Amid a sudden and seemingly endless stream of public relations disasters (senior execs leaving, sexual harrassment scandals, uncomfortable video clips, self-driving car fiascos, secret software programs, and mishandled DUIs), Uber opened up its books to Bloomberg, prompting one analyst to exclaim "this is a cash-burniung machine."

The last couple of months have been a constant PR battle for the CEO Travis Kalanick.

1. Another tale of sexism and unacceptable workplace behavior in Silicon Valley company has emerged. This time it's at Uber, according to an explosive blog post published on Sunday by a former company engineer named Susan Fowler Riggetti.
2. Uber's newly-hired VP of engineering Amit Singhal was asked to, and did, resign on Monday after the company learned from Recode that he was accused of sexual harassment shortly before leaving Google a year ago. Here's more on the difficult position of former employers in this case.
3. A video showing Uber CEO Travis Kalanick rudely arguing with a long-time driver at the end of his ride was published by Bloomberg. "I need leadership help," Kalanick said in an apology he issued shortly after.
4. Susan Fowler Rigetti, the former Uber engineer who wrote of discrimination, said she's hired attorneys after a new law firm began to investigate her claims. Uber confirmed it has hired Perkins Coie, which reports to former A.G. Eric Holder, who's leading the investigation.
5. Uber said on Thursday that it will finally apply for a DMV permit to test self-driving cars in California after its cars' registrations were revoked in December because it refused to get the permit.
6. Charlie Miller, one of the two famous car hackers who joined Uber's Advanced Technology Center in August 2015, announced he's leaving the company.
7. The New York Times uncovered a secret Uber program called Greyball, through which the company uses software and data to evade law enforcement in cities.
8. Keala Lusk, a former Uber engineer, published a blog post detailing how her female manager mistreated her, signaling that the company's problematic culture isn't limited to the men who work there.
9. Ed Baker, Uber's head of product and growth, resigned. Though the reason is unclear, he was allegedly seen kissing another employee three years ago, which was anonymously communicated to board member Arianna Huffington, according to Recode.
10. A report outlines a trip by a group of Uber employees to a Seoul karaoke-escort bar in 2014, which included company CEO Travis Kalanick and his girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth. After arriving, several male employees picked escorts to sit with, and went to sing karaoke. Uncomfortable, a female marketing manager, who was part of the group, left after a couple of minutes, while Holzwarth and Kalanick left after an hour.
11. California regulators have recommended that Uber be fined $1.13 million for failing to investigate and/or suspend drivers who are reported by a passenger to be intoxicated. The state requires ride-hailing companies to have a zero-tolerance policy for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
12. A new report says Uber used a secret program dubbed "Hell' to track Lyft drivers to see if they were driving for both ride-hailing services and otherwise stifle competition. Only a small group of Uber employees, including CEO Travis Kalanick, knew about the program, according to a story in The Information, which was based on an anonymous source who was not authorized to speak publicly.

But, Uber, according to The Wall Street Journal's Unicorn tracking database, remains the most valuable private company in the world.

In December we warned of the potential for massive losses at the ride-sharing company, and as Bloomberg's Eric Necomer reports, we were not wrong. Uber isn't required to report its finances publicly, but the privately held company has decided to forgo that luxury for the first time. Uber said its revenue growth is outpacing losses, hoping to show the business is on a strong trajectory as it attempts to address a recent cascade of scandals.

The good news is that the ride-hailing giant more than doubled gross bookings in 2016 to $20 billion, according to financial information Uber shared with Bloomberg, and net revenue was $6.5 billion. Uber’s business is indeed massive and getting bigger. In the last three months of 2016, gross bookings increased 28 percent from the previous quarter to $6.9 billion. The company generated $2.9 billion in revenue, a 74 percent increase from the third quarter.

 

However, adjusted net losses were $2.8 billion, excluding the China business, which it sold last summer. Losses in the last three months of 2016 rose 5 percent over the same period to $991 million.

Uber declined to report first-quarter numbers, saying they were in line with expectations but that the company hasn’t yet presented them to investors.

While the rate of sales growth compared with losses is encouraging, Uber is still losing a significant sum, said Evan Rawley, a business professor at Columbia University. “That’s a lot of cash to burn in a quarter,” he said. Jeff Jones, the company’s president of ridesharing who resigned last month, previously joked to staff that he joined Uber expecting P&L, meaning a profit and loss statement, but only found an L.

Bloomberg notes that Uber has burned through at least $8 billion in its lifetime. The company said it has $7 billion of cash on hand, along with an untapped $2.3 billion credit facility.

We leave it to none other than Aswath Damodaran, infamous valuation guru and finance professor at New York University – who nailed Theranos by warning in 2015 of numerous red flags about the unicorn…

"Uber is a one-of-a-kind company, in good ways and bad ways. It’s going to be a case study… This is a cash-burning machine."

And that Mr. Damodaran is what makes it worth $68 billion!!!???

via http://ift.tt/2oIr6Ql Tyler Durden

The following article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog:

The Korean missile crisis has never been hotter. Trump is turning the screws on everyone to force action. China, Japan, and South Korea join in threatening Kim Jong-un with imminent war, but North Korea’s crackpot despot isn’t backing down.

Trump has dispatched war ships, including the USS Carl Vinson, to North Korea as North Korea continues to show signs that it is preparing to do another nuclear test on Saturday (known as ‘Day of the Sun,’ which celebrates the birth of the present dictator’s grandfather, who was North Korea’s founding president). Voice of America has reported that North Korea “has apparently placed a nuclear device in a tunnel, and it could be detonated Saturday AM Korea time.”

By that time (Friday in the US), I suppose, those American ships will all be in place to do whatever it is they’re going there to do — maybe blow up the facilities around the test site. A US aircraft (Air Force WC-135 Constant Phoenix ) commonly called a nuclear sniffer, used to monitor radiation after a nuclear blast, has been moved up to Japan. The US has two destroyers capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles positioned near North Korea’s nuclear test set, and it has heavy bombers in Guam, capable of attacking North Korea.

 

US pre-emptive strike against North Korea on the table

 

US intelligence officials told NBC that the US may launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea if they test another nuclear device. When asked about the NBC story, the Pentagon responded, “No comment.” North Korea, in response, has warned of a “merciless retaliatory attack” if the US takes such action and has said it will hit the US with a nuclear weapon if there are even signs of aggressive reaction from the US armada.  (It is not believed that North Korea has such a weapon … yet.)

A defiant North Korea has said it will do more tests, regardless of US threats, and that it “will not back down.” America’s UN ambassador under Obama already called the threat “extremely grave,” saying last fall that North Korea was more dangerous than ever and a threat to the entire world.

Now the US and South Korea have deployed thousands of troops in the area, and US troops have been practicing the assassination of North Korea’s crackpot tinpot dictator. North Korea confirms that it has no doubt that the US is threatening the life of its leader, and that US, since the Obama days, has used its own nuclear bombers to push North Korea to further development of its own nuclear arsenal.

After a recent missile test off of North Korea’s coast, Japan began conducting mass nuclear evacuation drills. In the last couple of weeks, Japan also installed anti-missile batteries around the country, and a report has been circulating that President Trump last week made the extraordinary post-WWII policy change of granting Japan permission to attack North Korea on its own so long as China is not already engaged in conflict with North Korea. Japan denies this report. So, this might have been talk to get China more engaged as China would prefer to keep Japan out of North Korea.

It has also been reported on several news sites this week that China has moved 150,000 troops into location along North Korea’s border and has even stated to North Korea it will go to war against it if North Korea attempts another nuclear test. Trump tweeted his confidence in China’s response, saying they would “properly deal with North Korea,” but adding that, “if they are unable to do so, the US, with its allies, will!” Trump also said that, when he met with China’s president, he told President Xi Jinping to remind North Korea that the United States has nuclear submarines.

China issued its own uncharacteristically blunt caution to all parties this week:

 

“The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering,”  China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in Beijing…. “No matter who it is, if they let war break out on the peninsula, they must shoulder that historical culpability and pay the corresponding price for this.”  (The New York Times)

 

Even the normally reticent South Korea has warned the north that it can expect significant punishment that it will find hard to recover from if it attempts another nuclear test or intercontinental ballistic missile test. So, North Korea’s days of getting away with nuclear tests that defy world conventions are clearly over, and I think the days of negotiation are also past. There will be no more tests without action.

 

North Korea gears up for war

 

 

Kim Jong-un watching submarine’s test missile launch.

 

Suspecting trouble, North Korea partially evacuated its capital, Pyongyang, this week in order to reduce the population present to the number that can be accommodated in bomb shelters, and its Supreme Despot, Kim Jong-un (whose plopped-on hairstyle is only trumped by the Donald’s orange swirl), has told journalists to get ready for a big event. This event may have been the ribbon-citing ceremony Kim participated in this week with journalists present, as he showed off Pyongyang’s latest development, but the press is gathered for the upcoming Day of the Sun celebrations, and anticipates something much bigger at this event at which North Korea has in the past displayed missile tests or other evidence of military prowess. As he preps for whatever he’s prepping for and makes his various threats, Kim Jong-un is all smiles like a lunatic with something up his sleeve.

 

 

Kim Jong-un dances with soldiers as he celebrates a North Korean missile test. Everybody is happy.

 

 

All nations are on edge

 

Vice President Pence is scheduled to visit Seoul on Sunday, during his first Asian trip. The timing of his visit, after the Day of the Sun might indicate the US does not plan any pre-emptive strike against North Korea on that day. However, while Pence is ostensibly going to South Korea to talk with the government there about North Koreas nuclear development, the White House has also said it has contingency plans for the VP’s visit, should North Korea carry out another nuclear test, indicating the possibility of a sudden shift to a war footing if Kim goes ahead with his apparent plans. Said a White House foreign policy adviser of Kim Jong-un,

 

He continues to develop this program, he continues to launch missiles into the Sea of Japan. With the regime it’s not a matter of if – it’s when. We are well prepared to counter that.

 

The Kremlin has reported that it is watching the developments around North Korea with great concern. According to the head of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev,

 

The most alarming thing about the current U.S. administration is that you can’t be sure if it is bluffing or really going to implement its threats…. America objectively poses a greater threat to peace than North Korea…. The entire world is scared and left guessing if it strikes or not. (Associated Press)

 

North Korea’s vice foreign minister says President Donald Trump is more “vicious and aggressive” than President Barack Obama was. You got that right.

 

We are comparing Trump’s policy toward the DPRK with the former administration’s and we have concluded that it’s becoming more vicious and more aggressive.

 

It takes one to know one? North Korea denounced Trump’s “maniacal military provocations.” But maybe that is exactly Trump’s strategy: convince North Korea that he is just as crazy as Kim Jong-un and just as likely to have a hair trigger in order to get the Korean crackpot to back off a little. Convince the world with his recent attacks in other countries that he will act strongly and unpredictably in order to intentionally set everyone edge.

 

Is the Trump edge shrewd and necessary strategy or a game of tit for tat?

 

Trump is turning the screws hard because, while China and the Kremlin are counseling the US toward further negotiation, decades of negotiation with North Korea, from Clinton on, have already gone nowhere. So, Trump’s recent military moves, including the advancement of this armada, may be intended to rapidly ramp up pressure on China and Russia to do more than talk endlessly about negotiation. That doesn’t mean he is bluffing, any more than his actions with Syria and Afghanistan were some kind of bluff. This is a rapid ramp up of real pressure, meaning real action will be taken if North Korea takes one more step toward nuclear armament.

 

“It’s high stakes,” a senior intelligence official directly involved in the planning told NBC News. “We are trying to communicate our level of concern and the existence of many military options to dissuade the North first. It’s a feat that we’ve never achieved before but there is a new sense of resolve here,” the official said, referring to the White House. (NBC News)

 

Trump’s sudden actions in Syria and Afghanistan this week were probably designed to make it clear to the North Korea, China and Russia that they cannot count on him to telegraph his plans to China and Russia. They cannot assume he will wait any longer for action on North Korea. Trump is making it abundantly clear everywhere that China and Russia have little time left to be of any further influence on the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He is deliberately keeping all parties guessing about what he will actually do because a ticking time bomb is strong incentive for all parties to do everything they can to avert a conflict that will put them at risk.

While they urge negotiation and sanctions, China is also reluctant to go with sanctions and clearly needs a major push to get there even in the present pressured environment:

 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said this week that the Trump administration should not expect China to risk instability in North Korea by going along with choking sanctions. China and North Korea are “neighbors with traditional friendly ties, including normal trade activities,” a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, told reporters on Thursday. (The New York Times)

 

While Trump has been assessing tougher economic sanctions and pushing for them, I suspect his policy looks something like this: “We’ll apply sanction as soon as we can work them out with others, and we’ll engage in talks if North Korea shows signs of stopping its nuclear advancement, BUT we’ll never even get there if North Korea sends up another missile. We’ll simply shoot it out of the sky, and the second the DPRK detonates another nuclear bomb, we’re going in to destroy those parts of the nuclear test site and of Korea’s nuclear development facilities to whatever extent they can be safely destroyed.”

(Obviously, we have to be very careful that we don’t send a reactor into meltdown mode that could contaminate and kill friends in the region or harm the earth generally. You cannot just knock out its control room without creating your own bomb right beside South Korea, which could also drift contamination over Japan, Russia or China. Those countries may be more concerned about that kind of literal fallout than they are about Kim Jong-un’s retaliation. Japan has also expressed concern that Jong-un might respond with chemical-tipped missiles, aimed at Japan.)

 

Kim Jong-un sits alone

 

Personally, I think getting North Korea’s insane leader out of the way could be a big win for Trump. It’s the only situation I see where regime change actually does make sense because Kim is clearly both evil and insane enough to use whatever he has at his disposal. Unlike Assad or Qadaffi or Hussein, Kim directly threatens the US as often and as directly as he can. So, why would we wait until he has whatever he needs at his disposal? If someone is holding a gun to your head while you’ve got one aimed at theirs, do you wait until they start to pull the trigger before you pull yours?

 

CNN, however, can only wring its hands

 

After stating that “four-year-old” Trump doesn’t have the attention span it takes to fulfill his campaign statement that he might be able to “talk ’em out of those damn nukes,” CNN can only wring its hands and say,

 

The price of war is too high to bear, and the time for pre-emption passed on October 9, 2006, when Pyongyang said it conducted its first nuclear test. Doing nothing has only resulted in continued military development and aggression from North Korea. (CNN)

 

That’s a silly statement. The price of waiting for North Korea to get a nuclear missile is even higher, and pre-emption hasn’t passed if the US can take out North Korea’s nuclear arms before North Korea is capable of moving them to the US. If doing nothing has resulted in further military development by North Korea, and attempts at negotiation by Bill Clinton (before he gave up on that path) and talk by Obama did nothing to slow North Korea down, what options is left, other than an attack aimed at disarming them?

If you want real action here, you’re going to have to apply real pressure, which means real risks because no one in North Korea is listening to all the threats. So, Trump may be doing this to push things into action, but it clearly won’t work (because it hasn’t) if the threat isn’t completely real. Trump is saying, “We are past threats. It’s crunch time. Cease and desist immediately, or immediate action will be taken.”

If cease and desist works this weekend, talks will have a little time to proceed along with sanctions. If it doesn’t, there won’t be any further need for talks.

via http://ift.tt/2pjEVTd Knave Dave

One week after the “Shadow Broker” hacker group re-emerged when in a Medium blog post it slammed Donald Trump’s betrayal of his core “base” and the recent attack on Syria, urging Trump to revert to his original promises and not be swept away by globalist and MIC interests, it also released the password which grants access to what Edward Snowden dubbed the NSA’s “Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons”, it has made fresh headlines by releasing data which reportedly reveals that the NSA had hacked the SWIFT banking system of several banks around the globe including in the EU and middle east.

As a reminder, last year the Shadow Brokers claimed to have stolen files from the NSA’s cyber-espionage group known as the Equation Group. After initially putting up the tools up for auction (ultimately nobody was interested in paying the price of 1 million Bitcoin, or around $570 million at the time), Last week, the Shadow Brokers dumped the password for the files they had put up for auction last summer. Missing from last week’s dump were the Windows files they put up for individual auctions over the winter.

Fast forward one week, when on Good Friday the Shadow Brokers dumped a new collection of files, containing what appears to be exploits and hacking tools targeting Microsoft’s Windows OS and evidence the Equation Group had gained access to servers and targeted banks connected to the ubiquitous SWIFT banking system.

The tools were dumped via the Shadow Brokers Twitter account and were accompanied by a new blog post. As Bleeping Computer’s Catalin Cimpanu, who first noticed the release, points out, the blog post is called “Lost in Translation,” and in addition to some premeditated ramblings in broken English…

KEK…last week theshadowbrokers be trying to help peoples. This week theshadowbrokers be thinking fuck peoples. Any other peoples be having same problem? So this week is being about money. TheShadowBrokers showing you cards theshadowbrokers wanting you to be seeing. Sometime peoples not being target audience. Follow the links for new dumps. Windows. Swift. Oddjob. Oh you thought that was it? Some of you peoples is needing reading comprehension.

… the post contained a link to a Yandex Disk file storage repo.

The password provided for these files is “Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee”, and they’ve already been unzipped and hosted on GitHub by security researchers.  A list of all the files contained in the dump is available here, and it reveals the presence of 23 new hacking tools named such as ODDJOB, JEEPFLEA, EASYBEE, EDUCATEDSCHOLAR, ENGLISHMANSDENTIST, ESKIMOROLL, ECLIPSEDWING, EMPHASISMINE, EMERALDTHREAD, ETERNALROMANCE, ETERNALSYNERGY, ETERNALBLUE , EWOKFRENZY, EXPLODINGCAN, ERRATICGOPHER, ESTEEMAUDIT, DOUBLEPULSAR, MOFCONFIG, FUZZBUNCH, and others.

As Cimpanu notes, the dump contains three folders named Windows, Swift, and OddJob. The Windows folder contains several Windows hacking tools, although these don’t look like the same tools that were put up for sale last December. The folder OddJob contains an eponymous implant that can be delivered to Windows operating systems. Details on this implant are scarce at the moment although according to some members of the hacking community, the ETERNALBLUE tool also allows access to Windows 10-based platforms, also known as “zero-day” (0-day) exploits, granting hackers adversely control over any hacked computer.

OUCH, is that Windows 10 also impacted by ETERNALBLUE? That is INSANE. https://t.co/gKKO9EuFc7

— Hacker Fantastic (@hackerfantastic) April 14, 2017

If you’re running MS Windows, NSA malware dumped today by ShadowBrokers just made you a sitting duck. https://t.co/EUXNwfb4hO https://t.co/twYZ6vjbCb

— Not Even a Democrat (@SouthBoulder) April 14, 2017

This is not a drill: #NSA exploits affecting many fully-patched Windows systems have been released to the wild. NSA did not warn Microsoft. https://t.co/2H8F7vH7fW

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 14, 2017

Commenting on today’s release, Edward Snowden said in a tweet that “#NSA knew their hacking methods were stolen last year, but refused to tell software makers how to lock the thieves out. Are they liable?”

Just as interesting is that the folder claiming to hold SWIFT data contains SQL scripts that search for SWIFT-specific data inside databases, and text and Excel files hinting the Equation Group had hacked and gained access to several banks across the world, including not only Middle Eastern countries such as Palestine, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Yemen, but also allegedly to European Union-based banks.

As Cimpanu adds, “this folder is by far the most interesting of the three, as it alludes the Equation Group (NSA) had been infiltrating banks, and secretly keeping an eye on SWIFT transactions. The files included in the dump indicate the Equation Group had targeted and successfully infiltrated the SWIFT Service Bureau of the Middle East (EastNets), one of the SWIFT departments managing and monitoring SWIFT transactions across Middle East banks.”

In a statement posted on its website, EastNets denied it had been compromised, even if the Shadow Brokers dump included a file with all the Bureau’s compromised administrator accounts, some of which correspond to real-world employees. Furthermore, op-sec commentator Joseph Cox noted on twitter that JEEPFLEA is the “alleged op targeting SWIFT. Here’s the already public mention of JEEPFLEA from (I believe) a Snowden doc. TAO hacking op”

JEEPFLEA is alleged op targeting SWIFT. Here’s the already public mention of JEEPFLEA from (I believe) a Snowden doc. TAO hacking op http://pic.twitter.com/toOmO1FQMz

— Joseph Cox (@josephfcox) April 14, 2017

And while the NSA can perhaps claim that it was infiltrating Middle-eastern SWFT-member banks to search for terrorist, it will have a bigger headache on its hands if it emerges as some have alleged, that the NSA’s “Equation Group” had managed to hack the internal Belgium HQ network at SWIFT itself:

Additionally, as some commentators have pointed out, notably @emptywheel, there was no effective need for the NSA to hack into SWIFT as the US government already had “front door” access into SWIFT – with supervision – for terrorist purposes as far back as 2013.

Going to keep repeating this all day.

USG has front door access into SWIFT for broadly defined (& inadequately overseen) terrorist purposes

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 14, 2017

Remember: US negotiated front door access to SWIFT for terrorism purposes. No reason to hack (at least not for terrorism) it in 2013. https://t.co/HXMaW5pc2y

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 14, 2017

Also of note is that the SWIFT files date to at least a month after Globo and Spiegel exposed TAO’s hacking of SWIFT in 2013.

Other interesting thing is these SWIFT files date to at least a month AFTER Globo and Spiegel exposed TAO’s hacking of SWIFT in 2013.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 14, 2017

As Wired confirms, “the new leak includes evidence that the NSA hacked into EastNets, a Dubai-based firm that oversees payments in the global SWIFT transaction system for dozens of client banks and other firms, particularly in the Middle East. The leak includes detailed lists of hacked or potentially targeted computers, including those belonging to firms in Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Syria, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories. Also included in the data dump, as in previous Shadow Brokers releases, are a load of fresh hacking tools, this time targeting a slew of Windows versions.”

As a reminder, the transaction protocol SWIFT has been repeatedly targeted by hackers seeking to redirect millions of dollars from banks around the world, with recent efforts in India, Ecuador, and Bangladesh. Over the past year, researchers have pointed to clues that a $81 million Bangladesh bank theft via SWIFT may have been the work of the North Korean government.   But the Shadow Brokers’ latest leak offers new evidence that the NSA has also compromised SWIFT, albeit most likely for silent espionage and supervision of global fund flows, rather than wholesale larceny.

Separately, The Intercept notes that according to security researcher and hacker Matthew Hickey, co-founder of Hacker House, the significance of what’s now publicly available, including “zero day” attacks on previously undisclosed vulnerabilities, cannot be overstated: “I don’t think I have ever seen so much exploits and 0day [exploits] released at one time in my entire life,” he told The Intercept via Twitter DM, “and I have been involved in computer hacking and security for 20 years.” Affected computers will remain vulnerable until Microsoft releases patches for the zero-day vulnerabilities and, more crucially, until their owners then apply those patches.

“This is as big as it gets,” Hickey said. “Nation-state attack tools are now in the hands of anyone who cares to download them…it’s literally a cyberweapon for hacking into computers…people will be using these attacks for years to come.”

Hickey provided The Intercept with a video of FUZZBUNCH being used to compromise a virtual computer running Windows Server 2008–an industry survey from 2016 cited this operating system as the most widely used of its kind.

Finally, as an indication of the severity of today’s Shadow Broker leak, none other than Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, lashed out, saying that “Whatever you think of the [intel community] having 0-day, this situation pretty clearly demonstrates that the USG vulnerability equities process is broken.”

Whatever you think of the IC having 0-day, this situation pretty clearly demonstrates that the USG vulnerability equities process is broken. https://t.co/lkaeO175zt

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) April 14, 2017

The fact that this is the 3rd time this year (it’s April!) is a scandal. We need to rethink who in the USG is responsible for defense. (3/3)

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) April 14, 2017

Just to put it all into perspective, it was not the Russian government that allegedly had backdoor access to virtually every Windows-based platform and had infiltrated the information network that connects every bank in the world, but the NSA… and the US government.

And then there’s the question why the NSA has kept silent throughout this entire process:

Smoking-gun evidence that NSA could have prevented today’s Windows security disaster, but chose not to. Microsoft needs to take real action. https://t.co/zjQNOQcFSc

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 14, 2017

While many more questions will emerge following today’s leak, one can’t help but wonder if the entire “Russian hacking” scandal had been staged – either with the prior knowledge of the NSA or without – and just how much deeper this particular rabbit hole goes.

* * *

We conclude with the cryptic hint presented by the Shadow Brokers in their latest blog post:

Maybe if all suviving WWIII theshadowbrokers be seeing you next week. Who knows what we having next time?

Here’s to surviving WWIII…

via http://ift.tt/2pjrsdX Tyler Durden

The first round of French elections will be held on April 23rd, prompting Facebook to shut down pro Le Pen accounts, which they deem to be ‘fake.’

In an effort to fight ‘fake news’ or misinformation, Facebook has targeted 30,000 ‘fake accounts’ in order to control the information that its users consume.

In a statement to AFP, the company said they were trying to “reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”

They are targeting accounts with the highest amount of traffic — since they pose a grave threat to the croissant eating frog lovers in France.

In addition to outright bans, the company, in conjunction with French media, are running ‘fact checking’ programs — designed to fight ‘fake news’, heightening their efforts around the elections — which spans from 4/23-5/7.

All of this hysteria happened after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump’s twitter account this past November — prompting officials to pressure Facebook and Twitter to do something about the brazen belittling and subversion of the main stream media. Last week, the company launched a tool to help its users identify ‘fake news’ in 14 countries — including the U.S., France and Germany.

About a month ago, Facebook disabled our Facebook account, after we posted a picture of Chuck Schumer with Vlad Putin. This was a widely circulated news story at the time, which involved zero deception or any of the hallmarks that could be construed as being ‘fake news.’ Nevertheless, we lost access to the account and have ceased using the platform since then.

For those who publish independently and rely upon the ‘socials’ for traffic, heed the warnings given by Matt Drudge, founder of the Drudge Report, who compared them to ghettos — corporate controlled denizens of propaganda.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

via http://ift.tt/2pByt9q The_Real_Fly

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

In my money management process, portfolio “risk” is “ratcheted” up and down based on a series of signals which tend to indicate when market dynamics are either more, or less, favorable for having capital exposed to the market. This model is published each week in the Real Investment Report as shown below:

As you will notice, portfolios NEVER reach 100% cash levels. The reason is purely psychological. Once individuals go to 100% cash, it is extremely hard to re-enter back into the markets. I learned this lesson in February 2009 when I wrote the article “8-Reasons For A Bull Market” which stated:

“Any weakness next week will most likely warrant a push down to 800 for first support and then the November lows of 750.   We believe that these lows will hold although we are aware that if the market doesn’t get ‘it’ together soon further weakness could show itself.

 

We are cautious here and still holding on to a lot of cash waiting for some signal that the market is making a turn for the short term to the better. March, April, and May tend to be fairly strong months for the market and any ‘real’ assistance next week for homeowners could push the markets higher. A move above 900 will be a signal for a move higher in the markets.“

Of course, the market bottomed on March 9th at 666 and never looked back as over $33 Trillion in various bailouts, workouts, subsidies, and QE followed.

However, when the markets bounced above 900, suggesting it was time to re-enter the market, I faced extremely tough resistance from clients. I learned maintaining a small slug of exposure, which can be completely hedged, it becomes far easier to add to an existing position as improvement can already be seen. 

So, why do I bring this up?

Because the market has now tripped the first signal as shown above, and below, sending a warning that further weakness could ensue. With the first signal registered, combined with a break of the 50-dma, it puts us on “a signal-1 alert.”

With portfolios already hedged, as we added a lot of bond and interest rate sensitive holdings back in January, there is no action to take currently. This is why, for now, it is only an “alert” that something more important is developing.

The bullish trend remains intact, and the two primary signals (2 & 3), which would initiate further equity reductions, remain on “buy signals” currently.

With the markets getting oversold and “bearish” sentiment increasing on a short-term basis, it is quite likely the markets will rally next week. It is the success or failure of that rally attempt that will dictate what happens next. However, as noted by the “red vertical” lines above, previous weekly “sell” signals have typically devolved into more substantial declines.

Pay attention….things are getting interesting.

In the meantime, here are some things to read over the long Easter weekend.

Trump/Fed/Economy

• If An Electorate Falls In The Forest… by Danielle DiMartino-Booth via Money Strong
• 3-Precursors Of ’08 Crisis Repeating Now by Nomi Prins via Daily Reckoning
• Prepare For The Reversal Of The Trump Trade by James Rickards via Daily Reckoning
• Fed Communicating A Recession Is Imminent by Chris Hamilton via Econimica
• WTF! Trump Flips On 5-Core Campaign Promises by Tyler Durden via Zero Hedge
• The Stunning Gap Between Sentiment & Certainty by Paul Vigna via WSJ
• Federal Reserve’s Recovery Playbook by Gubb via Gubbmint Cheese
• Trump’s Wall Street Faction Starting To Win Him Over by Bob Bryan via BI
• Economy Stuck In Near Zero World by Justin Wolfers via NYT
• Trump Should Dump Goldman Guys On Taxes by Tho Bishop via ARC
• Fiscal Reality Test For Republicans by Nouriel Roubini via Project Syndicate
• Reflation? Not Really, Yields Going To 1% by Ivan Martchev via MarketWatch
• 4-Reasons To Worry About The Economy by Simon Constable via US News
• How The Fed Snuck Billions Into The Economy by John Crudele via New York Post
• Yields Paying Little Attention To Yellen by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Partners

Illusion Of Liquidity

Markets

• American’s Most Optimistic About Stocks In 20-Years by Vince Golle via Bloomberg
• Expensive Stocks & End Of Trump Trade by Akin Oyedele via BI
• Gundlach: Stocks Are Expensive & Trump Trade Over by Akin Oyedele via BI
• Absence Of The Fear Of Loss by Doug Kass via Real Clear Markets
• Geopolitical Stresses Could Trip Up The Markets by Ron Insana via CNBC
• No One Noticing This Big Red Flag by Howard Gold via MarketWatch
• How Trump Market Ranks As He Reaches 100-Days by Mark DeCambre via MarketWatch
• Stock Market Priced For Too Much Hope by Bill Gross via Janus Capital
• What The Oldest Market Timing System Is Saying Now by Mark Hulbert via MarketWatch
• Bond Yields Follow Economic Data by Bryce Coward via GaveKal Capital

Point-Counter Point

• Lies, Damn Lies & Financial Statistics by Peter Coy via Bloomberg
• Lies, Damn Lies & Data Mining by Clifford Asness via AQR

Research / Interesting Reads

• Tesla’s Inexplicable Ponzi Scheme Valuation by Wolf Richter via Wolf Street
• Former GM Vice-Chair Trashes Tesla by Tyler Durden via ZeroHedge
• How To Make Tax Day Go Away by Caroline Baum via MarketWatch
• American’s Have Become Lazy by Heather Long via CNN Money
• 50% Of Americans Live Paycheck-To-Paycheck by Quentin Fottrell via MarketWatch
• Beating The Odds With A New Venture by Gilbert & Eyring via Harvard Business Review
• What I Think I Know About Investing by Noon Six Capital via Medium.com
• Let Me Convince You To Save Money by Morgan Housel via Motley Fool
• US College Debt Bubble Getting Dangerous by Rana Foroohar via Time
• False Promise Of A “Gig” Economy by Editorial Staff via NYT
• Why Are Bond Managers So Weird & Pessimistic? Julie Segal via Institutional Investor
• What’s Causing The Retail Meltdown by Derek Thompson via The Atlantic
• Investors Stuck In Self-Reinforcing Echo Chamber by John Hussman via Hussman Funds
• Vexing VIX Behavior – Part 1 by Dana Lyons via Tumblr
• Gold On The Verge Of Greatness by Jesse Felder via The Felder Report

“Knowledge of financial history is critical to successful investing” – Larry Swedroe

via http://ift.tt/2ofJGeM Tyler Durden

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

With the arrival of President Hugo Chávez in 1999, Venezuela embraced Chavismo, a form of Andean socialism. In 2013, Chávez met the Grim Reaper, and Nicolás Maduro assumed Chávez’ mantle.

The Grim Reaper has also taken scythe to the Venezuelan bolivar. The death of the bolivar is depicted in the following chart. A bolivar is worthless.

With the collapse of a currency comes inflation. By the time President Nicolás Maduro arrived, inflation was in triple digits and rising.

With the acceleration of inflation, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) became an unreliable source of inflation data. Indeed, from December 2014 until January 2016, the BCV did not report inflation statistics. To remedy this problem, the Johns Hopkins-Cato Institute Troubled Currencies Project, which I direct, began to measure inflation in 2013.

The most important price in an economy is the exchange rate between the local currency and the world’s reserve currency – the U.S. dollar. As long as there is an active black market (read: free market) for currency and the black market data are available, changes in the black market exchange rate can be reliably transformed into accurate estimates of countrywide inflation rates. The economic principle of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) allows for this transformation.

I compute the implied annual inflation rate on a daily basis by using PPP to translate changes in the VEF/USD exchange rate into an annual inflation rate. The chart below shows the course of that annual rate, which peaked at 800% (yr/yr) in the summer of 2015. At present, Venezuela’s annual inflation rate is 286%, one of the highest in the world (see the chart below).

To stop Venezuela’s death spiral, it must dump the bolivar and adopt the greenback. This is called “dollarization.” It is a proven elixir. I know because I operated as a State Counselor in Montenegro when it dumped the worthless Yugoslav dinar in 1999 and replaced it with the Deutsche mark. I also watched the successful dollarization of Ecuador in 2001, when I was operating as an adviser to the Minister of Economy and Finance.

Countries that are officially dollarized produce lower, less variable inflation rates and higher, more stable economic growth rates than comparable countries with central banks that issue domestic currencies. Dollarization is, therefore, desirable. The chart below shows the normalized values of real GDP in terms of U.S. dollars between 2001 (index value = 100) and 2016 for nine Latin American countries. Three – Panama, Ecuador, and El Salvador – are officially dollarized, while Peru is semi-officially dollarized (read: both the Peruvian sol and USD are legal tender). In the three officially dollarized countries, real GDP growth has been more stable than and generally superior to growth in the countries that issue their own domestic currencies.

So, not all the news from Venezuela is grim. After all, there is a tried and true way to stabilize the economy, which is a necessary condition required before the massive task of life-giving reforms can begin. It is dollarization.

Just what does the Venezuelan public think of the dollarization idea? To answer that question, a professional survey of public opinion on the topic was recently conducted by Datincorp in Caracas. The results are encouraging. Sixty-two (62%) of the public favors dollarization. It’s time for enlightened, practical politicians in Venezuela to embrace the dollarization idea. The public already does.

This was originally posted on Forbes.

via http://ift.tt/2pjpMky Steve H. Hanke