Month: June 2021

When Apollo founder Leon Black abruptly left the firm months earlier than planned, many wondered if a woman’s allegations that Black had sexually abused and harassed her had anything to do with the CEO’s decision. Whether it did, or not, Black conceded to having a consensual sexual affair with the woman, before claiming that she was trying to ‘extort’ him. The CEO was already under fire over his close ties to deceased pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, leading some to wonder whether Epstein might have compromising information on Black (like he was rumored to have on his other exceptionally wealthy “friends”).

Now, months after he stepped down, Black’s accuser, a woman named Guzel Ganieva, has filed a lawsuit against Black alleging defamation, as well as sexual assault and harassment.

It’s worth noting that an internal review conducted by law firm Dechert found no evidence of any involvement on Black’s part in the criminal activities of Epstein, who was indicted in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving underage girls. But, according to WSJ, the contents of Ganieva’s lawsuit are “certainly disconcerting.” In the filing, Ganieva, a Russian immigrant who was in her early 20s and working as a model when she met Black at an International Women’s Day event in New York in 2008, alleges the billionaire “forced sadistic sexual acts on her without her consent,” and lent her money as a way of exerting control over her and promised to help her get work beyond modeling that never materialized.

She said she was inspired to “go public” after Black claimed that nobody had ever accused him of sexual wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Black vigorously denied the allegations.

“This frivolous lawsuit is riddled with lies, and is nothing more than a wholesale fiction,” Black’s spokesman said in a statement. The spokesman said Black, who is married, had a consensual relationship with Ganieva for six years and then paid her substantial sums over many years after she threatened to go public and tell his family.

Ganieva said in a series of tweets that she was sexually abused by Black for years and that he forced fer to sign an NDA back in 2015. Those tweets went unnoticed for weeks, until the New York Post reported on them.

Ganieva expanded on these allegations in the lawsuit. Isays that Black repeatedly threatened her to take the hush money he was offering, and that if she ever tried to expose him, he would “destroy your life”, or “put you in prison.” The lawsuit also alleges that Black never worried about being “exposed” for his relationship with Ganieva, since he took her on many public outings, including sitting courtside at MSG and to movie premiers, including the 2012 red-carpet premier for “The King’s Speech”. “What Black was worried about, however, is being exposed for the sadist that he is.”

The lawsuit goes on to accuse Black of manipulating Ganieva, then, after gaining her trust, he “forced sadistic sexual acts on her without her consent and despite her saying no.” The first of these acts allegedly happened in 2008 not long after the two met, when Black allegedly took Ganieva to a studio apartment with a mattress on the floor. These “sadistic” sexual acts often were “physically painful” for Ganieva. Specific details of “derogatory and controlling conduct” include the following:

Read the rest of the lawsuit below:

Apple Card users could be struggling to make payments this morning due to an outage. On Apple’s System Status webpage, “Apple Card – Outage” is being reported. 

The outage appears to have begun around 0917 ET. Here’s what Apple is saying:

Apple Card – Outage Today, 9:17 AM – ongoing All users are affected Users may not be able to manage their Apple Card, make payments, and may not see recent transactions.

“Today’s issue comes shortly after Apple Card Family Sharing arrived with iOS 14.6 at the end of May,” said 9to5Mac. 

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Finance and economic expert Alasdair Macleod says a new rule change at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), aka the central bank of central bankers, is going to help drive the price of gold and many other commodities higher. 

The new rule is called “Net Stable Funding Requirement” (NSFR).  It goes into effect by the end of June in Europe and by the end of the year in the UK where the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) operates the biggest gold trading platform in the world.  

The short story is this new BIS rule is going to stop paper contracts from conjuring supply of gold, silver and many other commodities out of thin air.   Macleod says,

“That’s what they do, and that is what is going to be stopped.  For a long time . . . I think the American government has encouraged the growth of paper alternatives to gold in order to take demand away from the real stuff…

They said to the Bank of International Settlements that we can’t have another Lehman Brothers.  So, what’s happened? 

They have come up with regulations to help insure we won’t have another Lehman…  I think the real big, big change is going to be in the second half of this year.”

Macleod says couple this BIS rule change along with the out-of-control global spending and coming inflation and you have the perfect predictable storm.  Macleod says,

“With these two things coming together, only one thing can happen.  The dollar goes down and down and down.  Also, people are going to be frightened and think we have no gold . . . they are going to go out and try to buy gold.  It’s going to be like squeezing a bar of soap in the bath, it will just shoot up.  I can’t see any other outcome than that. . . . Look at what is happening with the BIS and the new regulations that they are bringing in.  From the gold point of view, you’ve got a falling dollar and you have sudden demand for gold being unleashed that was previously happy to sit in a bank on an unallocated basis.”

Macleod also says,

“This has gotten to a point where we can’t go any further.  We are at the top of the bubble.  What happens when this market tops out?  The dollar goes with it.”

Macleod predicts big corrections in bonds and stocks along with the dollar because despite what you are hearing, Macleod says,

“Look at the fundamentals in the economy.  They are talking about economic recovery, but . . . look at all the shops that are closed and never to be reopened.  This is not a healthy economy.  This is a very bad economy.  The reason why prices are rising is you’ve got all this money being put into the consumers’ hands.  This is the middle class here, and they are spending this money, and where is the production to satisfy the spending?  It’s not there, it’s closed down. . . . There is no solution.  We are getting to the point that there is actually no exit from this mess.”

In closing, a warning about revolutions.  Macleod says,

“This is part of the myth of a revolution.  When you look at a revolution, it’s actually because the currency collapses because the economy collapses.  It’s not because there is no bread.  Why is there no bread?  Because there is no bloody money.”

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Alasdair Macleod, Head of Research for GoldMoney.com.

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

In March, the Small Business Administration gave a $234,548 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) “loan” to George Soros’s East-West Management Institute (EWMI).

The official description of the transaction is “to aid small businesses in maintaining workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic”, but federal grants and contracts to EWMI (its primary source of revenue) rose from $9,185,194 in FY 2019 to $14,859,293 in 2020. EWMI previously received a $226,179 PPP loan in May of 2020. As a supposedly small business struggling through the pandemic, EWMI enjoys office space at 575 Madison Avenue in New York City and 1101 Connecticut Ave NW in Washington, DC.

In November 2018, Judicial Watch published a special report, “The Financial and Staffing Nexus Between the Open Society Foundations and the United States Government.” The 28-page report is scrupulously documented with 154 footnotes citing to primary source records. A key take-away from the report concerning the activities of EWMI is that the organization manages projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a nominally independent component of the U.S. State Department.

For those interested, EWMI maintains a web page with documentation concerning their non-profit status and their financial statements. You can also view their self-described “Donors and Partners” who, evidently, were not able or willing to “loan” money to EWMI for paycheck protection. The list of donors and partners is quite remarkable — from the World Bank to Romania’s Justice Ministry, among many others. It makes one wonder why American taxpayers had to cover the PPP “loan.” It reminds one of Senator William Proxmire‘s (D-WI) “Golden Fleece Award” for squandering the American public’s money.

Granted, with the Biden administration and Congressional “leadership” meeting last month week to discuss a $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill (officially known as the American Jobs Plan) — it seems a little tough to get excited about a “loan” of $234,548. The exact dollars and cents total, however, is not the point.

We need to ask ourselves how “the system” — our government — facilitates this sort of racket without checks or oversight.

Harvard University can be publicly shamed into returning COVID relief money, but a Soros group gets a pass? Why the disparity of treatment and accountability?

What is the rationale?

“Just the way business is done?” “Don’t ask questions or you’ll be accused of some bias?” “Hey, it’s the ‘New Normal,’ get used to it!” Maybe the worst reaction for the post-Trump era is, “Who cares?”

Rest assured, there are hundreds of millions of Americans that care deeply. In American political lore, President Richard Nixon coined the phrase “silent majority” during a speech in November 1969. He aimed to identify and motivate the large mass of Americans dominated in the media by a vocal minority.

Today, the Nixon model seems quaint. America’s silent majority now is overshadowed by rabidly partisan major news media outlets, and the far-more-vocal minority who dominate social media platforms. It is an exponential shift in favor of the self-appointed “elites” — and away from ordinary Americans trying to make a living, pay their mortgage and get their kids educated during COVID lockdowns. Those Americans would be repulsed at the idea EWMI getting a PPP “loan,” assuming they even knew about it — 99.9% probably had no idea.

Think about it: a Soros-backed operation that manages a big chunk of the State Department’s international development operations, pretending it is like any other American “small business,” was seeking paycheck protection subsidies because of COVID. It is an insult. It is grotesque.

They get away with it because political operators on the Left are, it seems, creatures of big government. They are comfortable operating in that environment and in the organs of the state. They know how to work the various systems, get into the programs, make the paperwork fly and direct the taxpayer subsidies.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2017, George Soros transferred $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations. EWMI is part of the greater Soros operation. Why are American taxpayers subsidizing any part of his operations?

Former President Donald Trump has scrapped his blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” less than 30 days after launching it, according to CNBC.

In a Wednesday statement, spokesman Jason Miller said that the page “will not be returning,” and that “It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on.”

“Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing,” Miller added via email.

Facebook and Twitter both banned Trump from posting on their platforms after Jan. 6, when a mob of the then-president’s supporters violently invaded the U.S. Capitol, forcing a joint session of Congress into hiding.

…

Trump and his allies have long accused social media giants of being tainted by political bias and prone to censoring conservatives. The former president has teased the rollout of an alternative platform. -CNBC

Developing…

By now, the uproar over the NBA kowtowing to Beijing over a tweet from Daryl Morey showing support for “freedom fighters” in Hong Kong was a shameful episode that has now been largely forgotten by the general public. And with tensions flaring again over the White House’s efforts to punish Beijing for the genocide in Xinjiang, a congressional commission on Tuesday is calling on American basketball stars to end their endorsements of Chinese sportswear firms that use cotton grown in the region.

Now that Hong Kong has essentially fallen to Beijing, Xinjiang has replaced Hong Kong as the China human rights issue du jour. And following reports that certain Chinese apparel firms (ANTA, Li-Ning and Peak sportswear, to name a few) had publicly proclaimed their intention to continue using cotton from Xinjiang, the chairs of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China sent a letter to a dozen or so NBA players who have deals with these labels urging them to cut ties.

These companies mostly manufacture sneakers and other athletic apparel. According to the Daily Mail, retired NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade has a lifetime deal with Li-Ning, while injured Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson has a contract with ANTA. Peak, which previously had a deal with the New Jersey Nets before the team moved to Brooklyn in 2012, has several current NBA players, including backup Philadelphia 76ers center Dwight Howard.

These deals create “reputational risks” for the players, who are now financially beholden to Beijing. After all, America doesn’t need another episode where its most popular sports star is parroting Chinese propaganda.

“Players have continued to sign new deals with Anta Sports,” the letter from Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Jim McGovern added.

“We believe that commercial relationships with companies that source cotton in Xinjiang create reputational risks for NBA players and the NBA itself,” they said, noting that the U.S. government had determined that the Chinese government was committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and barred imports of cotton from the region.

“The NBA and NBA players should not even implicitly be endorsing such horrific human rights abuses,” the letter said.

For years now, reporting has confirmed the existence of systematic forced labor in the province, where its mostly Muslim inhabitants engage in forced labor. In the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, lawmakers warned that Anta, Li-Ning and Peak had publicly embraced Xinjiang cotton, “likely making them complicit in the use of forced labor.”

“We urge the NBPA to work with its members to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide taking place in Xinjiang and the role of forced labor in the production of products made by brands that NBPA members have endorsed,” the letter said.

“We hope that the result of such efforts would be that the players would leverage their contracts with Anta, Li-Ning, and Peak to push these companies to end their use of Xinjiang cotton. Short of that outcome, we encourage players to end their endorsement deals with these companies,” it said.

Back in September, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA’s long-standing business ties to China (the league’s most important growth market oversees) have a “net positive” impact on the “mutual understanding” between the US and Communist China. However, the NBA’s standing in China deteriorated after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. That lone tweet prompted China to pull NBA games from airing in the country, costing the league millions and forcing Morey to walk back his comment and apologize, something that horrified American lawmakers.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Shift or Spin?

As Bloomberg notes today, “China is Digging Deep Into Its Currency Toolkit to Manage Yuan”. This follows the first hike in the FX reserve requirement ratio since 2007. As the article goes on to point out: “The PBOC is seeking to curb speculation in the yuan without derailing a plan to liberalize the currency and promote its global usage.” Now this statement is true. It’s also not going to be possible – not as a critique of China, you understand, but for anyone in that position.

You cannot liberalize a currency in order to internationalize it, and maintain exchange rate stability once global markets have a free supply of it, and can push it up, or down: unless everything else except FX rates –growth, inflation, interest rates, trade flows, and capital flows– are held stable between China and the rest of the world. At least not without re-writing the global financial rules so we effectively go back to a new Bretton Woods (pegged to…?).

Allow me to remind readers that under the gold-backed Bretton Woods, member countries could only change their exchange rate against the metal (and thus the US dollar) by more than 10% with IMF approval, which was contingent on its determination that the applicant’s balance of payments was in a “fundamental disequilibrium”. Any country that changed FX rates without approval or after being denied approval was denied access to the IMF entirely. Given that “fundamental disequilibrium” was never defined, very few >10% movements were seen. Indeed, some FX rates only moved once in two decades. Imagine being an FX broker going for lunch and missing the only trade of your career; and contrast that with our 24/7 trade-FX-from-home culture of today embraced by those who seem to pine for the gold that backed Bretton Woods.

In short, unless we get a huge shift either in China or the rest of the world, or both, then talk of CNY internationalization is more likely to be spin – which is something we have argued since the Chinese currency was first put in the IMF basket of “global reserve currencies” back in 2015,…to no real effect whatsoever so far in terms of its global usage, as we see above.

Not entirely unrelated, Bloomberg also reports: “Xi Seeks ‘Lovable’ Image for China in Sign of Diplomatic Rethink”. Chinese officials have been told to create a “trustworthy, lovable, and respectable” image for the country; to “make friends extensively, unite the majority, and continuously expand its circle of friends with those who understand and are friendly to China.”; and the missive is to get “a grip on tone” in global communications, and to be “open and confident, but also modest and humble.” Obviously, such a step would be welcome, not just from China, but globally. However, the question of shift or spin again emerges. After all, Beijing has been embracing so-called ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy since 2017, and its representatives around the world, and the excitable Global Times, have used language strong enough to get pushback even from European governments; and the Global Times’ editor has even openly advocated an attack on Australia should a war start in the South China Sea.

Indeed, the Global Times’ take on the new national PR direction is a little different from Bloomberg’s. Its headline is “China needs a voice that matches its national strength, international status: Xi”; and it states China needs “to develop a voice in international discourse that matches China’s comprehensive national strength and international status,” and that “experts” say “China will not keep silent amid a stigmatization and propaganda warfare launched by the US and its allies.” Perhaps underlining the communication and perception gaps that have emerged in recent years, it adds: “Analysts said that due to the cultural tradition of humility of the Chinese nation, China is not a country that loves promoting itself to other nations, and it doesn’t like playing tit-for-tat with others, and prefers to treat others with kindness. This is a key reason why China’s voice in the Western-dominated global public opinion field is yet to match its national strength and influence.” Western ‘China hawks’ –who can be wolfish themselves– would say there is more to it than that as the Endless Frontiers Act progresses through Congress; Australia and Japan accelerate defence spending; and the UK sends an aircraft carrier to sail the South China Sea.

The Global Times then quotes a Beijing-based expert on international relations: “it’s easy for China to fix China-US ties immediately. As long as China announces it gives up 5G technology, space exploration, all advanced weapons and economic development, all struggles between China and the US would disappear. To stay weak and obey, and accept Western narrative hegemony in the international field of public opinion is the key for a non-Western country to keep the ties with the US friendly. It’s never about democracy and freedom; it’s about strength and autonomy.”

And it continues by quoting a senior Chinese media professional and European studies expert based in France, who states: “…many countries’ political elites and people in regions like Africa, Southeast Asia and Middle East are defending or supporting China’s stance and image in the international arena. This is an optimistic trend…It’s impossible for China to convince every single country and make all Western countries friendly, but it’s possible for China to win the support from the majority of the international community.”

In other words, unlike the Bloomberg spin, the broader thrust seems to be towards China building PR ‘market share’ *outside* the West – which it is already successfully doing with its exports.

Meanwhile, shift or spin is very much the issue for central banks too. The RBA did nothing yesterday, but next month is decision time: will it stick to a 3-year policy for yield curve control, or start to allow this to roll down the curve? Likewise, the ECB saw May Eurozone CPI above its “below but close to 2.0%” inflation target yesterday, months ahead of its target date: and all it took was a massive ‘bullwhip’ supply-chain shock that it had entirely failed to forecast!

Will the ECB shift towards slightly tighter monetary policy earlier than had been expected as well? More likely, this entirely accidental success on inflation will see central-bank spin that such price hikes are “transitory” – as global oil prices rise again as demand picks up, and all US JBS meat-packing plants were briefly shut down under a new Russian cyberattack; and that the ECB fully understands the supply-chain issues they did not predict a few months ago. (Which obviously also run through US/Western-China relations, and USD/CNY, by the way.)