bonus early next year as part of the long-term incentive plan the company put in place back in 2008.
That’s on top of the $52 million he will walk away with in stock and other retirement benefits that he accrued as part of his nearly 12-year run as CEO. That doesn’t even include the nearly $13 million he received in salary and cash bonuses for the past three years alone. He also may be entitled to lifetime health insurance and $60,000 worth of financial planning and tax advice.
What is even more surprising, is that Equifax’s very limited clawback policy “which the company has called rigorous,” applies only to financial restatements. That means Smith will have to return almost none of this tens of millions of dollars of pay, even if the company eventually finds that the hack has was his fault.
It gets better: Smith is in line to receive as much as another $11 million stock bonus at the end of next year, or a grand total over $18 million.
While the populist outrage will be acute, it will also likely be brief and last until the next, even more egregious, instance of unpunished, if very well compensated, corporate negligence. As Gandel summarizes the CEO’s quiet departure, “Smith’s exit pay, and particularly the looming bonus payments, follows an unfortunately well-worn pattern: Something egregious happens at a company. Someone has to take the inevitable hit, normally the CEO, who then walks into the sunset with millions of dollars.”
It doesn’t have to be that way…
Last year, Wells Fargo, under extreme pressure, eventually decided to claw back as much as $136 million from its former CEO John Stumpf and former executive Carrie Tolstedt, who ran the division at the center of that bank’s fake accounts scandal. The bank was originally planning to pay both executives in full. But that is one of the handful of cases in which companies have instituted a clawback.
… but it most likely will be due to several key footnotes in Smith’s departure, chief being that it is a “retirement” which means that all else equal, Smith’s multimillion-dollar long-term stock bonus payments
are safe. And while the company said that is could reclassify his exit as a
“termination with cause” – if the board finds that Smith was at fault – that rarely happens according to Gandel, who notes that with Smith already
out, it seems unlikely the board would go back and revisit his exit. As we noted this morning, the
two other executives who also left the company – both of whom were in charge of security (and one was a music major) were also allowed to retire.
Furthermore, and this goes to CEO incentives to keep issuing debt and buying back company stock boosting the share price in the process, oblivious if this means the company will be saddled with unrepayable debt and potentially resulting in insolvency, the Equifax long-term compensation plan is based entirely on the company’s stock performance for the past three years compared with the S&P 500.
What’s more, the plan included a calculation that was supposed to protect the executives against any sudden drops in the company’s stock at the end of the three-year period. That is in part why Smith is still eligible for such a big payout, despite Equifax’s recent stock plunge. Before the hack, the company’s shares were up nearly 75 percent in the previous two and a half years.
Finally, there is Equifax’s clawback plan, or rather lack thereof. Gandel writes that Equifax will only seek to claw back past pay from executives in instances in which the company is forced to make a material restatement of its past results. If, however, they do something that destroys the company’s reputation, subjects it to investigations and likely impacts the company’s prospects for years to come – like in this case – their past pay, the many millions of it, is in the clear.
In short, congratulations to Richard…
… who played the game of crony capitalism to perfection, and gets his parting present. 143 million other Americans may not be so lucky.
via http://ift.tt/2wj0Ywt Tyler Durden
Television Critic Glenn Garvin checks out the latest true crime anthology re-enactment to hit the airwaves, thanks to Law & Order mastermind Dick Wolf:
It represents the most audacious branding effort since back in the 1950s when entire shows were named after the products that sponsored them, like The Texaco Star Theater. In this, executive producer Dick Wolf is employing the name of his cookie-cutter Law & Order series (at least seven of them so far, not distinguishable from one another by the human eye) to launch an entirely unrelated anthology true-crime series. If this works, I expect Law & Order: Chupacabra and Law & Order: Kardashian Butt-Sculpting to follow shortly.
Even more startlingly, The Menendez Brothers is not a bad show at all. Wolf’s laconic just-the-bloodily-murderous-facts-ma’am approach mixes surprisingly well with the tabloid-trash genre. When your show stars parent-killing sociopaths who raise incestuous child-molestation as a defense, you don’t need to toss Lady Gaga or Siegfried and Roy into the mix.
Before O.J. and the white Bronco drove into our lives, the Menendez brothers seemed like the made-for-TV true crime couple of the century. Vacuous Beverly Hills brats, they were accused in 1989 of shotgunning their wealthy parents to death so they could buy Porches and tennis coaches without taking a lot of lip about it. Their first trial, broadcast daily by Court TV (the early incarnation of what is today TruTV) was a national sensation—or so we thought until O.J came long and redefined the term.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2xJnG43
via IFTTT
Iraqi Kurds voted “yes” in the referendum to start materializing the dream of the 30 million Kurds inhabiting Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Armenia – a dream which begins by establishing an independent state in Iraqi Kurdistan. Despite the announcement of the Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani that the referendum is only the beginning of a negotiation with the central government in Baghdad (and not a “divorce” from the state of Iraq), he hopes (and most probably knows) that independence will be recognized as a fact by the international community sooner or later.
For certain, this referendum – if its result is implemented – can lead to a redefinition of the map of the Middle East, and the countries of Iraq and Syria to start with where Kurds in both countries control enough energy resources to sustain their “state”. Leaders around the world said, during the war in Syria, that the Middle East would never return as it was to before 2011, probably referring to the “Islamic State” (ISIS) occupation of large part of Syria and Iraq. But today, their prediction may come true through the Kurds – even though the “Islamic State” (ISIS) “project” failed to reach its objective, that of dividing Syria and Iraq.
Thus, the Kurdish will to establish an independent state is giving greater power to Turkey, which will hold the key of the Kurdish future state and to the partition of the Middle East. In fact, in Iraq, Ankara will play a crucial role in the coming months or years in reshaping Mesopotamia and the Levant. Kurdistan exports its main oil revenue through Turkey, putting Erbil at Ankara’s mercy. Therefore, if Turkey considers independence a threat to its national security, it will not hesitate to send troops into Kurdistan, triggering probably numbness and little effective reaction from Baghdad. Moreover, recent media coverage which showed Iranian Kurds in Kirkuk encourages a free hand and perfect excuse for Tehran to hit these forces in Iraq if Erbil takes further measures towards independence.
Image via Elijah J. Magnier
Just prior to Monday's referendum, a Kurdish delegation from Erbil visited Baghdad to negotiate with the central government a postponement and rescheduling of the vote. They presented a series of conditions (considered unacceptable by Baghdad) insisting on a future Kurdish independent state. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi showed no flexibility and launched threats against Erbil. Abadi declared the closure of airspace over Erbil and asked neighboring countries to follow this step, to which Tehran and Ankara have responded positively. According to Nawzad Adham, Kurdistan general director at the Trade and Industry local Ministry, Kurdistan business exchanges with Turkey and Iran exceed $10 billion per year. Kurdistan imports 95% of its agriculture needs from Turkey and Iran and depends on Turkey to export its oil.
Kurdistan escaped most of the destruction caused by the first Gulf war in 1991, the Iraqi occupation in 2003, and the war against ISIS in 2014 (to date). The Kurds are spread over 40.000 square kilometers, they control over 40% of the Iraq's oil, its energy reserves are estimated at around 45 billion barrels of oil and 150 trillion cubic meter of gas, and they export around 900,000 b/d via Turkey. Oil has long been the source of dispute between Baghdad and Erbil: in October 2011, the Kurds signed an exploration deal with the US oil giant Exxon Mobil (of which US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is the former CEO) for six exploration blocks, and this without Central government approval, sparking the first official confrontation with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Since then, Kurdistan has refrained from agreeing on any fiscal control from the finance Ministry related to oil (and telecommunication) revenue cashed in by Erbil and consequently Baghdad has refrained from paying 17% of its total oil revenue – since 25% of Iraqi total oil revenue is apparently ending in Kurdish leaders’ pockets.
Many western officials considered the Kurds as the only serious US partner against ISIS. However, it was the same Barzani who praised the ISIS occupation of Mosul in June 2014 because it offered an opportunity for the partition of Iraq. Moreover, Iraqi forces (including the Popular Mobilization Units) lost more than 10,000 men, and recovered most of the territory controlled by ISIS, while the Kurds of Erbil limited them to defend Kurdistan, lost around 1300 men, and took back Sinjar in a few hours after allowing ISIS to leave the Iraqi city to Syria.
Barzani counts on international recognition to protect his “new state” in the future, regardless of the verbally negative stance of many countries, including the US, the UK and the UN. The Kurdish leader is not politically suicidal and would never insist on such a controversial step without enough international political support behind him, despite what is overtly announced by the major external powers. Kurds in Iraq believe the referendum is a historical opportunity that can't be missed, while Baghdad believes it is a huge mistake which Kurds will regret in the future. In fact, Iraqi PM Abadi is taking gradual measures against Barzani. These measures are expected to increase, putting in jeopardy the future of Iraqi Kurdish businesses and communities in many parts of Iraq, which includes over 1.5 million Kurdish employees within the various Iraqi state ministries and official institutions, and may very well lead to a military confrontation in the main contested areas, especially the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk (the oil fields are situated outside the city and under Kurdish Peshmerga control).
Army Col. Ralph Peters' controversial "Blood Borders" map envisioning the future Middle East and studied at US war colleges. Originally published in the Armed Forces Journal – which identifies the map as its most viewed and downloaded of all time. Via Wiki Commons.
In Syria, the Kurdish future “federation” (Kurds in Syria are expected to start with a request for a federation before moving on towards a state, like in Iraq) will force a Damascus-Ankara collaboration, obliging Syria to turn a blind eye on the Turkish forces present in the north of the country and postpone its claim to recover its territory for a while. A rich Kurdish Federation in Syria and “state” in Iraq will definitely create a serious menace to Turkey that is holding the largest Kurdish population (over 16 million). The Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan is in a privileged position but also needs to play his cards skilfully to avoid consequences on his own territory: once the Kurds of Iraq show their will to have a state, those in the rest of the region won’t stay long before following the same path.
In fact, the Syrian Kurds count around 8% of the population but control (under the US forces command and guidance) today 25% of the territory and 40% of oil and gas resources assuming they keep control over the oil and gas rich province of Deir Ezzor in northeast Syria. The Kurds have already initiated local community elections and are planning for council elections in the next months, with the election of a parliament expected next year in northeast Syria.
The end of ISIS’s control of territories in Syria and Iraq is certain by 2018. However, it is also certain that the Middle East is coming into a new period of chaos, putting all borders into question, and affecting the stability of the region.
via http://ift.tt/2y5JGal Tyler Durden