Month: August 2018

“This Is A Coup For China”: Senators Slam Google’s Plan For Censored China Search Engine

Two days ago we reported that in a striking departure from its mission statement of keeping speech free and uncensored, in its latest attempt to penetrate the Chinese market, Google was planning the rollout of a censored search engine in China. Google originally shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, citing – ironically – government attempts to “limit free speech on the web” but that no longer appears to be a binding consideration. 

Google has demonstrated the app which would blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and protests, to the Chinese government, and a final version could be rolled out in six to nine months. As The Intercept reported citing internal documents leaked by a whistleblower, Google had been developing the censored version of its search engine under the codename Dragonfly since the beginning of 2017. The search engine is being built as an Android mobile app, and will reportedly “blacklist sensitive queries” and filter out all websites blocked by China’s web censors (including Wikipedia and BBC News). The censorship will extend to Google’s image search, spell check, and suggested search features.

Today, a group of Republican and Democratic senators slammed Alphabet Google the still unconfirmed reports it is developing a censored version of its search engine. According to Bloomberg, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a prominent China critic, was joined by five other lawmakers on a letter to Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai on Friday demanding answers about the proposed “Dragonfly” search engine.

“If true, this reported plan is deeply troubling and risks making Google complicit in human rights abuses related to China’s rigorous censorship regime. It is a coup for the Chinese government and Communist Party to force Google — the biggest search engine in the world — to comply with their onerous censorship requirements, and sets a worrying precedent for other companies seeking to do business in China without compromising their core values.”

The letter demands details on Google’s push into China, and was also signed by Republicans Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Rubio has emerged as a strident critic of China. He voted this week against the annual defense policy bill because it didn’t include stringent punishment of Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE Corp. for violating U.S. sanctions by selling technology to Iran and North Korea

“We appreciate your prompt reply to this inquiry, including any views that you are prepared to share as to how this reported development can be reconciled with Google’s unofficial motto, ‘Don’t be evil,’” the letter concludes.

And while Google responded that it declines to comment on “speculation about future plans”, in a separate article Bloomberg reports that as Google is contemplating its Chinese expansion, it has already figured out just how it will monetize selling out: it is laying the groundwork for a key part of the initiative, bringing its cloud business to the world’s second-largest economy.

The internet giant is in talks with Tencent Holdings Ltd., Inspur Group and other Chinese companies to offer Google cloud services in the mainland, according to people familiar with the discussions. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

The talks began in early 2018 and Google narrowed partnership candidates to three firms in late March, according to one of the people. However, with trade tensions between China and the U.S. now looming over the effort, it’s unclear if the plans will proceed.

After years of slowly rebuilding a presence in China, Google has pressed the accelerator recently. As Bloomberg notes, it’s building a cloud data center region in Hong Kong this year and opened an artificial intelligence research center in Beijing in January. Along with other Alphabet Inc. units, it has begun investing more in Chinese companies. Plans for a censored search app in China surfaced earlier this week, sparking a furious debate about whether Google is putting profit over its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally available.”

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130,000 Acres Burned In California After 143-MPH “Fire Tornado” Rips Through Redding

California’s Shasta County is dealing with the 6th-worst fire in state history, which has killed 6 people and burned over 130,000 acres. The Carr fire, which is just 39% contained and being fought by oiver 4,300 fire personnel, has destroyed over 1,500 structures and is threatening another 1,300. Thousands of residents have been evacuated, while Yosemite Valley gave people until Noon on Friday to leave the area. 

Fire tornado

Large fires such as the Carr can produce their own unique weather paterns – and this was no exception. On July 26, the inferno unleashed a “fire tornado” that was so strong it uprooted trees and stripped away their bark. The National Weather Service on Thursday said that the vortex reached in excess of 143 MPH – equivalent to an EF-3 on the enhanced Fujita tornado scale. 

“This is historic in the U.S.,” Craig Clements, director of San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory, told BuzzFeed News. “This might be the strongest fire-induced tornado-like circulation ever recorded.”

Known as a pyrocumulus cloud, the ominous red weather formations usually occur over volcanic eruptions or forest fires when intensely heated air triggers an upward motion that pushes smoke and water vapor to rapidly rise. They can develop their own weather patters, including thunderstorms with severe winds which then further fan the flames. 

The tornado formed as the blaze, which has already charred an area three times as large as the District of Columbia, erupted and began to rotate like a supercell thunderstorm. Initially the smoke plume reached about 20,000 feet. That’s not overly impressive for a thunderstorm, but it couldn’t rise any higher: It was trapped beneath an inversion.

That “cap” in the atmosphere caused the smoke to spread out. But around 7:15 p.m. Pacific time, two plumes suddenly managed to break the cap. They rose into an unstable environment and exploded upward, towering to nearly 40,000 feet within just 30 minutes. That extreme, rapid vertical growth of the fire fueled an updraft that eventually would spawn the tornado. –WaPo

Fire map of California: 

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Is This The End Of Ultra Cheap Gasoline In Venezuela?

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via Oilprice.com,

As the economic crisis continues to deepen, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro is promising a new policy on gasoline (the world’s cheapest) – which is currently generously subsidized by the socialist regime.

Maduro promised earlier this week to roll out a new plan to ease the economic crisis and hyperinflation in a televised address to the nation that was delayed because of an hours-long blackout in the capital Caracas.

Although mismanagement and crumbling infrastructure often leave the countryside without power, it’s a rare event in the capital city and government seat, Caracas, the AP notes.

The president didn’t elaborate on the gasoline policy plan, but said in a televised cabinet meeting, as carried by Bloomberg:

“I’m committed and with a new national hydrocarbon policy we’ll have enough money, cash, in this country to invest in everything our people need.”

“We’ll have money to spare.”

Maduro of course didn’t say that gasoline prices would be increased, but warned that people who don’t take part in a nationwide car census beginning on Friday would not be eligible to receive state subsidies for gasoline.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s inflation will surge to one million percent by the end of this year as the country with the world’s biggest oil reserves remains stuck in a profound economic and social crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts.

“We are projecting a surge in inflation to 1,000,000 percent by end-2018 to signal that the situation in Venezuela is similar to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000’s,” Alejandro Werner, Director of the Western Hemisphere Department, wrote in an IMF blog post last week.

Venezuela’s real gross domestic product is expected to drop by 18 percent this year, which would be the third consecutive year of GDP plunging by double digits, “driven by a significant drop in oil production and widespread micro-level distortions on top of large macroeconomic imbalances,” Werner said.

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Local News Publishes Identities of Gay Men Arrested for Consensual Sex

|||MilsiArt/Dreamstime.comDoes private, consensual gay sex warrant a police raid? How about a smear campaign?

In Florida last month, officers of the Hollywood Police Department raided an adult store called the Pleasure Emporium. Someone had called the cops claiming that patrons were committing lewd acts inside; an undercover couple went to the store, purchased tickets for an adult video room, and found gay men allegedly performing sex acts either on themselves or with each other. It wasn’t prostitution, but the cops decided it violated the statutes against lascivious acts and exposure of sexual organs. The arrests followed, and a police report noted the identities of those involved.

Just a day later, the men became victims of what the Miami New Times has rightly called a smear campaign.

Local outlets such as WPLG and The Miami Herald posted the men’s names and mugshots. Abbie Cuellar, a lawyer representing one of the men, tells the New Times that her client lost his job as a result. The man had fled Cuba two decades ago because he was persecuted for being gay; he saw the United States as a “beacon of ‘freedom.'”

“Imagine: You’re having sex with a consenting adult,” she says, “and then you’re arrested and held overnight, and your whole, entire life has been exposed on TV. Your picture is everywhere. You’re on the internet! My client has even been getting calls from Cuba. This was horrible, horrible, horrible”

After the New Times reached out, the Herald revised its story by removing the arrestees’ identities and mugshots. A joke about the arrested watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also removed. An editor’s note read, “This story has been updated to remove portions deemed inappropriate under the Miami Herald’s editorial standards.”

The New Times also tried to contact the journalist who wrote the WPLG story, but it did not receive an immediate response. The WPLG story has not, at this point, been revised.

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Liberal Hero Chomsky Admits “Israeli Intervention In US Elections Overwhelms Anything Russia Has Done”

Well, this is going to make the weekend’s political conversations a little more awkward around America.

As the mainstream media (and even the leftist politicians) begin to back quietly away from the “collusion” narrative, they remain increasingly focused on Russia’s “evil” efforts at “meddling” in the US election and “interfering with our democracy,” or some such hysterical phrase.

And that is what makes the comments by mainstay of world-renowned political dissident and liberal-thinking hero Noam Chomsky’s comments in the following interview with Democracy Now so ‘awkward’ for the Trump-hating members of society.

…so, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke.

First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.

Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done…

I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015….

Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to – calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.

So if you happen to be interested in influence of – foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There’s nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States.

There’s ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters’ attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they’re basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent – the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector.

The elections—Tom Ferguson’s stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That’s only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions.

So, if you’re concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he’s perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia.

Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes – Russia shouldn’t refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done.

But they shouldn’t refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn’t refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better – right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We’re very close to that.

Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it’s because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama.

The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That’s the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns.

So, yes, there’s tensions at the Russian border – and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern.

The fate of – the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.

So to sum up – Trump’s right about better relations with Russia – the fate of the world depends on it, Russia did nothing of note, Russian hacking is extremely marginal, Israel is the real meddler, US democracy no longer exists, the billionaire corporatocracy runs America.

Is Noam Chomsky a “puppet of Putin”? Did the veteran political dissident just become a “useful idiot”? Well he must be an anti-semite, right? We look forward to Adam Schiff’s response to this crushing blow to the left’s ‘russia-russia-russia’ narrative.

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Weekend Reading: Mathematical Adjustments Don’t Change Reality

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Yesterday, I discussed the mathematical adjustment to the GDP calculation that added $1 trillion to economic growth. To wit:

“Where did a bulk of the change come from? A change in the calculation of “real” GDP from using 2009 dollars to 2012 dollars which boosted growth strictly from a lower rate of inflation.  As noted by the BEA:

“For 2012-2017, the average rate of change in the prices paid by U.S. residents, as measured by the gross domestic purchasers’ price index, was 1.2 percent, 0.1 percentage point lower than in the previously published estimates.”

Of course, when you ask the average household about “real inflation,” in terms of healthcare costs, insurance, food, energy, etc., they are likely to give you quite an earful that the cost of living is substantially higher than 1.2%. Nonetheless, the chart below shows “real” GDP both pre- and post-2018 revisions.”

Importantly, the entire revision is almost entirely due to a change in the inflation rate. On a nominal basis, there was virtually no real change at all. In other words, stronger economic growth came from a mathematical adjustment rather than increases in actual economic activity.

The change to a lower inflation rate also boosted disposable incomes and personal consumption expenditures which also boosted the savings rate. However, what doesn’t change is economic reality. The chart below shows what we call “real DPI” or rather it is disposable incomes (which is gross income minus taxes) less spending. What we have left over after paying our bills, healthcare costs, food, tuition, etc. is what is really disposable for spending on other “stuff” or “saving.”

Despite the adjusted bump in savings, consumer activity continues to remain weak. Given that roughly 70% of the economic calculation comes from personal consumption, watching consumer activity is a good leading indicator of where the economy is headed next. PCE figures also suggest the recent bump in economic growth is likely transitory. Looking back historically, GDP tends to follow PCE and not vice-versa.

More importantly, weaker economic growth rates will also be met with much tougher year-over-year comparisons on corporate earnings which likely further hamper equity returns in the near term.

As we summed up yesterday:

“As an investor, it is important to remember that in the end corporate earnings and profits are a function of the economy and not the other way around. Historically, GDP growth and revenues have grown at roughly equivalent rates.

Forget the optimism surrounding “’Trumpenomics’ and focus on longer-term economic trends which have been declining for the past 30+ years. The economic trend is a function of a growing burden of debt, increasing demographic headwinds and, very importantly, declining productivity growth. I see little to make me believe these are changing in a meaningful way.”

Changing the math doesn’t change reality.

Just something to think about as you catch up on your weekend reading list.

Economy & Fed

Markets

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Research / Interesting Reads

“Everything eventually reverts to the mean.” – Frank Holmes

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Pro-Life Conservatives Should Understand that Mothers Are Better Guardians of the Unborn than the Government: New at Reason

With Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination—and near certain confirmation—to the Supreme Court, the pro-life lobby can finally look forward to overturning its much-Abortionhated Roe v. Wade ruling that prevented states from banning abortion. At the same time, however, there are signs that public opinion is shifting on the side of protecting reproductive rights.

Pro-life conservatives have so far tried to appear sympathetic to women who opt for abortions. However, if their impatience to change the status quo that they find intolerable gets the better of them, they might dial up the rhetoric that abortion is murder, and women who opt for the procedure are murders.

That is not only false but would also be strategically unwise. Do they really believe that the government would be a better guardian of the rights of the unborn than mothers themselves, asks Shikha Dalmia?

View this article.

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Miami Sees 65 Percent Drop in DUIs, Thanks in Part to Ridesharing

DUI arrests have plummeted in the Miami area. The Miami Herald reports that activists and public safety officials are giving partial credit to ridesharing services.

“Ride-sharing has definitely impacted things,” Lt. Joaquin Freire, who commands the city’s traffic enforcement unit, tells the Herald. “There’s always an Uber around.”

“We know it’s had an impact,” adds David Pinsker of Florida’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving branch. “I can say that certainly.”

Drunk driving arrests made by the Miami-Dade County police force are down some 65 percent, falling from over 1,500 in 2015 to 594 in 2017. Arrests by Miami city police have fallen by a smaller but still significant 35 percent from 2015. (Uber and Lyft both started operating in the city in mid-2014.)

The drop in arrests has come hand-in-hand with safer roads. Forty-two fewer people died on Miami’s roads in 2017 than did in 2015. And though the raw number of traffic accidents has ticked up slightly in Miami-Dade County—not surprisingly, given the growth in both population and vehicle miles travelled—traffic injuries are down in real terms.

Correlation does not equal causation, of course; many factors could be contributing to the fall in both DUIs and traffic fatalities. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to think that ridesharing can claim a good deal of responsibility.

According to a February 2018 study from the Shared Use Mobility Center, Uber and Lyft use is at its peak during nights and weekends, when drivers are more likely to be both drunk and bereft of public transit options. Being able to summon a car at the touch of a button no doubt keeps a lot of these weekend warriors from getting behind the wheel.

A similar phenomenon can be observed at the national level. Drunk driving deaths have fallen from a high of .45 deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles travelled a decade ago to .33 deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles travelled today.

Academic research is also increasing suggesting that ridesharing brings down alcohol-related crashes in most cities.

A 2016 study on the topic found no relationship between the number of drunk driving fatalities and the introducing of rideshare services in 100 cities across the country. But this study depended on data from 2009 to 2014, just as ridesharing was really taking off and before the fall in DUI arrests in late-adopting cities like Miami.

Subsequent investigations have turned up significant safety improvements. A 2017 study, for example, looked at crash data from four cities—Portland, Reno, Las Vegas, and San Antonio—where Uber and Lyft experienced month-long pauses in their operations. They found a 60 percent decline in crashes in Portland when ridesharing returned, and a 40 percent decline in San Antonio. Researchers found no effect in Las Vegas or Reno. (That may be because those cities are big tourist destinations, where most drunks are out-of-towners choosing between an Uber and a cab, not an Uber and their personal vehicle.) And a 2017 working paper from the City University of New York attributed a 23 to 35 percent decline in alcohol-related collision rates to the introduction of ridesharing in New York City.

Yet more and more cities are looking to restrict these services. Washington, D.C., upped its tax on rideshare trips by 500 percent in June, justifying the move in part as a way for Uber to pay for the increased congestion it has allegedly caused. San Francisco politicians are trying something similar. In New York City, political will is increasingly coalescing behind a proposal to cap the number of rideshare vehicles.

The main effect of such measures will be to limit people’s transportation options. To the extent that this applies to people who’ve had a few too many while out on the town, that will likely mean more intoxicated people getting behind the wheel—and, thus, more accidents.

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Stocks, Bonds, Dollar Gain As US Macro Plunges To 11-Month Lows

Everything was going so great – Apple etc… – and then China ruined the party and payrolls disappointed…

An ugly week for US macro data (tumbling to its most disappointing in 11 months) did nothing to stall hopes for economic growth…

Or faith in the US plunge protection team…

 

And, despite today’s spike, yuan ended lower for the 8th week in a row (and 14th of the last 16 weeks) as China-US trade tensions escalated further…

 

As Chinese stock cratered…

 

European stocks were unhappy too…

 

But USA USA USA was positive – even The Dow managed to get back to ‘even’… as Trannies outperformed…

 

It seems ‘Murica is winning the trade war – or the equity algos are anyway…

 

AAPL managed to hold on to its trillion-dollar market cap…

 

Big week for TSLA as it squeezed higher again… but bonds faded today…

 

Nasdaq bounced perfectly off its 50DMA…

 

FANG Stocks ended the week lower (despite Nasdaq gains)…

 

Treasury yields were broadly lower on the week (thanks to a heavy bid today) but 30Y ended higher (in yield)…

 

The yield curve steepened on the week

 

10Y briefly topped 3.00% (China?) early in the week, before pushing back lower (note the same level on Fed day in June)… so now do we plunge back to the other end of the range?

 

Remember, bond positioning has never been more short.

 

The Dollar ended the week higher, but found resistance in the middle of ECB-day spike range…

 

Turkish Lira was the week’s biggest loser, puking above 5.00/USD for the first time ever…

 

Cryptos were ugly all week… just leg down after leg down…

 

Worst week for Bitcoin in two months, back below $8,000…

 Ethereum found support relative to Bitcoin once again at the 2017 year-end close…

 

Commodities rallied today but ended the week lower overall…

 

Finally, we note that China’s stock market capitalization has slumped to its lowest relative to the world since 2014 and a critical point of support/resistance…

Does this mean Trump is winning?

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Kushner Family Sells 666 Fifth Avenue Office Tower To Brookfield

Brookfield Asset Management has agreed to purchase the lease the office portion of 666 Fifth Ave. in midtown Manhattan from the Kushner family, the WSJ reported.

“Given Brookfield’s experience in successfully redeveloping and repositioning major office assets in New York and other cities around the world, we are well placed to capitalize on that opportunity,” Ric Clark, Brookfield Property Group’s chairman, said in a statement.

While terms of the deal weren’t disclosed in a statement Friday, the WSJ notes that the proceeds would give the family enough to pay off the more than $1.1 billion of debt on the building and buy out its partner, Vornado Realty Trust, for $120 million so it can transfer 666 Fifth to Brookfield unencumbered.

The sale means that the Kushner family likely won’t make any money on its investment in 666 Fifth Ave. In recent years, the building hasn’t been generating enough money to pay its debt service. Jared Kushner had already sold his stake in 666 Fifth to a trust controlled by other family members to avoid potential conflicts. Still, the talks between Anbang and his father ignited criticism that Kushner might use his position to help his family salvage its investment.

Brookfield, which is buying the property through one of its private-equity funds, also plans to invest more than $600 million in overhauling the 39-story building, giving it a new lobby, façade and mechanical systems, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The building has seen its rental payments suffer in recent years due to a relatively high vacancy rate but is viewed in real-estate circles as having potential due to its prime location on Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets.

The structure of the deal is different from what Brookfield and Kushner Cos. discussed in the spring. Back then, Brookfield was considering a deal in which it would essentially acquire Vornado’s 49.5% stake in the property and become partners with the Kushner family.

The infamous “devil” tower with the 666 on the front door, has been under scrutiny because Jared Kushner is married to President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and is a senior adviser to the president. When the Kushner Cos acquired the building in 2007 for $1.8 billion, it represented a New York commercial real estate record and was made when Kushner was taking a leadership role in the business. It remained precarious for years, and potential deals became complicated after Mr. Kushner took the senior White House job.

One of the uncertainties about the Brookfield purchase of the 99-year lease is how much of the current debt on the building is going to be repaid. In the 2011 restructuring, the debt was carved into two pieces—a senior piece and a junior piece. The senior piece is worth $1.1 billion and the junior piece has increased since 2011 to over $300 million, because interest on it has been accruing.

Kushner executives have been arguing that only the senior debt on the building has to be repaid, partly because 666 Fifth isn’t worth the total $1.4 billion of debt on the building.

The recent history of the building is remarkable:

The property has taken numerous twists, both financial and political. Kushner Cos. sold a controlling stake in the retail space for more than $500 million a few years after it purchased the tower in 2007, using most of the proceeds to repay debt.

But that wasn’t enough to shore up the property in the post-crash years. In 2011, Kushner Cos. renegotiated what was then $1.2 billion in debt and brought in Vornado as a 49.5% partner.

In 2017, soon after Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, was negotiating with Anbang Insurance Group, a Chinese insurer with connections to Beijing government. The elder Mr. Kushner’s plan at the time was to use Anbang’s capital in a $7.5 billion plan to convert 666 Fifth Ave. into a 1,400-foot-tall mixed use skyscraper with retail, hotel and condominiums.

Soon after, the Anbang talks soon collapsed. Since then, Kushner Cos. has steered clear of any deals with sovereign funds, a decision which has made the firm rein in its ambitious plans for the site. The family also faced a deadline: the debt on the building needs to be repaid next year.

And thanks to Brookfield, that will be someone else’s problem now.

 

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