iftttwall – Page 26778

Banker Suicides Return: DSK’s Hedge Fund Partner Jumps From 23rd Floor Apartment

The summer, thankfully, has been largely bereft of the dismal trend of bankers committing suicide, but as Bloomberg reports, Thierry Leyne, a French-Israeli banker and partner of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former chief of the IMF, was found dead Thursday after apparently taking his own life by jumping off the 23rd floor of one of the Yoo towers, a prestigious residential complex in Tel Aviv. This is the 16th financial services executive death this year.

Bloomberg reports that Thierry Leyne, the French-Israeli entrepreneur who last year started an investment firm with former International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has died. He was 48.

Leyne died yesterday in Tel Aviv, according to his assistant at the firm, who asked not to be identified. Le Figaro newspaper reported that he committed suicide.

Last year, Leyne joined Strauss-Kahn in establishing the Paris-traded firm Leyne, Strauss-Kahn & Partners after the former IMF head bought a 20 percent stake to help develop the investment-banking franchise of Leyne’s company, Luxembourg-based Anatevka SA. Leyne had taken Anatevka public in March 2013 before joining forces with Strauss-Kahn, commonly referred to in France as DSK.

The new partnership — usually called LSK & Partners by using both men’s initials — was part of Strauss-Kahn’s efforts to rebuild his post-IMF life after he was charged in 2011 of criminal sex, attempted rape, sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment and the forcible touching of a chambermaid at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan. Strauss-Kahn denied the charges, which were later dropped. He settled the maid’s lawsuit in 2012.

And NYTimes adds,

Mr. Leyne, 48, jumped off the 23rd floor of one of the Yoo towers, a prestigious residential complex, according to Israeli officials.

Leyne's Background:

Leyne, who resided in Tel Aviv, built his career as a financier in France, Israel and Luxembourg. He founded the investment firm Assya Capital in 1994 and listed it on Euronext in Paris in 2001. Leyne merged the business with Global Equities Capital Markets in 2010 to provide financial advice and private banking to clients in eastern Europe, Le Figaro reported.

Anatevka, which had a market value of 50 million euros ($63 million) when Strauss-Kahn purchased his stake, controlled the merged entity, known as Assya Compagnie Financiere, offering asset management, brokerage, corporate finance and capital investment. Anatevka had a staff of about 100 people in six countries — Luxembourg, Belgium, Monaco, Israel, Switzerland and Romania — in September 2013.

In 1996, Leyne founded the company Axfin, one of the first independent investment firms in France, according to the website of Assya Capital. Axfin listed on the Paris stock exchange in 1999 before it was bought by Nuremberg, Germany-based Consors Discount Broker AG. Leyne was the supervisory board chairman of Consors France until the end of 2002.

Leyne was born in September 1965, according to French public records. He held French and Israeli citizenship, Figaro said. He had an engineering degree from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, his LinkedIn profile shows.

* * *

This is the 16th financial services executive death this year…

1 – William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.

2 – Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.

3 – Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.

4 – Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.

5 – Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.

6 – Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.

7 – Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago. No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.

8 – Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.

9 – James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO, found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say whatcaused the death

10 – Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, commited suicide by jumping in front of LIRR train

11 – Kenneth Bellando, 28, a trader at Levy Capital, formerly investment banking analyst at JPMorgan, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment.

12 – Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, the former CEO of Dutch bank ABN Amro found dead at home near Amsterdam with wife and daughter.

13 – Li Jianhua, 49, the director of China's Banking Regulatory Commission died of a sudden heart attack

14 – Lydia _____, 52 – jumped to her suicide from the 14th floor of Bred-Banque Populaire in Paris

15 – Julian Knott, 45 – killed wife and self with a shotgun in Jefferson Township, New Jersey

16 – Thierry Leyne, 48 – jumped from 23rd floor apartment in Tel Aviv.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1D76TjP Tyler Durden

Pennsylvania So Mad at Mumia Abu-Jamal It Just Outlawed Offenders’ Free Speech

The government doesn't get to decide who gets to be famous or why. Let us not wade into an
argument as to whether Mumia Abu-Jamal is a cop-killer or a victim
of a corrupt justice system. Actually, go ahead and wade into the
argument if you like. Whether Abu-Jamal is innocent is not actually
relevant to this blog post, but the argument surrounding it
certainly is.

Pennsylvannia, the state in which Abu-Jamal was born and where
his crime took place, passed a law this week that essentially
declared that those convicted of crimes
no longer have free speech. That is not the stated intent of
the law (it never is), but it’s absurdly clear it is what has
happened. This week Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law a bill that
allows victims of crime to go to a judge and stop a convicted
criminal from engaging in any “conduct which perpetuates the
continuing effect of crime on the victim.”

What could that possibly mean? It has to do with Abu-Jamal
giving a pre-recorded commencement speech to graduates at Goddard
College in Vermont. This apparently shocked the conscience of
Pennsylvania’s legislature and Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain
officer Daniel Faulkner. So they’ve introduced a
victim’s veto. If you’ve been convicted of a crime in
Pennsylvania, you can’t say or do anything that makes the victim or
victims feel “a temporary or permanent state of mental
anguish.”

The wording of the law is vague—but makes sure to note that
redress involves collecting “reasonable attorney fees and other
costs associated with the litigation.” Does it mean that a
convicted person who continues to protest his innocence in media
interviews is breaking the law? The law criminalizes conduct, not
just speech. Would asking the Innocence Project for help
with your case violate the law? Would doing anything outside of the
standard appeals process “perpetuate the continuing effect of the
crime”?

The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union
is
not impressed:

“This bill is written so broadly that it is unclear what
behavior is prohibited,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of
the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “Essentially, any action by an inmate or
former offender that could cause ‘mental anguish’ could be banned
by a judge.

“That can’t pass constitutional muster under the First
Amendment.”

They note that that the bill could also put the kibosh on
efforts by imprisoned criminals to engage in political advocacy and
criminal justice reform, which I suspect is a feature, not a bug.
The state’s victim advocate, Jennifer Storm, nevertheless insists,
“We’re not limiting one’s free speech. That is not what this bill
is about.” That is literally what you are doing. This law was
passed for the expressed purpose of censoring criminals.

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Ebola: The Upshot of Liberia’s Western Aid Curse

When an Ebola-afflicted man collapsed in Nigeria’s Lagos
airport, Nigerian authorities didn’t call the Western aid Ebola hotline demanding mulah and
manpower. They hunkered down and took aggressive steps to prevent
the contagion from spreading.

By contrast, Liberia started holding press conferences and
calling Western aid organizations when it belatedly detected the
disease. The outcome? Ebola is raging through this sad, sad
country, attacking over 300 people last week alone.

What’s the difference between Liberia and Nigeria? Liberia is
among the most indebted nations in Africa, I note in my column at
The Week, and Nigeria is the least. It’s capital Monrovia
is crawling with NGOs and the U.N. is already spending $500 million
to maintain a peacekeeping force. As one African put it: “The virus
has managed to escape from a country that has one of the largest
concentration of ‘helpers’ in the world.”

With Western aid like this, developing countries don’t
need drones and bombs.

Go
here to read the whole thing.

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Jury Nullification Law Gutted by New Hampshire Supreme Court

Jury Insisting “It is well established that jury
nullification is neither a right of the defendant nor a defense
recognized by law,” the New Hampshire Supreme Court this morning
eviscerated a law
that was openly intended and
widely interpreted as a
shot in the arm for the right of jurors to consider the law as
well as the facts in criminal cases. It did nothing of the sort,
the court sniffed. It just codified existing law allowing the jury
to give some thought to the way in which laws are applied.

Yeah. That’s why legislators battled and prosecutors fretted
over the law’s passage.

In the case at hand,
The State of New Hampshire v. Richard Paul. Richard
Paul was convicted of selling marijuana and LSD. During closing
arguments, his attorney urged nullification. By the court’s
description, the prosecutor acknowledged the jury’s nullification
role, but argued that the jurors should convict based the law—an
understandable back and forth between prosecution and defense.

Then, the judge issued “jury instructions that effectively
contravened his ‘jury nullification defense.'” Paul appealed his
subsequent conviction.

Honestly, the law had been watered down in the course of its
passage through the New Hampshire legislature, from a version that,
the court concedes, instructed the jury to “judge the law” and
“nullify any and all actions [the jurors] find to be unjust.” The
enacted
version reads, instead, “In all criminal proceedings the court
shall permit the defense to inform the jury of its right to judge
the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts
in controversy.”

At the time of passage in 2012, Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute
said it was “definitely a step forward,” but he was
worried about the dilution the measure had suffered.

I am concerned, however, that this language does not go
far enough. We don’t know how much pressure trial
judges will exert on defense counsel. As noted above, if the
attorney’s argument is “too strenuous,” the judge may reprimand the
attorney in some way or deliver his own strenuous instruction about
how the jurors must ultimately accept the law as described by
the court, not the defense. I’m also
afraid what the jurors hear will too often depend on the
particular judge and, then, what that judge wants to do in a
particular case.

That’s pretty much exactly what happened here. Insisting “Were
[the law] interpreted to grant juries the right to judge or nullify
the law, there would be a significant question as to its
constitutionality,” the New Hampshire Supreme Court said Paul got
more than he was entitled to when the judge in his case allowed his
attorney to mention nullification before issuing contrary
instructions.

So Paul is out of luck. And defendants in the state can no
longer rely on the state’s jury nullification law, because the
state’s highest court says that law doesn’t mean what everybody
knew it meant.

Below, Reason TV on a happier outcome from a jury.

HT: Kirsten Tynan

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Health Insurers Worried That Obamacare Might Have to Be Implemented as Written

Imagine you’re a health insurer
participating in Obamacare’s exchanges. There are some things you
don’t like: The back end of the federal exchange, which is supposed
to handle payments to insurers, still isn’t finished. There are
some things you’d like to see changed: Insurers currently aren’t
allowed to offer plans below a certain actuarial value—the average
amount of medical expenses covered for people in the plan—although
there are currently proposals to change this.

But even still, it’s not a bad arrangement: Americans are
generally required to buy the product you sell, they are heavily
subsidized by the federal government, and if your expenses for
exchange-based plans come in more than a bit higher than expected,
the federal government will cover a significant percentage of your
overage.

All in all, you’ve got a fairly generous setup. But you probably
have some worries. For instance, what about those
lawsuits contending that, because the text of Obamacare only allows
subsidies in state-established exchanges, only state-established
exchanges should be allowed to disburse subsidies? Imagine what
would happen if those crazy legal challenges were actually
successful. That might be a problem for insurers, given that the
majority of exchanges were established by the federal government,
not states.

Now, many of the health law’s supporters have argued that the
challenge is an extended legal joke—an error in wording, not a
serious legal challenge. Only an anti-Obamacare cynic, a
text-obsessed nihilist, could think that when Congress wrote and
passed legislation specifying that subsidies would be available in
state-established exchanges that Congress actually meant this
literally. Or, well,
Jonathan Gruber, who helped draft the federal health law and
the Massachusetts health reform it was based on. But that’s neither
here nor there.

If you’re an insurer, however, you might not be so sure. You see
this Gruber fellow
saying, all the way back in 2012, that “if you’re a state and
you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get
their tax credits.” (He’s since changed his mind, and says he
previously misspoke on multiple occasions.) And you see a
couple of court decisions that seem to buy into the odd notion
that the plain, unambiguous text of the law is the clearest
expression of congressional intent. You notice that, even when a
court disagrees with the challengers, it agrees that they kind of
have a point,
as the Fourth Circuit did when it admitted that “a literal
reading of the statute undoubtedly accords more closely with their
position.”

Sure, one of the decisions in favor of the challengers has now
gone to a full court review, which is
expected to be more favorable to the administration. But
overall, the whole situation looks kind of dicey.

And so, since you’re an insurer, you’d probably want, well,
insurance against the prospect that these oddball legal
literalists, who think the law should be implemented in the
explicit way that the text of the law states, and not some
impressionistic way that better fits the administration’s purposes,
might actually win.

As CNBC notes,
that’s just what insurers sought and eventually got from the Obama
administration in the latest round of health exchange
contracts:

These insurers will sell you some Obamacare—at least as long as
the government is footing the bill for most of their customers.

Insurers doing business on HealthCare.gov will be
allowed to terminate their health plans if there’s a halt on
federal tax credits that help most Obamacare customers buy the
coverage, according to new language for 2015
contracts.…The language in the contracts, without saying so
overtly, recognizes that there is a chance that those challenges
could succeed.

In other words, if you’re an insurer, you might be worried. And
you might have good reason to be.

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The Housing Recovery Has Been Canceled Due To Data Revisions

Last month, when, with great amusement, we reported that “New Home Sales Explode Higher Thanks To… Record High Average New Home Prices?”, we mocked the latest batch of bullshit data released by the US department of truth as follows:

New Home Sales rose a magnificent (seasonally-adjusted annualized rate) 18% in August – the biggest monthly rise since January 1992 albeit with a 16.3 90% confidence interval, meaning the final number may well be +1.7%. At 504k, new home sales are back at May 2008 levels (though obviously massively below the 1.4 million homes sold at the peak in 2005). As a reminder, May’s 504K new home sales print was later revised later to 458K. But even more stunning, new home sales in The West rose a mind-numbing 50% in August (and up 84.4% YoY – nearly double).

Well, it is now a month later, and here come the revisions: first, that 50% surge in the West was revised… 30K lower. But to get a sense of just how bad the revision was, here is the old, pre-revision data, and the “data” following the latest revision.

In short: the euphoric, consensus-beating data for every single month since May has been revised lower, by on average 6% and as much as 9%. Perhaps finally people will realize that there is only one number that matters in the Census bureau’s monthly new home sales report: the ±15.7 90% confidence interval. Well, people maybe, but not algos, who only care about one thing: whether the data beat or missed.

Now we wonder: will all those market surges over the past 4 months which were based on erroneous headline data, all be revised lower? Sarcasm off.

Oh, and as for that record new home price reported last month, which magically also resulted in what the US government wanted everyone to believe was a surge in buying… well, see for yourselves:

So to summarize: the latest “housing recovery” has been indefinitely postponed due to data revisions.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1xhtjN8 Tyler Durden

New Home Sales Miss, August Drastically Revised Lower

Having exploded 18% higher in August (driven by, um, record high prices), September’s new home sales printed at 467k (against expectations of 470k) and August’s surge to 504k was revised lower to just 466k (busting the biggest beat since 2005 meme) revised 7.5% lower. After August’s reported 50% MoM rise in The West, the region saw the rate of sales slow in September. The median new home sales price (at record highs last month) fell 4% YoY to $259,000.

New Home Sales Missed…

Last month, New home sales rose the most since 1992… and there was much rejoicing…

and now that has been drastically revised lower to a 10% jump in August and a drop in July – one wonders if the gains in homebuilder stocks will also be relinquished.

Either NAHB sentiment has to plunge (as it has done the previous two times) or home sales magically surge back to bubblicious levels…

You Decide…

Charts: Bloomberg

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

Friday A/V Club: Vintage Swine Flu PSAs

As New York gears up for a new
round of Ebola dread, here’s an artifact from one of
yesteryear’s epidemic fears: a pair of public service announcements
from the swine flu outbreak of 1976. I especially like the second
one, which starts about 30 seconds in—it’s a sort of micro horror
movie with steadily more discordant music:

The ’76 swine flu campaign became an
infamous fiasco: The virus killed only one person, while
several more people died from a side effect of the shots. Ford gets a shot from Dr. Squeaky Fromme. The mistakes made then
have haunted the responses to subsequent public health threats, not
just among those fringe characters who oppose all vaccines always
but in the corridors of power. In 2002, Time
reports, George W. Bush opted “not to administer a nationwide
smallpox vaccination program—despite Vice President Dick Cheney’s
belief that doing so was a prudent counterterrorism step—because it
could have resulted in dozens of deaths.” Credit where it’s due:
The terrorist smallpox conspiracy never materialized, so Bush chose
correctly.

In the case of Ebola, at any rate—where the disease is eating
its way through West Africa and a vaccine is still in
development—that sort of dilemma would be a vast improvement
over the status quo.

(For past installments of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)

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Goodfellas Actor Suing Simpsons Because Mafia Character Looks Like Him

Twenty-five years after the release of the mafia gangster movie
Goodfellas, and twenty-three years after the mafia
characters on the The Simpsons were introduced on the
animated television show, one of the actors in Goodfellas
is suing the creators of The Simpsons because, he alleges,
they stole his likeness in creating one of the mafia characters.
The actor is Frank Sivero, who played Frankie Carbone and says the
Simpsons character gangster Louie looks like him. Here’s a
side by side:

Louis and Frankie

It’s hard, I think, not to see a resemblance, but the idea that
performing artists be able to “own” the broad features of
characters they create seems ridiculous. Even if you’ve never
watched Goodfellas, the Simpsons character looks
like what you might imagine a member of the mafia looks like.

Sivero doesn’t explain why he waited more than two decades to
sue, but does explain why he thinks the creators of The
Simpsons “stole” his character.
Via NBC News:

Silvero claims in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles
Superior Court that in 1989 he lived in a Sherman Oaks apartment
next door to “The Simpsons” writers and that “Simpsons” producer
James L. Brooks was “highly aware of who Sivero was, the fact that
he created the role of Frankie Carbone, and that ‘The Simpsons’
character Louie would be based on this character.”

“During this time, both writers knew who Sivero was, and they
saw each other almost every day,” the complaint alleges. “They knew
he was developing the character he was to play in the movie
‘Goodfellas,’ a movie Sivero did in 1989. In fact, they were aware
the entire character of ‘Frankie Carbone’ was created and developed
by Sivero, who based this character on his own personality.”

Can I say ay caramba or is it going to get me sued? Will the

Department of Homeland Security have to get involved?

Related: This summer Sivero
sued a deli in Los Angeles for selling a sandwich called the
Frankie Carbone.

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Russell Napier Asks: “What Evidence Is There That QE Works?”

From Russell Napier of ERIC

Easy’s Getting Harder Every Day

The job of the investor is to answer that impossible question, ‘ What is the correct valuation for this financial instrument?’ There is almost never a right answer to this question, but there are, of course, many wrong ones. Eliminating wrong answers, especially when valuing an investment which already discounts the future, is an important strategy in coming up with better answers than the competition.

So there is really good news for investors: the current, prevalent answer to the question, ‘What is the correct valuation for this financial instrument?’ is clearly wrong. It is demonstrably wrong because the answer is ‘Whatever the central bankers say is the correct value’. It is clearly wrong because it has never been true in the past. It was recognised as clearly the wrong answer as early as 1810 in the words of the so-called ‘ Bullion Committee’-

‘The most detailed knowledge of the actual trade of a country, combined with the profound Science in all the principles of Money and circulation, would not enable any man or set of men to adjust, and keep always adjusted, the right proportion of circulating medium in a country to the wants of trade.’

Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons 1810

The ‘Bullion Committee’ of 1810 realised the virtual impossibility of the United Kingdom remaining off the gold standard when the war with the French had concluded. It realised a simple truth: that no ‘man or set of men’ could provide the appropriate amount of money for an economy. And thus it has been true ever since that central bankers, when freed from any form of monetary anchor, have created the wrong amount of money. All we have to decide is which side of wrong are they on — too much or too little? Market movements now clearly indicate that the answer is too little.

The world is beginning to see that central bank action is insufficient to overwhelm the forces of deflation. The reported deflation of 2009 lasted only briefly. The consensus view is that it was defeated by developed world central bankers flooding the world with money.

The consensus view is wrong. Since 2009 almost 80% of the increase in the world’s money has come from Emerging Markets in general, and China in particular. It is the rapid slowdown in EM, exacerbated by the strong US$ discussed in the previous Fortnightly Solid Ground, that is bringing deflation to the world. The developed world will feel that deflationary wind and it will raise real rates of interest at a time when the central bankers cannot reduce nominal rates of interest. The chart below shows how, even in the USA, inflation expectations are declining and real rates of interest rising.

US 5 Year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities- Inflation Breakevens

Since July the markets expected average annual inflation rate, over the next five years, has declined from 2.1% to just 1.6%. After five years of QE inflation expectations are right back where they were in the final quarter of 2009. With no ability to reduce nominal rates further, the efficacy of monetary policy rests almost entirely upon its ability to generate inflation and depress real rates of interest. Monetary policy is failing to create inflation and if the central bankers don’t control this variable they certainly don’t control the price of financial instruments.

This is the third time that inflation expectations have dived in the post QE world and, on each occasion when expected inflation has neared 1.5%, the S&P500 has fallen sharply. It falls sharply because, in a land of near-zero nominal rates, the success or failure of the Fed is gauged solely on its ability to produce inflation. On both previous occasions when inflation expectations got this low the Fed responded with even easier monetary policy, causing inflation expectations to rise; but crucially inflation did not.

The bell has rung for Pavlov’s dogs twice before, but the meat of higher inflation has not been delivered. Now the bell is ringing for the third time. With the key driver of inflation events well beyond US shores, the inability of the Fed to generate the meat of inflation will be much more apparent on this occasion. After five and a half years of QE there is still no meat for the dogs: real rates of interest are rising rapidly and almost all financial market instruments are overvalued. If you believe that the correct price for financial market instruments is the price decreed by the Federal Reserve, you need to look at the chart above and ask yourself a simple question, ‘With inflation expectations back at 4Q 2009 levels, what evidence is there that QE works?’

Financial markets continue to price in the God-like omnipotence of central bankers, while the evidence mounts of their all-too-human mortality. When it comes to central bankers, do not forget the words of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the great monetary allegory of the same name. Unmasked and accused by Dorothy of lying about his great powers, he could only remark-