Month: September 2018

Report: Federal Low Income Housing Program Lacks Basic Anti-Fraud Safeguards

The federal government’s flagship affordable housing program lacks basic anti-fraud safeguards, according to a new government watchdog report.

Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an investigation into the $9 billion a year Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, finding that it lacks the necessary monitoring to prevent contractors, developers, and other program beneficiaries from fraudulently overbilling the system.

This has been a long-running problem for the LIHTC program, which has been wracked in recent years by relavations of large-scale fraud and abuse. In 2016, a group of developers and contractors in Florida pled guilty to defrauding LIHTC of some $36 million in affordable housing funds. That same year, a Los Angeles housing developer was indicted on charges stemming from an effort to defraud the program of some $50 million.

In both cases, developers conspired with contractors to inflate the construction costs of their affordable housing projects, something the complex, poorly monitored LIHTC program does little to guard against.

Unlike other federal housing programs, which are administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), LIHTC is managed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which dolls out tax credits to state housing finance agencies (HFAs) who in turn award these tax credits to affordable housing developers based on the costs of their projects. These affordable housing developers then sell off the tax credits to banks and investors who use them to lower their own tax liability.

The complexity of LIHTC and the fact that it is administered by the IRS all but ensures there is going to be poor monitoring of the money going out the door, says Vanessa Brown Calder, a housing policy expert with the Cato Institute.

“When you have a really complicated program, it requires a lot of monitoring to make sure that abuse isn’t happening, because there are so many pieces moving, so many people involved,” Calder tells Reason. “Building housing is not part of the IRS’s mission. They don’t have the capacity to monitor housing, nor do they have the interest to monitor LIHTC housing costs.”

According to the latest GAO report, the IRS requires only that developers report high-level data on how much they pay contractors working on their projects, which leaves open the “risk of unscrupulous developers, contractors, and subcontractors inflating costs and obtaining excess program resources for personal financial gain.”

The state HFAs also have a watchdog role to play when handing out LIHTC credits to developers, but they too have performed poorly. The latest GAO report looked in depth at twelve state HFAs, finding that only five required additional information on contractor costs over and above the minimal reporting that the IRS requires.

Given that these HFAs are often run by political appointees, or even by partisan elected officials in some states, there is an incentive to use LIHTC funds as a tool of political patronage.

Last year, the Sacramento Bee reported that California treasurer John Chiang—who sits on the three-member board that administers California’s LIHTC funds—had voted to award millions in LIHTC credits to developers that had also given tens of thousands of dollars to his gubernatorial campaign.

A 2016 study of LIHTC found “a modest relationship between partisan loyalty and housing investment,” finding that “Democratic governors steer tax credits to areas of core support, but only where the governor exercises a high level of control over the state’s LIHTC-allocating agency.”

In keeping with its hands-off approach to the program, the IRS has done remarkably little to supervise the activities of these HFAs. A GAO report from 2015 found that of the 56 agencies in the country that award LIHTC credits, the IRS had audited only seven in the 30-year history of the program.

While a skeptic of federal housing aid, Calder suggests that replacing LIHTC with a program that simply gives vouchers to low-income tenants would making monitoring for fraud easier and be more efficient in reducing rents.

The GAO recommendations were more marginal still, suggesting that the IRS require more information about construction costs from contractors, and that Congress appoint a specific agency (potentially HUD) to collect and review data from the LIHTC program.

Even these reforms are unlikely to come to pass. The IRS rejected all GAO recommendations that it step up its monitoring of the LIHTC program. Congress, meanwhile, has done little to increase oversight while voting back in March to increase funding for the program.

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Stossel: Leaving the Left

Dave Rubin is a popular YouTube host who was once on the left. He worked for The Young Turks TV show.

But Rubin tells John Stossel how he gradually changed his mind and became a classical liberal. For that, Rubin lost friends and gets protested at college campuses.

While many leftists are so angry at Rubin that they will no longer talk to him, conservatives are eager to talk. Rubin says that surprised him because, “I’m pro-choice. Most of them are pro-life. I’m against the death penalty, most of them are for the death penalty.”

Stossel had a similar experience. “When I went from left to libertarian, the right was willing to argue,” he tells Rubin.

Why would that be? Rubin speculates that it comes down to treating people as individuals rather than groups. “If you believe in the individual, then you fundamentally understand that individuals are different. So you are willing to sit down with someone different than you,” he says.

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The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

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Peter Schiff Warns “Trump Tariff Put” On The Stock Market Is Worthless

Via SchiffGold.com,

The Dow Jones pushed into record-high territory again late last week. As Peter Schiff pointed out in his latest podcast, Pres. Trump was out there pointing out the record run on Wall Street and claiming responsibility for this bull market. Just turn on Fox News and hardly a segment will go by that somebody isn’t reminding you about how great the economy is. Peter said it reminds him how people were talking up George W. Bush before the Great Recession.

Just because you’re a Republican, you don’t have to claim that anything that’s done by another Republican is great in order to make the Democrats look bad. Because ultimately that comes back and bites you because you lose all credibility when the economy turns down and you’ve been gushing over how great it is and how successful the Republican president is. And when it turns out it was just a bubble, it was just an illusion and when the bubble bursts and the illusion is replaced with a harsh reality, well you’ve got nothing and it makes it easier for the other side to scapegoat capitalism for the problems and hold out more government as the solution.”

Nevertheless, the markets are going up. One of the reasons is the so-called “Trump tariff put.” The idea is that Trump will keep an eye on the stock market and the economy, and if the tariffs actually start to have a negative impact, he can just soften his stance and perhaps even lower the tariffs. That will rescue the stock market and everything will be fine.

In other words, there’s this put. So, it’s heads the market wins, tails, nobody loses, right? Because as long as the tariffs aren’t doing any damage, the markets keep going up, but if the tariffs turn out that they do damage, well they get rid of them and the market resumes going up, even if it has temporarily gone down. So, that is the ‘Trump put,’ just like the ‘Greenspan put’ we had, which became the ‘Bernanke put’ and the ‘Yellen put,’ whether or not there is a ‘Powell put’ beneath the market – the idea was, hey, if the market ever falls, the Federal Reserve is going to slash rates to make it go up again. So, you can’t lose. Even if the market goes down, you’re going to get bailed out, whether it’s by the Federal Reserve or whether it’s by Donald Trump.”

But Peter said he thinks this is just wishful thinking.

It’s the kind of attitude you get during a bubble – a mania. And wishful thinking won’t change reality.

If the stock market really starts to fall, it’s not going to matter if we call off the tariffs. Because if the market is falling, chances are it’s falling not simply because of the tariffs. I mean, the tariffs might be one element that is a problem for the markets, but it may simply be one of a number, and just getting rid of the tariffs isn’t going to be enough to turn around a bear market in stocks, which is long overdue.”

Actually, the whole “Trump put” thing may work exactly opposite. Let’s say Trump does surrender in the trade war. A lot of people have priced a trade war win into the market. The tariffs are a stick Trump is using to beat the Chinese over the head. The payoff is the US is supposedly going to get these fantastic trade deals when the Chinese finally give in.

But if Trump has to take the tariffs away because he has to admit that we’re losing because the market is going down, maybe the market is already pricing in all of these promised benefits that are waiting for us at the other side of this trade war, and if the trade war is over and we surrender, if the benefits have already been priced into the market, well now we’ve got to price those benefits out, whatever they were. So, it’s even possible that if the market is falling and then Donald Trump’s reaction to a falling market is to back away from the tariffs, the market could actually fall even more. It could accelerate the decline.”

Peter also offered an interesting analysis of cannabis stocks. There is a great deal of volatility in that market right now. Peter said it reminds him of the dot-com era. It’s not that cannabis is a bad industry. But there is a lot of speculation there right now. He said it’s indicative of what you see overall during periods of market mania.

Make sure you listen to the whole podcast. Peter also gets into home sales, the impact of tariffs on consumer prices here in the US, and a GQ article on Puerto Rico.

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Consumer Confidence Explodes To 18 Year High But Wage-Gain Hopes Fade

American consumers’ optimism about the short-term outlook improved considerably in September, with the Conference Board Consumer Confidence index soaring to 138.4 from 134.7 (smashing expectations of a dip to 132.1).

 

“After a considerable improvement in August, Consumer Confidence increased further in September and hovers at an 18-year high,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board.

“The September reading is not far from the all-time high of 144.7 reached in 2000. Consumers’ assessment of current conditions remains extremely favorable, bolstered by a strong economy and robust job growth. The Expectations Index surged in September, suggesting solid economic growth exceeding 3.0 percent for the remainder of the year. These historically high confidence levels should continue to support healthy consumer spending, and should be welcome news for retailers as they begin gearing up for the holiday season.”

However, it is noteworthy that the number of people expecting income growth fell the most since April 2017…

The gap between ‘Present Situation’ and ‘Expectations’ has widened to historically concerning levels, that have in the past preceded recessions…

Of course, as we have shown before, historically high confidence combined with low savings rates has been an ominous precursor for the stock market…

 

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Watch Live: Will Trump Announce New Sanctions Against Iran During UN Speech?

One year after President Trump angered both allies and foes alike when he threatened to annihilate North Korea during a speech at the UN General Assembly, Trump was expected to adopt a more measured tone this year that will nonetheless stress the US’s policy of “maximum pressure” on its enemies, according to Bloomberg.

Though Trump’s rhetoric isn’t expected to be as bellicose as it was last year, when he coined the nickname “Rocket Man” for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before claiming that Kim was on a “suicide mission,” the US president is expected to focus on the importance of bringing the Iranian regime to heel. The speech comes just weeks before the Trump administration is expected to impose economic sanctions against Iran in November, a process that China, Russia and the US’s erstwhile EU partners are developing strategies to circumvent, per Bloomberg.

Trump

National Security Advisor even hinted that Trump could surprise his audience by unveiling new sanctions against the Islamic Republic when Bolton said Monday that “more are coming” during a meeting with reporters.

“We’ve imposed very stringent sanctions on Iran. More are coming,” National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters Monday at the UN General Assembly. “And what we expect from Iran is massive changes in their behavior. And until that happens, we will continue to exert what the president has called ‘maximum pressure.'”

While Trump loves to bash the UN (he famously believes the US spends too much money on the UN’s operations) National Security Adviser John Bolton has said that Trump’s Tuesday speech will focus on “American sovereignty” and “how that fits into America’s place in the world as a whole.”

On a more amusing note, Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have traded insults this week after Rouhani said he wouldn’t agree to meet with the US until the Iran deal is reinstated, despite what he said were several overtures from US officials. In response Trump tweeted that he had “no plans to meet with…Rouhani”, having rebuffed requests from his administration.

Iran’s foreign mission reiterated Tuesday morning that no meeting with Trump had been requested. To be sure, Trump has said in the past that he would be open to meeting Rouhani. The Iranian president will have an opportunity to rebut Trump’s claims during his own address to the general assembly later Tuesday.

“That bridge must be rebuilt,” he said. Meanwhile, Iran can withstand U.S. sanctions, he said, calling the Trump administration’s threats to choke off his country’s oil exports an “empty promise.”

“The United States is not capable of bringing our oil exports to zero,” Rouhani told NBC.

The Los Angeles Times added that Trump intends to highlight Iran’s malign activities in the Middle East – including its ballistic missile tests and its support for militant groups in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Oil

The president is also expected to tout his foreign policy successes, including the burgeoning detente with North Korea.

In his speech, Trump is expected to highlight his diplomatic outreach to North Korea over the last year and his claim that dictator Kim Jong Un promised at a June summit in Singapore to give up his nuclear arsenal — even though no proof has yet emerged to support that assertion.

The nuclear negotiations with North Korea appear to have stalled, and U.N. nuclear monitors and U.S. intelligence agencies have found no evidence that North Korea has dismantled or given up its nuclear program or weapons arsenal.

Trump is expected to take the stage at 10:15 am ET. He will be followed later in the day by Rouhani, who is expected to rebut many of the president’s claims

Watch his speech live below:

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Daycare Center Tells Parents to Provide Helmets for the Kids

HelmetIf you could go back 50 years, you would see very few kids wearing helmets as they zoomed around on bikes. Who knows if, 50 years from now, bareheaded kids on the playground circa 2018 might look crazily unprotected. If so, we may have one particular daycare in Canada to thank for igniting the trend. Global News reports:

An Edmonton daycare is defending a policy that may raise a few eyebrows. It has asked parents to bring a helmet to protect children in its playground.

The policy also states it is the parents’ responsibility to provide a helmet and to upgrade it in order to fit their children’s growing needs. “You feel like you protect the child,” daycare owner Mircea Bailesteanu said.

The center’s helmet policy is this:

“It is also advisable for young toddlers to wear a helmet while in the playground because they can easily trip and fall.”

The fact that toddlers are built to trip and fall—that this is a feature, not a bug, of learning to get around, know their body, test their limits, and practice walking better so that they trip and fall less often—does not occur to anyone looking at the process only through the lens of risk. That lens magnifies the downside of normal childhood activities, and blocks out any upside, including the fact that falling down is the corollary to getting back up.

We are arriving at a point where we define almost any negative activity—a splat, a spat, a boo-boo, a B+, a moment of sadness, fear, or regret—as something no child should be forced to endure. As if they are all as fragile as glass animals. Protecting children from being a child is not protecting them as they’re grow. It’s protecting them from growing.

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Over 120 Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters Arrested On Capitol Hill As “Resistance” Activates

128 people were arrested at Capitol Hill on Monday during a highly organized protest against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, reports ABC News. 

Capitol Hill police said 128 people were arrested for “unlawfully demonstrating” outside of senators’ offices and in the main rotunda of the Russell Senate Building. About half as many protesters were arrested for protesting Kavanaugh on Thursday.

The protests were organized by various groups, including the Women’s March, Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others who strongly oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination. –ABC  

The protests come just one day after a second Kavanaugh accuser emerged, claiming the Judge waved his penis in her face during a drunken Yale dormitory party. Ramirez made her claim after six days of “carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney” despite having significant alcohol-induced memory gaps. 

It is unclear if Monday’s protest included members of SPAN, the Colorado women’s rights group that Ramirez helps lead.  

Meanwhile, professors at Yale law school canceled classes Monday, as men and women clad in black staged walkouts with the message that everyone should believe women who claim to have been victims of sexual misconduct, and that Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination should be stopped. 

Emails obtained exclusively by Campus Reform show that as many as 20 Yale Law School faculty members canceled or rescheduled up to 31 classes on Monday because of the Kavanaugh hearing. 

Yale Law School spokeswoman Debra Kroszer told Campus Reform on Monday that “Yale Law School did not cancel all classes,” but, she added, “many faculty members chose to reschedule or cancel their own classes today. And some held classes as usual.” 

“While I respect the right of the students protesting to make their voices heard, I disagree with professors’ decisions to cancel classes at the request of those protesters,” Emily Hall, a student at Yale Law school, told Campus Reform in a statement. “It effectively encourages students to participate in the protests and penalizes those who choose not to by disrupting the class schedule,” Hall added. –Campus Reform

After repeatedly denying the accusations, Kavanaugh lashed out at them again on Monday, calling them “false,” and declaring that he would not withdraw his nomination. 

“I’m not going to let false accusations drive us out of this process and we’re looking for a fair process where I can be heard and defend my integrity my lifelong record. My lifelong record of promoting dignity and equality for women starting with the women who knew me when I was 14 years old. I’m not going anywhere,” he said in an interview with FOX News.

Protesters filled the office of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa on Monday, sharing their own stories of sexual assault and calling on senators to “stand with survivors.” 

“He raped me as he choked me,” she said in a video that later circulated Twitter with thousands of retweets. “And when I heard Professor Ford say that Kavanaugh had his hand over her mouth, I believed her. You do not forget someone choking you, you do not forget someone putting their hand over their mouth and you thinking they’re going to die,” she said, her voice quaking.

“For God sake, for all the boys and girls who have been assaulted over the years, for God sake, when will you stand up for the American people, for democracy?” the woman said, a plea to the senators on the Judiciary Committee, as a fellow protester put a hand on her shoulder. –ABC

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and his wife were chased out of a DC restaurant by anti-Kavanaugh protesters Monday night, who followed the pair chanting “we believe survivors.” 

As Infowars‘ Paul Joseph Watson notes, the group behind the stunt, Smash Racism DC, issued a threatening tweet afterwards:

“This is a message to Ted Cruz, Bret Kavanaugh, Donald Trump and the rest of the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic right-wing scum: You are not safe. We will find you. We will expose you. We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others.”

If Monday’s protests were a taste of what’s to come, this is going to be an interesting week.  

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Judge Kavanaugh’s Sex Life Becomes Focus of Fox News Interview: Reason Roundup

“I did not have sexual intercourse … in high school.” Much like the infamous 1990s Bill Clinton statement that it calls to mind, Kavanaugh’s comment to Fox News last night—even if we take it as 100 percent true—doesn’t actually exonerate him of the conduct of which he stands accused.

Christine Ford Blasey claims that a teenage Kavanaugh groped her, pushed her down, and attempted to take clothes off; Deborah Ramirez told the New Yorker that Kavanaugh and other college boys exposed themselves to her and others at a party. Whatever you think of these allegations, Kavanaugh’s virginity is possibly true and, technically, irrelevant.

It did lead to some good “incel” jokes, at least?

As Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch wondered in yesterday’s podcast, “Will public discourse ever recover from the Kavanaugh hearings?”

A potentially more interesting part of Kavanaugh’s Fox News interview relates to a woman named Renate, who went to a girls prep school nearby and whose name appears throughout Kavanaugh’s senior yearbook from Georgetown prep. Boys including Kavanaugh mention being a “Renate Alumni,” and there’s a poem about how if it’s late and you need a date, you could call Renate.

Kavanaugh insisted via his lawyer that there was no untoward meaning to these references. Kavanaugh and Renate “attended one high school event together and shared a brief kiss good night following that event,” said a statement. “The language from Judge Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook refers to the fact that he and Ms. Dolphin attended that one high school event together and nothing else.”

To be clear—and this should really go without saying, but these are touchy times—these high-school boy brags certainly don’t mean Kavanaugh was a rapist, that he did the things of which he is accused by Ford and Ramirez, nor that he’s unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.

But come on—the implication is clearly that this girl was “easy” and the boys had hooked up with her sexually. This is Kavanaugh’s first personal explanation that rings as clearly and ridiculously untrue. He should’ve just let that line of criticism go and said nothing or used it as an opportunity for a small bit of reflection on 1980s high-school boy culture that could’ve worked to his advantage.

For her part, a now-grown Renate denied having hooked up with these boys in high school and having kissed Kavanaugh.

Somehow, this has become the state of our national discourse.

A confounding article at Jezebel yesterday argued that we need to start bringing “the #MeToo movement” to bear on the “gray areas.” Yet the news cycle has made it abundantly clear that we’re already there.

Watch the full Kavanaugh interview here.

Per Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a Thursday hearing is set to feature testimony from Kavanaugh and Ford.

FREE MINDS

Made in the USA. “Latin America wasn’t always the most murderous region in the world.” But now, “with just 8% of the world’s population, Latin America accounts for roughly a third of global murders,” reports The Wall Street Journal. And “nearly one in every four murders around the world takes place in just four countries: Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia.”

The reasons for its rise as a murder capital are complex, but many center on the growing importance of gangs in these countries since around the middle of last century. And while the Journal article tends to tiptoe around it, the rise of these gangs comes in large part thanks to the U.S. drug war.

“In the 1950s, Singapore and Caracas”—the largest city in Venezuela—”had very similar murder rates, between 6 to 10 per 100,000 residents,” notes the Journal. “Nowadays, Singapore’s murder rate is 0.4 per 100,000 residents. In Caracas, the government doesn’t bother to count. The nongovernmental Venezuelan Violence Observatory estimates the country’s murder rate is roughly 110 per 100,000—about 34,000 a year.”

FREE MARKETS

It’s “a disguised effort to expand the #PatriotAct.” The House is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a bill that borrows language from the PATRIOT Act and would increase the feds ability to snoop on consumer bank and financial records. This time, it’s not “terrorists” that are the ostensible target but “human traffickers.”

But as Republican Rep. Justin Amash rightfully noted, this is simply a ploy to pass unpopular surveillance-expanding measures. It’s “a disguised effort to expand the #PatriotAct,” tweeted Amash on Saturday. “GOP leaders put ‘Fight Human Trafficking’ in the title to conceal the bill’s true purpose: to give the government more power to unconstitutionally spy on law-abiding Americans without a warrant.”

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Argentina Peso Plunges After Central Bank Head Unexpectedly Resigns

One day after it emerged that the IMF’s record $50 billion bailout of Argentina is just not big enough, and the country will need an additional $3-$5 billion in additional rescue funds, news which sent the Argentine Peso tumbling, moments ago the country’s economic problems took another turn for the worse, when Argentine Central Bank President Luis Caputo resigned on Tuesday morning just three months after taking office, as the country slides ever deeper in an economic crisis, coupled with the collapse of its currency, which lost half of its value this year.

Caputo, a former Citigroup and Deutsche Bank trader who was previously Finance Minister under Macri, had spent the majority of his time at the bank trying to stabilize the peso which has tumbled 50 percent, the most in emerging markets this year. The latest news that Argentina is seeking even more bailout funds suggests that the “stabilization” process is not going quite as well as expected.

The now former central banker said the decision was due to personal issues, according to Bloomberg…

“This resignation is due to personal issues, with the conviction that the new deal with the International Monetary Fund will re-establish confidence in the fiscal, financial, monetary and exchange regimes.”

… however judging by the market’s response that is hardly the case, as the Argentine peso has tumbled more than 3% to start the day.

 

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Qualcomm Accuses Apple Of Stealing Chip Secrets, Giving Them To Intel

The latest episode in the years-long legal drama between Qualcomm and Apple was unveiled today, when CNBC’s David Faber reported that Qualcomm has lobbed “explosive” charges against Apple for stealing “vast swaths” of its confidential information and trade secrets for the purpose of improving the performance of chip sets provided by Qualcomm competitor Intel, according to a filing with the Superior Court of California.

According to Faber, the charges were revealed in the latest legal complaint filed by Qualcomm, which hopes the court will amend to its existing lawsuit against Apple “for breaching the so called master software agreement that Apple signed when it became a customer of Qualcomm’s earlier this decade.”

The two companies have been engaged in litigation around the globe centered on Apple’s unwillingness to have its suppliers pay Qualcomm royalties it deems excessive for the iPhone. And while Monday’s filing is merely the latest salvo in that dispute, and is likely designed to put pressure on Apple to settle, Qualcomm’s general counsel, Donald Rosenberg, told CNBC this case stands on its own “and would have been filed regardless of the on-going dispute between the two companies.”

“Unlawful use of Qualcomm’s valuable trade secrets to try to help a competitor catch up irreparably harms us and must not be allowed to continue,” he said.

As Faber adds, the latest legal charges are part of a separate lawsuit filed in November of last year which alleged that Apple was in violation of the agreement it signed with Qualcomm when it began work to use Qualcomm’s chips in the iPhone.

That agreement required Apple to allow Qualcomm to periodically insure that the source code software and tools it was sharing with Apple as part of the agreement were being appropriately protected.

While Qualcomm originally argued that it was prevented from auditing Apple’s use of its source code and sued, it is now alleging a far larger misdeed: the stealing of that same source code and tools, for the express purpose of helping Intel overcome engineering flaws in its chips that led to their poor performance in iPhones.

Specifically, Qualcomm said it is making the latest charges “after discovery in the current lawsuit allowed it to unearth evidence that Apple engineers repeatedly provided source code and other confidential information to Intel engineers so they could improve the performance of Intel’s chip sets.”

As part of its requested remedies, Qualcomm is hoping its latest charges will be added to the current lawsuit against Apple and that the case will still be on track for its current court date of April of next year.

Both AAPL and QCOM shares were trading modestly in the red after the CNBC report…

Knocking Nasdaq futures into the red ahead of the open…

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