Category: zerohedge

Curious why Brent just spiked by over 1% (and the S&P500 took a leg lower)? The reason is headlines from Reuters citing Europe’s unelected dictator, Van Rompuy who has said that sanctions should include Oil technology. However, in a hilarious twist, the unellected muppet of Europe’s insolvent banks, hopes to get his sanctions cake and snort Russia’s gas too, adding that Europe’s sanctions should exclude the gas sector.

• LETTER FROM EU COUNCIL HEAD VAN ROMPUY TO MEMBER STATES SAYS RESTRICTIONS ON SUPPLYING TECHNOLOGY TO RUSSIA SHOULD INCLUDE OIL, BUT EXCLUDE GAS SECTOR-EU SOURCES

More from Reuters:

EU leaders seeking to agree sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine are expected to include oil technology but exclude technology for Russia’s all-important gas sector, EU sources said on Friday.

 

The scaling back of the EU’s ambitions shows the difficulty of agreeing forceful sanctions against Russia without risking damage to the bloc’s fragile economy.

 

Two sources quoted from an official letter sent to EU heads of government outlining “an emerging consensus on some key principles”.

Here it appears that Europe’s unelected leaders are somehow deluding themselves that if faced with escalating sanctions, Russia will not unilaterally cut off the gas to Europe.

It gets better. Reuters also added the following:

• LETTER FROM EU COUNCIL HEAD VAN ROMPUY ASKS EU LEADERS TO DELEGATE AUTHORITY TO AGREE TO RUSSIA SANCTIONS TO AMBASSADORS, AVOIDING NEED FOR SUMMIT-EU DIPLOMAT

Why? So that when things really escalate out of hand, and Russia does half gas deliveries sending Europe into a triple-dip recession or outright depression, the population will demand scalps. At that point the unelected Van Rompuys can say: “hey, don’t blame us. It was all the ambassadors fault.”

Lest anyone thinks that Russia is anywhere close to “blinking”, allow us to disabuse you of such naive thoughts with these Reuters and BBG headlines:

• RUSSIA SAYS UKRAINE SHELLED RUSSIAN TERRITORY WITH THE INTENT TO KILL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS; PROOF FOR `FALSE’ U.S. CLAIMS `SIMPLY DOESN’T EXIST’ – -INVESTIGATIVE COMMITTEE STATEMENT;

But the biggest telltale is what we have said the latest escalation is all about: the South Stream – the Russian nat gas pipeline which would circumvent Ukraine entirely. “A draft document on possible sanctions on Thursday also laid out a range of technologies that could be restricted, which could have delayed development of Russia’s South Stream gas project to ship gas to Europe via the Black Sea.“

Because just like with Syria, so with Ukraine and all the associated brewhaha, at the heart of the ongoing conflict is nothing more than Europe’s addiction to Russian energy.

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

It was a little over a year ago when the “Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary “Rebels” Was Revealed” as none other than the uber-wealthy Qatar (also known as the tiny but filthy rich state in the Persian Gulf that hosts the US Fifth fleet, better known as infinite leverage vis-a-vis the United States), which effectively had been pulling the US interventionist strings in hopes of taking out the Assad government and installing a puppet regime, one which would be helpful in facilitating the passage of a natgas pipeline beneath the country, which would then proceed into Turkey and all the way into Europe, as a means of bypassing Europe’s reliance on Russia (which as recent events have shown has all the leverage when it comes to Europe).  It failed.

As a result it had to redirect its puppetmastery skills elsewhere. That “elsewhere” appears to be none other than Hamas, which is now embroiled in a landwar with Israel in a conflict that has claimed the lives of over 800 people. And while we did find the revelation reported by the Times of Israel as surprising, it is certainly not shocking in a world in which moneyed interests fund militants across nations in what has become an explosion of proxy wars around the globe (see Syria, Ukraine, etc).

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, left, shakes hands with Hamas leader
Khaled Mashaal, right, as the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, center,
looks on, after signing an agreement in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Feb 6, 2012
(photo credit: AP/Osama Faisal)

According to the TOI, Israel president Shimon Peres “accused Qatar on Wednesday of becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror” due to its financial support for Hamas in Gaza.”

A spokesman for Peres would not comment on the information on which the president was basing his accusation, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former security adviser said Qatar was relentlessly financing Hamas terror.

 

Qatar’s recently attempted to transfer funds for the salaries of Hamas civil servants in Gaza, following the formation of a Palestinian unity government, but was blocked by the United States, which pressured the Arab Bank not to process them. But former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (res) Yaakov Amidror told The Times of Israel that the emirate’s funding for the organization’s terror apparatus, including tunnel diggers and rocket launchers, has continued unabated.

 

“Hamas currently has two ‘true friends’ in the world: Qatar and Turkey,” Amidror said. The small Gulf state is currently Hamas’s closest ally in the Arab world, after the movement’s relations with Egypt soured following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi in June 2013. Qatar, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction and infrastructure projects in Gaza, is also home to the movement’s political leader Khaled Mashaal in Doha.

 

“The one supporting this organization financially, almost alone, is Qatar,” Amidror said.

 

Qatar isn’t only being accused of funneling funds to Hamas. Israel and Egypt are also blaming it for blocking Egypt’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza. On July 17, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said that Qatar and Turkey were undermining Egypt’s quiet-for-quiet ceasefire initiative, a position echoed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.

Bloomberg admits as much in its latest sweep of the land:

Qatar and, to a lesser extent, Turkey are providing Hamas with alternative channels. Erdogan “has taken a very vocal and emotional pro-Palestinian line,” said Sabra. “It’s good for him domestically, but it limits his ability to play a regional diplomatic role.” After Qatari-backed rebels in Syria lost ground to the rise of more radical forces, “it’s not a surprise that they’re leaping at an opportunity to try to play this role,” said Sabra.

 

Israel, looking to its traditional partner Egypt, rejects mediation by Qatar and Turkey, particularly after Erdogan said Israel’s “barbarism has surpassed even Hitler’s,” according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic developments.

 

Hamas is looking at the prospect that Qatar would sweeten a cease-fire deal with financial aid for its Gaza government, including the salaries owed to about 30,000 employees, Elmenshawy said.

Israel also has objections against the Qatar-backed news channel Al Jazeera, whom it has accused of spreading “incitement against the state of Israel”:

Another aspect of Qatar’s destructive influence, Israel believes, is state-backed news channel Al-Jazeera. Communications Minister Gilad Erdan requested of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council this week that it stop broadcasting Al-Jazeera due to its “extremely severe incitement against the State of Israel as well as enthusiastic support for Hamas and its terrorist actions.” Liberman said his ministry was examining the possibility of shutting Al-Jazeera’s offices in Israel, Israeli news site Walla reported.

In the meantime, the diplomatic tensions as a result of the US breakdown of influence in the mid-east have managed to drag even largely netural regional superpowers as Saudi Arabia and the UAE into a conflict:

A diplomatic tug of war has been underway in the Arab Gulf between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — both staunch supporters of the new Egyptian regime —  on the one side and Qatar on the other. On Tuesday, Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad arrived in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, to discuss the Palestinian situation with Saudi King Abdullah. No details of the meeting were immediately available.

And so on. The problem as we showed last week with the following chart, is that international relations in the middle east are so complicated, virtually everyone hates, if not is engaged in outright conflict with everyone else.

 

So while the grand vision that US-backed Qatar (and hence Hamas) has in the middle east is still unclear, what is even more confusing is just what its energy intentions are (because in the middle east it is all about energy trading and/or the Petrodollar until its replacement with some other reserve currency of course) with Hamas, and Gaza are: after all the sliver of land is landlocked on the east by Israel and shares a small border with Egypt on the south: an Egypt whose allegiance so far lies with Israel, and thus will hardly assist Gaza in any capacity.

We hope to find out more clues about what quite confounding chessgame Qatar is playing shortly.

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

It was a little over a year ago when the “Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary “Rebels” Was Revealed” as none other than the uber-wealthy Qatar (also known as the tiny but filthy rich state in the Persian Gulf that hosts the US Fifth fleet, better known as infinite leverage vis-a-vis the United States), which effectively had been pulling the US interventionist strings in hopes of taking out the Assad government and installing a puppet regime, one which would be helpful in facilitating the passage of a natgas pipeline beneath the country, which would then proceed into Turkey and all the way into Europe, as a means of bypassing Europe’s reliance on Russia (which as recent events have shown has all the leverage when it comes to Europe).  It failed.

As a result it had to redirect its puppetmastery skills elsewhere. That “elsewhere” appears to be none other than Hamas, which is now embroiled in a landwar with Israel in a conflict that has claimed the lives of over 800 people. And while we did find the revelation reported by the Times of Israel as surprising, it is certainly not shocking in a world in which moneyed interests fund militants across nations in what has become an explosion of proxy wars around the globe (see Syria, Ukraine, etc).

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, left, shakes hands with Hamas leader
Khaled Mashaal, right, as the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, center,
looks on, after signing an agreement in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Feb 6, 2012
(photo credit: AP/Osama Faisal)

According to the TOI, Israel president Shimon Peres “accused Qatar on Wednesday of becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror” due to its financial support for Hamas in Gaza.”

A spokesman for Peres would not comment on the information on which the president was basing his accusation, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former security adviser said Qatar was relentlessly financing Hamas terror.

 

Qatar’s recently attempted to transfer funds for the salaries of Hamas civil servants in Gaza, following the formation of a Palestinian unity government, but was blocked by the United States, which pressured the Arab Bank not to process them. But former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (res) Yaakov Amidror told The Times of Israel that the emirate’s funding for the organization’s terror apparatus, including tunnel diggers and rocket launchers, has continued unabated.

 

“Hamas currently has two ‘true friends’ in the world: Qatar and Turkey,” Amidror said. The small Gulf state is currently Hamas’s closest ally in the Arab world, after the movement’s relations with Egypt soured following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi in June 2013. Qatar, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction and infrastructure projects in Gaza, is also home to the movement’s political leader Khaled Mashaal in Doha.

 

“The one supporting this organization financially, almost alone, is Qatar,” Amidror said.

 

Qatar isn’t only being accused of funneling funds to Hamas. Israel and Egypt are also blaming it for blocking Egypt’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza. On July 17, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said that Qatar and Turkey were undermining Egypt’s quiet-for-quiet ceasefire initiative, a position echoed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.

Bloomberg admits as much in its latest sweep of the land:

Qatar and, to a lesser extent, Turkey are providing Hamas with alternative channels. Erdogan “has taken a very vocal and emotional pro-Palestinian line,” said Sabra. “It’s good for him domestically, but it limits his ability to play a regional diplomatic role.” After Qatari-backed rebels in Syria lost ground to the rise of more radical forces, “it’s not a surprise that they’re leaping at an opportunity to try to play this role,” said Sabra.

 

Israel, looking to its traditional partner Egypt, rejects mediation by Qatar and Turkey, particularly after Erdogan said Israel’s “barbarism has surpassed even Hitler’s,” according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic developments.

 

Hamas is looking at the prospect that Qatar would sweeten a cease-fire deal with financial aid for its Gaza government, including the salaries owed to about 30,000 employees, Elmenshawy said.

Israel also has objections against the Qatar-backed news channel Al Jazeera, whom it has accused of spreading “incitement against the state of Israel”:

Another aspect of Qatar’s destructive influence, Israel believes, is state-backed news channel Al-Jazeera. Communications Minister Gilad Erdan requested of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council this week that it stop broadcasting Al-Jazeera due to its “extremely severe incitement against the State of Israel as well as enthusiastic support for Hamas and its terrorist actions.” Liberman said his ministry was examining the possibility of shutting Al-Jazeera’s offices in Israel, Israeli news site Walla reported.

In the meantime, the diplomatic tensions as a result of the US breakdown of influence in the mid-east have managed to drag even largely netural regional superpowers as Saudi Arabia and the UAE into a conflict:

A diplomatic tug of war has been underway in the Arab Gulf between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — both staunch supporters of the new Egyptian regime —  on the one side and Qatar on the other. On Tuesday, Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad arrived in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, to discuss the Palestinian situation with Saudi King Abdullah. No details of the meeting were immediately available.

And so on. The problem as we showed last week with the following chart, is that international relations in the middle east are so complicated, virtually everyone hates, if not is engaged in outright conflict with everyone else.

 

So while the grand vision that US-backed Qatar (and hence Hamas) has in the middle east is still unclear, what is even more confusing is just what its energy intentions are (because in the middle east it is all about energy trading and/or the Petrodollar until its replacement with some other reserve currency of course) with Hamas, and Gaza are: after all the sliver of land is landlocked on the east by Israel and shares a small border with Egypt on the south: an Egypt whose allegiance so far lies with Israel, and thus will hardly assist Gaza in any capacity.

We hope to find out more clues about what quite confounding chessgame Qatar is playing shortly.

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

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jZjQIU williambanzai7

An Op-Ed piece penned by Veritaseum Chief Contracts Officer, Matt Bogosian

This past weekend (despite American Airlines’ best efforts), Reggie and I made it to the Second Annual North American Bitcoin Conference in Chicago. While there were some very creative (and very ambitious) ideas on how to try to realize the disruptive Bitcoin protocol, one of the predominant topics of discussion was New York Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky’s proposed Bitcoin regulations (the BitLicense proposal) – percieved by many participants at the event as an apparent attempt to regulate Bitcoin out of existence.

Even assuming that the entities sought to be regulated under the (seemingly draconian) BitLicens[ing] proposal qualify as “financial services institutions” (which I think is tenuous and highly debatable), to say that the proposal is in violation of New York’s statutory mandate, “[t]o encourage, promote and assist … other financial services institutions to effectively and productively locate, operate, employ, grow, remain, and expand in New York state … [and] … [t]o establish a modern system of regulation, rule making and adjudication that is responsive … to the needs of the state’s consumers and residents,” (NY Fin. Svcs. Law, § 102(a), emphasis mine), is not only an understatement, it’s probably totally irrelevant. Courts typically (and perhaps frustratingly) don’t second guess legislators and regulators on whether their laws have any correlation to any stated goals, even if those laws have the exact opposite effect of what was alleged as intended. Instead, courts leave that to the voters, effectively saying, “If you don’t like the law, change the legislator,” and we all know how effective that is.

In other words, Orwell was (still) right. The stated purpose of BitLicenses is not corollary to the apparent purpose – which is to maintain the status quo. Status quote doesn’t contemplate disruptive innovations like the blockchain. Unless and until a higher authority intervenes (with higher authority potentially defined as you – the reader, the consituency and particularly the avid and concerned social media user) Lawsky’s proposal, if achieved, will quite likely end (or at least drive underground) the most significant economic and technological breakthrough known to this century, not only in New York, but very likely the United States.

Imagine if Lawsky had been Superintendent in 1994. Imagine that (for whatever reason) Lawsky felt compelled to frustrate the dissemination of another set of disruptive innovations known as the Internet Protocols.

 

By analogy, imagine that he proposed a regulatory scheme known as “PacketLicense”, wherein anyone routing IP packets that arrived at or passed through devices located in or belonging to residents of New York had to acquire a PacketLicense (unless they were a New York bank, or a retailer incorporated in New York), which (in small part) involved fingerprinting everyone employed by the owner of the device, or any affiliate of that owner. In retrospect, we would laugh at its absurdity, and likely recoil in horror imagining the economic Armageddon such a regulation would cause.

But that is precisely what Lawsky is trying to do with the blockchain. Others have provided extensive treatment on various parts of the proposal. Over my next few posts, I will add my voice to that chorus by providing detailed analysis (and possible fixes) for some of the requirements that I find particularly bothersome. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jZjQbP Reggie Middleton

You can be forgiven for thinking that the world is a pretty terrible place right now, exclaims JPMorgan’s Michael Cembalest. With 11.7% of the world’s population currently at war (and a considerably larger percentage seemingly on the verge), it seemed an appropriate time to summarize the main geopolitical risk points in the world.

Deutsche Bank warns Geopolitical Risks Remain High

 

As Cembalest notes, the list is long… and growing

The downing of a Malaysian jetliner in eastern Ukraine and escalating sanctions against Russia, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, renewed fighting in Libya, civil wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, Islamist insurgencies in Nigeria and Mali, ongoing post-election chaos in Kenya, violent conflicts in Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen, assorted mayhem in central Africa, and the situation in North Korea, described in a 2014 United Nations Human Rights report as having no parallel in the contemporary world. Only in Colombia does it look like a multi-decade conflict is finally staggering to its end.

 

 

For investors, strange as it might seem, such conflicts are not affecting the world’s largest equity markets very much (for now). Perhaps this reflects the small footprint of war zone countries within the global capital markets and global economy, other than through oil production.

*  *  *

While markets maybe ignorant of the risk flares, economies are not as today’s durable goods orders in the US show, even the cleanest dirty shirt is starting to get soiled.

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

You can be forgiven for thinking that the world is a pretty terrible place right now, exclaims JPMorgan’s Michael Cembalest. With 11.7% of the world’s population currently at war (and a considerably larger percentage seemingly on the verge), it seemed an appropriate time to summarize the main geopolitical risk points in the world.

Deutsche Bank warns Geopolitical Risks Remain High

 

As Cembalest notes, the list is long… and growing

The downing of a Malaysian jetliner in eastern Ukraine and escalating sanctions against Russia, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, renewed fighting in Libya, civil wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, Islamist insurgencies in Nigeria and Mali, ongoing post-election chaos in Kenya, violent conflicts in Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen, assorted mayhem in central Africa, and the situation in North Korea, described in a 2014 United Nations Human Rights report as having no parallel in the contemporary world. Only in Colombia does it look like a multi-decade conflict is finally staggering to its end.

 

 

For investors, strange as it might seem, such conflicts are not affecting the world’s largest equity markets very much (for now). Perhaps this reflects the small footprint of war zone countries within the global capital markets and global economy, other than through oil production.

*  *  *

While markets maybe ignorant of the risk flares, economies are not as today’s durable goods orders in the US show, even the cleanest dirty shirt is starting to get soiled.

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

Shit! God Damn it! Fuck Asshole! In that order, please, from most favorite at the top. Most of us probably out there in the real world won’t be too surprised that those are the three favorite words that come out of everyone’s mouths when they need to let off steam somehow. It’s better and safer than punching the wall of the board room and getting yourself a fine. But, it can still cost and sometimes it can cost you a lot. A new study has revealed that cursing goes up proportionally as the crisis sets in and that means CEOs have been cursing their way to the top any which way they can for over five years now.

Bloomberg carried out a study and it has just been published. It covers conference calls from 2004 to 2014 and it analyzes how American CEOs speak and what words they use. By looking at the graph you will see that 2010 was the height of cursing for those at the top. Apparently the cursing has now waned since that peak year and the ‘economy is getting better’ (according to Bloomberg). Or rather, those companies that were analyzed are doing better because they are being kept alive and afloat by the buoyancy of the Federal Reserve and the loose money that they have had all these years. It would hardly seem that the economy is doing any better in general terms. But, they might be cutting back on their swearing because the flow of money has continued into the financial markets thanks to quantitative easing.

In the conference calls that were analyzed by Bloomberg, the overriding favorite word was ‘shit’, being used 197 times over that period. Next came ‘God damn it!’, used 34 times, followed by ‘Fuck!’ (17 times) and there were 6 ‘assholes’ that will go down somewhere in history.

Apparently, it was James Hagedorn, Chairman and CEO of Scotts Miracle-Gro (Ohio) that came out tops in the league table with 16 ‘shits’, and 3 ‘fucks’ plus 1 ‘god damn it’ in 10 years, making a total of 20. Hardly a lot by anyone’s daily standards and a lot of us could probably do better than that.

It’s a little bit like the study that was published in 2012 which showed the closer we got to the financial crisis the more the people at the Fed were telling jokes and laughing at the Fed meetings than actually doing anything else. According to the reports published with the transcripts of conversations, laughter was more common as things got more worrying. Take a look at the graph below and see for yourself. The closer the crisis the more they laughed. Was that nervous laughter or was that because they were blind as to what was coming? Just one example is the August 8th 2006 meeting in which the following was said: “As the comments indicate, this is probably the most challenging time that we have had before us in my long history at the FOMC [laughter]”. Still how many of us will be surprised to see that board meetings are for doing anything but work. We all know that things are decided before the meeting actually takes place. The table is just there for show, that’s all, isn’t it? But, laughter doesn’t beat cursing, does it?

Whether you choose scatology, profanity and blasphemy or downright straight-forward sexual references it’s a taboo word in society. Usually, taboo words are watered down in public and replaced by something that everyone gets but you don’t need to say. It’s only when you are feeling right at home that you let rip with what you want. Perhaps the study doesn’t so much reveal that the CEOs are under pressure and have been since 2008, but more that they are now fully at home in their environment and so they can say and do just as they like. Well, almost. Cursing is like honking the horn of your car. It lets you express yourself, whether that be happiness or downright anger and frustration.

Just take a moment and look around the office. Who’s at the top of your office league table?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jZjLEV Pivotfarm

It’s gone from bad (Mapping Africa’s “Totally Out Of Control” Ebola Epidemic)  to worse, (Head Doctor Fighting Africa’s “Out Of Control” Ebola Epidemic Contracts The Virus), to much worse (Liberian Man Tested For Ebola In World’s Fourth Most Populous City), to having run out of comparaitves – although we are leery of using a superlative just yet as we have a feeling Africa’s Ebola’s epidemic will deteriorate before it gets better. But the latest news is bad enough: as Reuters reported moments ago, Sierra Leone officials appealed for help on Friday to trace the first known resident in the capital with Ebola whose family forcibly removed her from a Freetown hospital after testing positive for the deadly disease.

How big is Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown: just around 1 million inhabitants, so yes, things are suddenly very much uncontained.

More:

Radio stations in Freetown broadcast the appeal on Friday to locate a woman who tested positive for the disease that has killed 660 people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since an outbreak was first identified in February.

 

“Saudatu Koroma of 25 Old Railway Line, Brima Lane, Wellington,” the announcement said. “She is a positive case and her being out there is a risk to all. We need the public to help us locate her.”

 

Koroma, 32, a resident of the densely populated Wellington neighborhood, had been admitted to an isolation ward while blood samples were tested for the virus, Health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis. The results came back on Thursday.

 

“The family of the patient stormed the hospital and forcefully removed her and took her away,” Tunis said. “We are searching for her.”

What is just as bad is that even without this latest shocking development, the death toll from the epidemic has already hit 660 according to the WHO, cited by AFP.

And now we await news out of the world’s fourth largest city, Nigeria’s capital Lagos, where a man collapsed at the airport and is now being tested whether he too had Ebola, and we are confused how the market is not trading at fresh all time highs following what is now a recreation of the plot of the movie Outbreak. Just consider how much GDP was created or not destroyed there.

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

If you shorted CYNK at the all time highs well over $20 several weeks ago, just before the stock was halted after the SEC finally woke up to its duty of protecting investors from pump and dump ponzi schemes (such as the broader market for example) congratulations: you are now up a lot to quite a lot, as the stock has just reopened for trading some 86% lower (on the usual volume of virtually no shares, even though the FT just told us that illiquidity is bullish), a price at which it still has a market cap of over $500 million!

The only question: how does this company, which technically doesn’t exist, still have any equity value left?

And yes, it would truly be a testament to just how broken the “market” is, if following today’s crash, the BTFD dip crew and algos sniffed it out and pumped it right back to its idiotic market cap of over $5 billion hit in the first week of July. Because after tumbling to $2.01, someone already managed to make a double on it as it was trading at over $4.00 at last check…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1AfW4ND Tyler Durden