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Submitted by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

They met in secret to plan a devastating attack…

Two powerful men, colluding at a palace in the Middle East.

In September 2014, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Saudi Arabia. He was there to meet with King Abdullah, the country’s ruler and one of the richest men in the world.

Informed observers say Kerry and Abdullah drew up a plan at this meeting to destroy their common enemies: Russia and Iran.

To carry out the attack, they wouldn’t use fighter jets, tanks and ground troops. They would use a much more powerful weapon…

Oil.

Oil is the world’s most traded commodity. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter. It has arguably more control over the price of oil than any other country does.

Insiders say Saudi Arabia agreed to flood the oil market at this secret meeting. The purpose was to drive down the price of oil. This would hurt Russia’s and Iran’s economies. They both depend heavily on oil sales.

They wanted to hurt Russia for supporting their regional foe, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They wanted to hurt Iran for the same reason. Iran is the Saudis’ fierce geopolitical rival in the region.

Their strategy has had some success.

As you can see in the chart below, the price of oil has plummeted over 70% since John Kerry’s secret meeting with King Abdullah in September 2014.

There’s so much conflict in the Middle East—but oil prices are falling.

And despite China’s economic slowdown…it still imported more oil in 2015 than in 2014. China is the world’s number two oil consumer behind the U.S.

Turmoil plus demand says oil should be going up, not down. But the mystery is explained by the Saudis’ oil war and their strategy of flooding the market to bankrupt competitors.

Saudi Arabia’s Other Target

The Saudis have also declared war on the U.S. shale oil industry.

In the 1990s, the U.S. imported close to 25% of its oil from Saudi Arabia. Today—because of high U.S. shale oil production—we import only 5%.

By keeping the market saturated with oil, the Saudis are driving down the price. They hope to drive it down low enough and long enough to bankrupt the shale industry…since shale oil costs more than Saudi oil to produce.

This would knock out a major competitor and let the Saudis regain lost market share.

But economic warfare doesn’t always go according to plan. I think the Saudis made a colossal mistake…

Impaled on Their Own Sword

I think the Saudis have overplayed their hand…big time.

Oil makes up 90% of Saudi government revenue. So the price drop has been very painful. They’re bleeding through their reserves.

The market is putting more pressure on their currency peg than at any time in its history.

For over 30 years, Saudi Arabia has pegged its currency at 3.75 riyals per U.S. dollar. To maintain this, it needs a large stash of U.S. dollars. With its historically large reserves, this has never been a problem.

But now, the Saudi budget is under serious pressure. The government is only staying afloat by draining its foreign exchange reserves. This threatens Saudi Arabia’s ability to support its currency peg.

If the currency peg breaks—which is exactly what the current market expects—the riyal would be devalued. This would increase the cost of living for Saudis across the board.

It would also increase social unrest.

The Saudis are also losing billions underwriting foolhardy wars in Yemen and Syria.

The Saudis thought they could support armed Syrian rebels and topple the Assad government in a matter of months. They figured Assad would fall just as easily as Gadhafi did in Libya in 2011. It was a gross miscalculation.

There’s also the Saudi war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor.

The Saudis launched the war in March 2015. They wanted to reinstate a Saudi-friendly government. The Saudis thought the intervention would last a few months, then they’d declare “mission accomplished” and go home. That’s not what happened.

The political and economic stars are aligning against the Saudis. It’s their most vulnerable moment since the kingdom was founded in 1932.

Crisis Investing 101

The Saudis are having some success. In the past year, at least 67 U.S. oil companies have filed for bankruptcy. Analysts estimate as many as 150 could follow. The shale oil industry is in “survival mode.”

And the crisis in the oil market could spread. That’s because many banks made big loans to these distressed shale oil companies. A wave of bankruptcies means those loans could go bad, which would be a huge threat to those banks.

It has the potential to trigger another meltdown in the financial system. The warning signs are there.

I wouldn’t own any bank that has big exposure to risky shale plays…nor keep my life savings there.

The Saudis have damaged the U.S. shale oil industry. And they’ll continue to cause more damage. But they won’t bankrupt every producer.

The shale industry has more staying power than Saudi Arabia. Some producers now say they’re profitable with $40 oil. And their pace of innovation will drive that even lower. The industry will survive.

All the Saudis have done is create an existential crisis for themselves.

If the Saudis don’t stop flooding the market—and there are no signs they will—they won’t be shooting themselves in the foot… but in the head. Saudi Arabia will either collapse or surrender—and stop flooding the market.

Either way, oil will eventually go a lot higher.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nBnFGq Tyler Durden

Back in the summer of 2014, roughly a year and a half before the second bubble of profitless, “story”, aka “tech”, companies had burst, we wrote in dismay, that “the true indicator of just how bubbly the second coming of the dot com era has become comes courtesy of none other than Jessica Alba’s, yes the actress, own startup: a company launched in 2012 and which makes “non-toxic” diapers (as opposed to toxic diapers?), called the Honest Co., has raised $70 million at a valuation just shy of $1 billion in preparation for an IPO.”

What was the company’s business model? Simple: one part Amazon monthly subscription purchase, and one part promise that its products are clean and don’t contain what it says are harsh chemicals found in many mainstream products; apparently that is a critical deciding factor for today’s largely unemployed Millennial generation:

“since launching in 2012 with its non-toxic diapers and other natural baby products, the California-based startup has grown quickly by blending its environmentally sensitive products with a social mission. Annual revenue is tracking to hit north of $150 million in 2014, or three times the revenue of 2013. Roughly 80% of Honest revenue is from customers who subscribe to a monthly service delivering diapers and other consumable products on a recurring basis.”

All this happened at a time when frauds such as Theranos were being valued in the billions, so in retrospect the “Honest Company’s” idiotic valuation may be explainable.

What isn’t as easily explained is that since we profiled Alba’s “Honest Company“, its valuation has grown by another 70%, and according to the WSJ it is now $1.7 billion with total funding raised more than $200 million “thanks to its marketing of cleaning supplies, diapers and other consumer products that it says are safer and more ecologically friendly than other brands.”

But what Alba herself will have a very difficult time explaining is why, just like in the case of Theranos, her company it not only grossly misnamed, but may also be another fraud, because according to a just released WSJ expose, “one of the primary ingredients Honest tells consumers to avoid is a cleaning agent called sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS, which can be found in everyday household items from Colgate toothpaste to Tide detergent and Honest says can irritate skin. The company lists SLS first in the “Honestly free of” label of verboten ingredients it puts on bottles of its laundry detergent, one of Honest’s first and most popular products. But two independent lab tests commissioned by The Wall Street Journal determined Honest’s liquid laundry detergent contains SLS.“

“Our findings support that there is a significant amount of sodium lauryl sulfate” in Honest’s detergent, said Barbara Pavan, a chemist at one of the labs, Impact Analytical. Another lab, Chemir, a division of EAG Inc., said its test for SLS found about the same concentration as Tide, which is made by P&G. “It was not a trace amount,” said Matthew Hynes, a chemist at Chemir who conducted the test.

In Alba’s 2013 book, “The Honest Life” she lists SLS as a “toxin” that consumers should avoid. She started Santa Monica, Calif.-based Honest in 2011 after she said she had an allergic reaction to a popular brand of laundry detergent. According to the WSJ, she has no problem actually including it in her product, comparble to the Theranos’ bezzle, in which its blood test was not only inaccurate, but had been superceded by products by its biggest competitors.

And just like Theranos, “Honest” disputes the labs’ findings and says its own testing found no SLS in its products.

“We do not make our products with sodium lauryl sulfate,” said Kevin Ewell, the company’s research and development manager.

And just as the WSJ exposed Theranos, now it has set its sight on the one company that years ago couldn’t pass the smell test, and now stinks like a rotting venture capital corpse.

The blame game begins:

Honest said its manufacturing partners and suppliers have provided assurances that its products don’t contain SLS beyond possible trace amounts. Honest provided the Journal with a document it said was from its detergent manufacturer, Earth Friendly Products LLC, that stated there was zero “SLS content” in the product. Earth Friendly in turn said the document came from its own chemical supplier, a company called Trichromatic West Inc., which it relied on to test and certify that there was no SLS.

 

Trichromatic told the Journal the certificate wasn’t based on any testing and there was a “misunderstanding” with the detergent maker. It said the “SLS content” was listed as zero because it didn’t add any SLS to the material it provided to Earth Friendly and “there would be no reason to test specifically for SLS.” It said the product in question “was fairly and honestly represented” to its customer.

 

Honest said it didn’t deal directly with Trichromatic and declined to comment further on the certificate. Earth Friendly reiterated that it relied on Trichromatic to test the ingredient.

 

Honest also disagreed with the methods used by the Journal’s labs, and said the labs tested against a sample of SLS that isn’t the type used in consumer products. Both Chemir and Impact Analytical said they stand by their test results, used the most precise method for quantifying SLS in a consumer laundry detergent and followed standard scientific guidelines.

Then there is the question of what “Honest” uses instead of SLS: the WSJ reports that Honest supposedly prefers an alternative called sodium coco sulfate, or SCS, which the company says is less irritating and a different compound from SLS. “We have evidence that our laundry detergent contains SCS, not SLS, and any contention to the contrary is wrong.” The problem is that SCS contains SLS, which means fundamentally the fraud at the Honest company, one which it uses to pray on naive and impressionable young moths, is one of cheap marketing alternatives.

Rival Seventh Generation lists SLS as an ingredient in its laundry detergent, including a variety made for sensitive skin, and lists sodium coco sulfate as an ingredient in its hand wash. It says both cleaning agents have the potential to irritate skin but are safe when products are formulated properly. “In all practicality they act and behave as the same chemical in consumer products,” said Tim Fowler, Seventh Generation’s senior vice president of research and development.

Not for Alba, who preys on the wallets of the uninformed with false advertising.

Then there is the real-time alteration of the company’s public materials during the WSJ’s investigation into the company:

During the Journal’s reporting, Honest made changes to wording on its website, including revising the description of its “Honestly Free Guarantee.” It used to say its products are “Honestly free of” dozens of ingredients, including SLS. Now it says the products are “Honestly made without” those ingredients. Honest also removed claims that other companies use “risky” or “toxic” ingredients that it doesn’t use.

 

When asked about the website changes, Honest co-founder and Chief Product Officer Christopher Gavigan said they were to help clarify, educate and accurately represent the company’s position. He said in a December meeting that Honest was also changing its product labels to match its website and had no plans to reformulate its detergent.

 

Alba, who is Honest’s chief creative officer in addition to co-founder, declined to be interviewed for the WSJ article. Just like Elizabeth Holmes, when the WSJ demolished the skyhigh valuation of Theranos. Her attorney Bert Fields said, “Jessica Alba and the folks at Honest truly believe that their detergent is free of non-trace SLS and have been assured of that by their suppliers.”

Sadly that too is a lie.

As is the gratuitous false marketing of this post with photos of the “Honest” CEO. Spoiler alert: they too are not genuine and contain an abnormal dose of Photoshop.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1P2KRUl Tyler Durden

Remember that once-in-a-lifetime, "don't worry there's plenty of liquidity" flash-crash in japanese Government Bond futures on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning Japan time)… well it happened again…

JGB Futures to be halted any minute…

 

And so the market chaos even among the "safest" of securities, the result of central bank intervention, continues. Bloomberg's Richard Breslow summarized it best:

 

 

Even with QEs creating what look an awful lot like bubbles, it’s been fair to say, those distortions reflected the reaction function of how central bankers interpreted the state of play. Yield levels, let alone negative rates, and volatility are making these guideposts increasingly questionable.

 

If you look at the yield curves of much of the world, you’d be hard pressed not to conclude we are very much still experiencing a severe global recession. Central bankers may strongly disagree, yet Japanese 10-year JGBs haven’t seen 2% this century. German bunds have backed up to 21bps. Both are likely to increase QE. The U.S. is tightening (?) and 10- year yields are still down 42bps on the year

 

The Fed wants to raise rates but insists on re-investing the take on its massive portfolio. They act like fund managers protecting their AUM.

 

The Osaka Stock Exchange had to invoke circuit breakers today on the March JGB future for excessive volatility. Buying panic yesterday to front-run today’s QE buying led to panic selling today into BOJ bids 22 bps through Monday’s close. Oh, and did I mention, ahead of an auction tomorrow. The take-away is mayhem, not analysis.

And now we look forward to an even greater surge in volatility first ahead of the Fed and BOJ next week, who – just like everyone else – have no idea what is going on any more.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1SEbHJf Tyler Durden

Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

It’s not the hair.

Or the bad manners.

Or the “beautiful” wall he says he’ll build.

There’s a different, more subtle reason why the Republican establishment, donor class, political operatives, and the news media in general hate Donald Trump.

The reason can be found in a New York Times best selling business book, Stacking The Deck, by Wharton professor David Pottruck.

Pottruck, the Charles Schwab CEO who took the genial brokerage house online and into the big time, says that organizations hate change. Hate it with a PASSION!

That’s because when there’s a new way of doing things, a new way of solving problems, a new way of relating to everything, they feel threatened as a deep personal-loss.

Change renders meaningless the value of their hard-won experience and know-how. In politics, it may means family member lose their cushy jobs and perks.

Student loans of government employees get automatically paid off by government – TAX FREE.

Those in government have done things one way forever. Change is NOT FAIR to them

Everything they have done to line their pockets is threatened. The rules of the game may no longer apply.

So they dig in their heels and will do whatever it takes to resist change.

They resist perpetually until forced otherwise.

They subvert any process that would lead to change.Until they lose, it becomes open warfare against the people to sustain the establishment and its perks.

And so it is with Donald Trump. Like him or not, he has completely rewritten the rules of Presidential politics.

He bypasses the media, taking his message, raw and unfiltered, to the millions of people who follow him on Twitter.

The party establishment went from underestimating him and laughing at him to fearing him breaking out in night sweats.

They fear all power and their relevance will vanish into thing air.

Donors gave Jeb Bush $120 million and he came in dead last.

The money, like Jeb, is gone and it could not save their fiefdom.

Now wealthy donors have a choice. Oppose Trump and he wins and they are out in the cold. Understand there is a change in the wind and shift sides to the people.

How ironic.  It took a billionaire to neuter the billionaire donor class.

Most of the media hates Trump to the core and dislike the fact they are no longer able to play kingmaker losing their power fearing they will be irrelevant with the internet displacing them.

The political class have lost the power to rule behind the curtain from paid operatives and cronies who cannot transition to the new world where the old rules of campaigning don’t apply.

Trump has spent more on hats than he has on polls so the pollsters also have lost their importance.

Diplomats worldwide are running scared because Trump will renegotiate everything from a business standpoint that cannot be bought like Hillary & her foundation.

The handwringing, the dire predictions of doom, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth have little to do with Donald’s positions, but their loss of power.

They complain Trump is bringing in new voters who are not Republican. And this is bad?

The Trump threat isn’t to the Constitution, to America’s standing in the world, or even to Republican Congressional candidates, it is to the establishment.

If you think Trump’s supporters are angry about the way the government and the business world colluded, you are right. The establishment fails to appreciate the anger.

They’re just furious. Even if Trump fails to win, there will be more in the wings. He is inspiring a change and he doesn’t even understand how profound.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RTI2td Tyler Durden

If there was still any doubt whether the Trump juggernaut can be stopped before, if not so much after the Michigan primary earlier this week, it can be laid to rest now because shortly after Trump received the endorsement of Chris Christie, the real estate mogul has now secured his second highest profile backing, that of Ben Carson who according to the Washington Post will endorse Trump officially on Friday morning.

According to WaPo, the endorsement “was finalized Thursday morning when Carson met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the luxury club owned by the Republican front-runner, the people said. The sources requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.”

Friday’s announcement will also take place at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., where the onetime rivals will appear alongside one another at a news conference.

The endorsement comes at a critical time for Trump, who will almost certainly become undefeatable if he wins the upcoming Florida and Michigan “winner take all” primaries.

As WaPo adds, the support of Carson, a famed retired neurosurgeon and author, will likely give Trump a boost with GOP base voters and evangelicals, who embraced Carson’s campaign in its early days and fueled his brief rise to the top of Republican primary polls.

Carson’s decision may surprise some of his backers since Trump made blistering critiques over the past year of stories from Carson’s past. But according to people close to him, Carson has gradually come to see Trump as the GOP’s best chance of winning a general election and turning out droves of disengaged voters.

The endorsement will probably not come as a big surprise, because earlier today on Fox News radio, Carson hinted that he is “certainly leaning” toward a candidate and spoke highly of Trump.

“There’s two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes,” he said. “They’re not the same person. One’s very much and entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.”

And now we await tonight’s seemingly token GOP debate, which just like last time, will showcase Trump knowing he has a critical endorsement in the bag, and will surely crush his already demoralized competitors.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RabxtQ Tyler Durden

One month ago, when describing the latest in an endless series of Vancouver real estate horror stories, in this case an abandoned, rotting home (which is currently listed for a modest $7.2 million), we explained the simple money-laundering dynamic involving Chinese “investors” as follows.

• Chinese investors smuggle out millions in embezzled cash, hot money or perfectly legal funds, bypassing the $50,000/year limit in legal capital outflows.
• They make “all cash” purchases, usually sight unseen, using third parties intermediaries to preserve their anonymity, or directly in person, in cities like Vancouver, New York, London or San Francisco.
• The house becomes a new “Swiss bank account”, providing the promise of an anonymous store of value and retaining the cash equivalent value of the original capital outflow.

We also explained that hundreds if not thousands of Vancouver houses, have become a part of the new normal Swiss bank account: “a store of wealth to Chinese investors eager to park “hot money” outside of their native country, and bidding up any Canadian real estate they could get their hands on.”

This realization has now fully filtered down to the local population, and as the National Post writes in its latest troubling look at the “dark side” of Vancouver’s real estate market, it cites wholesaler Amanda who says that “Vancouver seems to be evolving from a residential city into almost like a lockbox for money… but I have to live among the empty houses. I’m a resident, not just an investor.”

The Post article, however, is not about the use of Vancouver (or NYC, or SF, or London) real estate as the end target of China’s hot money outflows – by now most are aware what’s going on. It focuses, instead, on those who make the wholesale selling of Vancouver real estate to Chinese tycoons who are bidding up real estate in this western Canadian city to a point where virtually no domestic buyer can afford it, and specifically the job that unlicensed “wholesalers” do in spurring and accelerating what is currently the world’s biggest housing bubble.

A bubble which, the wholesalers themselves admit, will inevitably crash in spectacular fashion.

This is the of about Amanda, who was profiled yesterday in a National Post article showing how a “Former ‘wholesaler’ reveals hidden dark side of Vancouver’s red-hot real estate market.” Amanda quit her job allegely for moral reasons; we are confident 10 people promptly filled her shoes.

* * *

Vancouver’s real estate market has been very good to Amanda. She’s not a licensed realtor, but buying and selling property is her full-time job.

She started about eight years ago as an unlicensed “wholesaler” in Vancouver.

She would approach homeowners and make unsolicited offers for private cash deals. Amanda made a 10-per-cent fee on each purchase by immediately assigning the contract to a background investor. It is seen as the lowest job in property investment, but it is low risk and very profitable. Amanda has done so well that she now owns two homes in Vancouver and develops property in the U.S.

Unlicensed wholesaling is an illicit and predatory business that is quickly growing in Metro Vancouver because enforcement is virtually non-existent.

It’s similar to a tactic currently being examined by B.C. real estate authorities known as “assignment flipping,” which involves legally but secretly trading homes on paper to enrich realtors and circles of investors.

However, unlicensed wholesaling is completely unregulated. Amanda estimates hundreds of wholesalers are scouring Metro Vancouver’s never-hotter speculative market — not including the realtors who are secretly wholesaling for themselves.

Amanda decided to step away from the easy money for moral reasons.

She’s most concerned that wholesalers are targeting B.C.’s vulnerable seniors who don’t understand the value of their old homes. She is also worried about offshore money being laundered, and the resulting vacant homes.

Because wholesalers are unlicensed, they have no obligation to identify their background investors or reveal the source of funds to Canadian authorities who fight money laundering.

“Vancouver seems to be evolving from a residential city into almost like a lockbox for money,” Amanda said. “But I have to live among the empty houses. I’m a resident, not just an investor.”

Amanda said she believes that unethical and ignorant investors are driving B.C.’s housing market at full speed towards a crash. For these reasons, and with the condition that we not use her real name, she came forward to reveal how wholesalers operate.

The calling cards of wholesalers — hand-written flyers offering homeowners “confidential” and “discreet” cash sales — started flooding westside Vancouver homes over the past 18 months. With the dramatic surge in home prices, wholesalers now are spreading into neighbourhoods across Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

In eight years Amanda has never seen the market hotter than it is right now, and her colleagues are urging her to start wholesaling again.

Notices offering cash for homes are the calling card of unlicensed wholesalers

“A lot of money is leaving China, so now every second day people are asking if I can go out and find places for them. They have tons of money,” Amanda said. “They are basically brokering business deals specifically for Chinese investors.”

She said the mechanics of wholesaling schemes work like this:

The investor behind the unlicensed broker targets a block, often with older homes, and gives the wholesaler cash in a legal trust.

The wholesaler persuades a homeowner to sell, offering immediate cash, no subjects, no home inspections, and savings on realtor fees.

While the wholesaler claims to represent one buyer, or in some cases to be the buyer, Amanda said three or four contract flippers are often already lined up, with an end-buyer from China who will eventually take title in most cases. These unlicensed broker deals appear to be illegal.

A veteran Vancouver realtor confirmed these types of deals. The realtors we spoke to have been asked by their brokerages not to comment to reporters, so we agreed to withhold their names.

“I work with some non-licensed flippers,” one said. “They walk on to the lawn of an older house, see the owner and yell, ‘We’re not realtors!’ The owner invites them in, thinks they’re saving a commission — which they are — and loses big-time on the actual sale. I’ve seen it first-hand.”

According to flyers obtained from across Metro Vancouver and interviews with homeowners who were solicited, wholesalers often say they have Chinese buyers willing to pay a premium for quick sales.

Homeowners in Richmond, Vancouver’s east and west sides, Surrey, Langley, Coquitlam, Burnaby, White Rock, Delta and North Vancouver confirmed such offers in interviews.

One resident of Vancouver’s west side Dunbar area said she was annoyed by wholesalers constantly soliciting her, and a man in Surrey said his elderly mother was bothered by wholesalers.

“A guy walked up and he offered $700,000 cash within a day, and he said I would save on the realtor fees,” said Zack Flegel, who lives near 119th Street and Scott Road in Delta.

“He also says he will give me $100,000 cash and move me into a $600,000 house. He said he has a bunch of properties. He was talking about my house like it was a trading card. We don’t have abandoned homes yet like Vancouver, but this is how it happens, right?”

After the offer is accepted, the wholesaler assigns the purchase contract to the investor for a 10-per-cent markup, Amanda said. But some wholesalers aren’t content with making $100,000 or more per sale.

“People were going in and offering, for example, an 80-year-old widow, she bought the house for $70,000 and it is now worth $800,000 and they were offering her $200,000,” Amanda said. “So they are making $300,000 or $400,000 (after assigning the contract).

“And you are socializing with other wholesalers, and it is hard to hear them say, ‘Oh this whole street is filled with seniors whose partners are dropping off like flies.’ Or, ‘They just want to get rid of it, they have no clue what their house is worth, and it’s the whole street.’”

Amanda said her father died recently. She pictured her mother being targeted by wholesalers and resolved never to play that role again.

“There are elements of this that are elder abuse, absolutely.”

In a recent story that deals with implications of rising property taxes rather than predatory real estate practices, the Financial Post reported that, especially in Vancouver and Toronto’s scorching markets, “it’s not uncommon for some Canadian seniors to be unaware of the value of their location.”

B.C.’s Superintendent of Real Estate, Carolyn Rogers, conceded the potential for elder abuse as reported by Amanda.

“We would welcome an opportunity to speak to (Amanda) and assuming she gives us the same information, we would open a file,” Rogers said. “The conditions in the Vancouver market right now present risks … and seniors could be an example of that.”

It is illegal for wholesalers to privately buy and sell property for investors without a licence, Rogers said. She said her officers have approached some wholesalers recently and asked them to become licensed or cease their activities.

A review of the superintendent’s website shows no enforcement orders, fines or consumer alerts filed in connection to unlicensed wholesalers making cash deals and flipping contracts.

Amanda said that over the past year she learned of new levels of “layering and complexity that I didn’t see five years ago” in wholesaling and assignment-clause flipping.

“Five years ago I didn’t see realtors wholesaling, and I didn’t see people calling me so that I would get them a property and not assign the property to them, but work as a ‘partner’ and I would attach a 10-per-cent fee.

“And then they would assign it to their boss and attach 10 per cent, and then that person’s boss would attach 10 per cent. I’ve been watching over the last month, and it has got astounding.”

Amanda said some wholesale deals involve only unlicensed brokers and pools of offshore cash organized informally, and some appear to involve realtors and brokerages hiding behind unlicensed wholesalers.

“I’ve seen it from the back end. We have friends in the British Properties and the realtor said he will buy their property for $2 million. And then six months later it was sold for $3.5 million. When I’m looking at that, it is a pretty clear wholesale deal.”

Darren Gibb, spokesman for Canada’s anti-money-laundering agency, FINTRAC, confirmed that unlicensed property buyers have no obligation to report the identity or sources of funds of the buyers they represent.

However, Gibb said, if realtors are involved in “assignment flipping” it is mandatory that they and unlicensed assistants make efforts to identify every assignment-clause buyer and their sources of funds.

Vancouver realtors confirmed that money laundering is a big concern in assignment-flipping deals, whether organized by an unlicensed wholesaler or a realtor.

“When you are a non-realtor broker you no longer have to play by any rules,” one Vancouver realtor said.

“There is a role for assignments, but nobody is asking where the money came from. We are creating vehicles for money laundering.”

“No person in their right mind wants to buy your house once, and sell it three more times in a small window of opportunity, unless they have a whole pool of people lined up trying to get their money out of the country. The higher the prices go, these vehicles to get money out of the country get bigger and bigger.”

NDP MLA David Eby and Green MLA Andrew Weaver commented that allegations of unlicensed brokers targeting seniors and participating in potential money-laundering schemes call for direct action from Victoria and independent investigation, because these concerns fall outside the jurisdiction of the B.C. Real Estate Council and its current ongoing review of real estate practices.

“It is very troubling to me,” Eby said, “that not only do we have a layer of real estate agents that are acting improperly and violating the rules, but there might be this additional layer who are not bound by any rule and have explicitly avoided becoming agents for that reason.

“This unscrupulous behaviour is targeting seniors who need money for retirement. What kind of society is that?” Weaver said.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RaKVCV Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Although the extent to which oil-related funding has sustained ISIS over the past couple of years is highly contested, it’s undeniable that the collapse in prices has had a negative cash flow impact on the terror threat du jour. As such, how’s the group sustaining itself in the fact of such a major cash crunch? According to a UK inquiry, we can thank donations from America’s Persian Gulf “allies.”

Of course, none of this will be surprising to Liberty Blitzkrieg readers. I’ve been pointing this out for a very long time. In fact, evidence was already piling up two years ago, as can be seen in the following excerpts from a piece published in June 2014 titled, America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq:

But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.

 

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”

 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

Fast forward two years, and not much has changed. The Guardian reports:

Meanwhile, it’s also become abundantly clear that the Saudis played a major role in  the 9/11 attacks. See:

The New York Post Reports – FBI is Covering Up Saudi Links to 9/11 Attack

Must Watch Video – Congressman Thomas Massie Calls for Release of Secret 9/11 Documents Upon Reading Them

Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11

With friends like these…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1P2C1G0 Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

We look to be basing right now for a higher move in the oil market into summer. We are headed for another higher week for oil prices, and the uptrend continues.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pAhc00 EconMatters