Showing posts with label finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finance. Show all posts

20170130

A Guide to Donald Trump's Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present


Donald Trump has announced that on December 15 he will hold a press conference to reveal to the world his plan to address the many conflicts of interest between his vast business empire and his new role as president. Trump has indicated that he will remove himself from the daily "business operations" of the Trump Organization—but not sell off his holdings or create a truly blind trust.

Ethics experts have criticized this approach because Trump would continue to own his properties, benefiting from their success and suffering from their losses. He would know when his policy decisions and actions—or those of others (including corporations and foreign governments)—could affect his assets. Consequently, he would not be separating his presidential decision-making from his own personal financial circumstances. Yet, arguably, the biggest conflicts he faces aren't related to what he owns. Rather, they relate to what he owes.

All of Trump's top properties—including Trump Tower, the Trump National Doral golf course, and his brand new luxury hotel in Washington, DC—are heavily mortgaged. That means Trump maintains critical financial relationships with his creditors. These interactions pose a significant set of potential conflicts because his creditors are large financial institutions (domestic and foreign) with their own interests and policy needs. Each one could be greatly affected by presidential decisions, and Trump certainly has a financial interest in their well-being.

Below is a list of all the financial players that Trump owes money to and how much Trump directly has borrowed from each one. This roster is based on publicly available loan documents. According to his own public disclosure, Trump, as of May, was on the hook for 16 loans worth at least $713 million. This list does not include an estimated $2 billion in debt amassed by real estate partnerships that include Trump. One of those loans is a $950 million deal that was cobbled together by Goldman Sachs and the state-owned Bank of China—an arrangement that ethics experts believe violates the Constitution's emolument clause, which prohibits foreign governments from providing financial benefits to federal officials...

20170127

At Goldman Sachs, Trump’s new economics advisor Gary Cohn outsourced thousands of US jobs to India

Goldman Sachs’ biggest office outside its New York City headquarters isn’t in the financial centers of London or Hong Kong—it is in the sprawling south Indian city of Bangalore, now officially called Bengaluru.

At the “Embassy Golf Links Business Park,” a neatly laid out campus with palm trees and fountains, nearly 6,000 Goldman Sachs employees do support and service work for the bank’s global operations, taking care of everything from banker payroll and IT to preliminary research for its analyst reports.

Goldman has grown sharply in India under Gary Cohn, the bank’s president who was tapped on Dec. 9 to be the director of the National Economic Council, one of president-elect Donald J. Trump’s top economic advisors. As president of the bank for the past decade, Cohn regularly touted the benefits of moving jobs from financial centers like New York to lower cost areas like Bengaluru or Singapore, as well as Salt Lake City and Dallas.

Goldman’s actions aren’t that unusual—since the early 2000s, US companies have moved several million white-collar jobs, from payroll to legal research to coding, to areas far from home, often in Eastern Europe and India. Surprisingly, as Trump makes punishing companies that send US jobs overseas a key focus of the new administration, the offshoring of service-sector jobs has been absent from the discussion...

https://qz.com/853075/goldman-sachs-and-other-wall-street-banks-moved-thousands-of-jobs-out-of-the-us-will-trump-go-after-them-too/

20170116

Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'


The world's eight richest individuals have as much wealth as the 3.6bn people who make up the poorest half of the world, according to Oxfam.

The charity said its figures, which critics have queried, came from improved data, and the gap between rich and poor was "far greater than feared".

The richest eight include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett.

Mark Littlewood, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said Oxfam should focus instead on ways to boost growth.

"As an 'anti-poverty' charity, Oxfam seems to be strangely preoccupied with the rich," said the director-general of the free market think tank.

For those concerned with "eradicating absolute poverty completely", the focus should be on measures that encourage economic growth, he added.

Ben Southwood, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said it was not the wealth of the world's rich that mattered, but the welfare of the world's poor, which was improving every year.

"Each year we are misled by Oxfam's wealth statistics. The data is fine - it comes from Credit Suisse - but the interpretation is not."...

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38613488

20161204

Lloyd Blankfein’s oldest son quietly landed one of the best jobs in finance


Remember Alex Blankfein? He’s the 30 year old son of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Last time we caught up with him, he’d spent around three years at Goldman Sachs working in cross asset sales, followed by an MBA at Harvard Business School, followed by a job at Bain & Co. Now though, he’s working as a senior associate at Carlyle Group – one of the world’s most prestigious private equity companies.

Alex Blankfein’s arrival at Carlyle isn’t recent – according to his publicly available profile he joined from Bain in April last year. However, it appears to have gone unnoticed by the world’s media. Carlyle updated its page relating to Alex Blankfein last week. He’s working on Carlyle’s U.S. Equity Opportunities team, is ‘focused on a broad range of middle-market buyout transactions,’ and is based in New York City.

Private equity jobs are notoriously difficult to get and Carlyle is one of the most selective hirers of the lot. Alex Blankfein’s move may have been indirectly facilitated by his father’s closeness to David Rubenstein, Carlyle’s founder. Rubenstein interviewed Lloyd Blankfein last month for his Bloomberg-hosted chat show.

Speaking at a London School of Economics conference last year, Rubenstein said the people who succeed in private equity are those who are in it for love rather than money: “You have to really love what you’re doing and you won’t find what you love until you’ve experimented a bit. Find something you really enjoy and then you can make a career out of it.” In this, Rubenstein echoed Lloyd Blankfein’s own careers advice from several years earlier: success comes from being a “complete person”, said Blankfein in 2013, adding that young people should have a “few years of experimentation.”

In 2013 Blankfein said his own children ignored his careers wisdom. In fact, it seems Alex was listening: Blankfein’s oldest son has experimented by notching up a range of top brands. He’s worked for a top name investment bank, taken a top name MBA, joined a top name consultancy firm, and now he’s at a top name private equity firm. Other millennials may want to take note.

http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/267151/lloyd-blankfeins-oldest-son-has-quietly-landed-one-of-the-best-jobs-in-finance/

HMRC "gleeful" ahead of KPMG raid

Lawyers for the Big Four firm's partners Eamonn Donaghy, Jon D’Arcy, Paul Hollway and Arthur O’Brien told the court in Belfast that there was no justification for taking the "nuclear option" of an intrusive operation that also involved trawling through children's school bags, according to a report from the Belfast Telegraph.

The four men, the firm’s most senior partners in Ireland, are challenging the legality of the permits gained to search their homes and business premises.

They were arrested last November in connection with suspected tax evasion. None have been charged. Their counsel has previously argued that important information, including about their cooperation with the investigation, was omitted in HMRC’s applications for the warrant.

http://economia.icaew.com/news/november-2016/hmrc-gleeful-ahead-of-kpmg-raid-belfast-high-court-suspected-tax-evasion

20161130

The Goldman Sachs power players behind Lloyd Blankfein

by Portia Crowe and Matt Turner 

A Goldman Sachs executive considered a potential candidate to succeed CEO Lloyd Blankfein said this week he was retiring from the firm. Michael Sherwood, a vice chairman and co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International, decided to retire after 30 years at the firm, according to an internal memo. 

In case his departure raises any questions about who might eventually take the reins after Blankfein, who is 62 and says he has no plans to retire, we have put together a list of the key executives at the firm. These are the key people behind the big three at Goldman: Blankfein, CFO Harvey Schwartz, and president Gary Cohn. 

They come from across the firm — banking, sales and trading, investment management, and even technology. They've worked around the world and now are based mostly in New York and London. Check out Goldman Sachs' top power players, listed below in alphabetical order...

20161113

Donald Trump Took Liberal Icon George Soros’s Money

Tim Kaine is taking some right-wing heat for getting dinner with the son of lefty billionaire and top GOP villain George Soros.

“NEW SOROS SEED RISES: Tim Kaine Dines with Billionaire Son,” blared a Drudge Report headline.

It linked to a Breitbart News piece saying the pair broke bread as Trump’s rise “TERRIFIES WORLD ELITE.” But if Kaine is friendly with Alex Soros, it probably doesn’t compare to the good times Donald Trump has shared with Soros’s dad.

Over the years, the two billionaires have had tabloid-friendly professional dealings, teaming up to build one of North America’s most recognizable skyscrapers—and shared billing on a lawsuit over the sale of the most expensive building in New York City.

The two billionaires even palled around one Christmas Eve. None of this means Donald Trump is a covert George Soros puppet. But it’s already given some conservatives pause.

The pair’s relationship goes back more than a decade. In 2004, Soros lent Trump a cool $160 million to help with the construction of Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported. At the time, some Chicagoans were skeptical that Trump would ever get his tower built. The project, after all, was yuuuge.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/16/donald-trump-took-liberal-icon-george-soros-s-money.html

20161111

Newsbud Exclusive Report- A Distillation DOD Spending Spree for October 2016

The Pentagon issues a jumbled list of contracts every business day around 5:00PM local time. Our project distills an entire month of these contracts into an accessible form.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) spent at least $10,635,283,000 on 142 individual contracts during October 2016. This amount does not include Foreign Military Sales transactions worth $481,384,637.

FOREIGN MILITARY SALES (FMS) – Through FMS, the U.S. government procures and transfers materiel to allied nations and international organizations.

CFM International Inc. received $14,724,356 to provide Australia with supplies and services required for CFM56 engine field assessment, unscheduled engine repair, and technical assistance. Non-competitive, per FAR 6.302-1a2.

Conti Federal Services received $64,580,000 for construction at site 13414 in Israel.

Lockheed Martin received $31,069,159 to provide shipboard testing and integration in support of Japan’s Aegis modernization program.

Lockheed Martin received $20,564,338 to upgrade Italy’s C-130J Operational Flight Trainer and Cockpit Avionics Part Task Trainer.

Lockheed Martin received $11,815,569 for engineering & logistics on MK 92 Fire Control System life-cycle maintenance (overhaul, install, maintain) to USA and FMS (Poland, Saudi Arabia).

Nibor Enterprises Inc. received $11,470,618 to work on “projects 13372, 13416, and 13493” for Israel.

Northrop Grumman received $14,375,411 to provide Japan E-2D spares and support equipment

Swiftships LLC received $14,591,075 for continuous lifecycle support (maintenance, repairs, platform overhaul support) on Iraqi Navy patrol boats, offshore vessels, and defender boats. Work at Umm Qasr Naval Base, Iraq.

Textron (AAI) received $206,561,704 to provide Australia with RQ-7B Shadow contractor logistics sustainment services.

http://www.newsbud.com/2016/11/07/newsbud-exclusive-report-a-distillation-dod-spending-spree-for-october-2016/

20161107

FEMA Opens Loan Window As Red Cross Tries To Shut Down Shelters

As the floodwaters receded from Nichols, South Carolina and the surrounding areas, many residents made the emotional journey home to assess what little they had left, a good portion of those people discovering that they had absolutely nothing. Having spent the last several weeks in a shelter operated out of the National Guard Armory in neighboring Mullins (some of those at the shelter are from Mullins also), the shelter residents have been anxious to return home or, at the very least, to return to a home at all.

After the cleanup has begun and the issue morphed into getting the victims out the shelters, many people thought that the cavalry finally arrived when FEMA announced it was coming to town to “assess” the damages and the need of the community for aid. Unfortunately for those who don’t fully understand the nature of such organizations, FEMA has been anything but a cavalry.

In fact, despite an annual budget of nearly $14 billion a year, FEMA has done virtually nothing other than “assess” damages. The agency did not come with water, sandbags, food, blankets or anything else necessary for flood victims. All it brought was an expensive van and lots of paperwork.

So what does FEMA actually do besides assess? And why on earth would it need $14 billion to assess anything? The answer? Besides creating the blueprint to use a natural disaster, military conflict, economic collapse, and social unrest as justification to set up domestic internment camps alongside the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA acts as a facilitator for loans and “loan assistance” to victims who have lost their homes and their livelihood. Instead of providing “trailers” (preferably free of toxic chemicals) to victims, FEMA is instead focused on providing “low interest” loans through the Small Business Administration.

While no one is arguing that loan assistance program is the problem, many would rightly wonder why, if this is all FEMA will do in an actual emergency, is there an annual budget of $14 billion?...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/11/fema-opens-loan-window-red-cross-tries-shut-shelters.html

20160929

Here's why it seems like the CEO of Wells Fargo can't remember anything

John Stumpf — the CEO of what was once Wall Street's most squeaky-clean bank, Wells Fargo — was in front of Congress on Tuesday answering for the fraudulent actions of thousands of employees.

It's yet another exhausting example of how people working at a bank got up in the morning, cheated and lied to their customers, went home to their families, ate dinner, were fairly normal, went to bed, and then got up in the morning to lie and cheat at work again.

Here's what happened at Wells Fargo: Under intense pressure to meet performance targets from above, thousands of employees opened fake accounts for clients.

The bank has agreed to pay a fine of $125 million (peanuts, really, at a company with a market capitalization of $235 billion), and thousands — excluding the executives who ran this division, of course — were fired.

In front of Congress, Stumpf was apologetic but weak and ineffectual.

He said Wells Fargo was dealing with the issue for a number of years before he was made aware of the issue. "If I could turn the clock back, I — we all — wish we had done something earlier," Stumpf said.

And then he said something that you could've seen coming. He couldn't remember details. Specifically, Stumpf said he couldn't remember when exactly in 2013 he learned about the issue. He was repeatedly asked if he had known before the Los Angeles Times published a story on the practices, but he didn't answer.

This, you see, is a Wall Street coping mechanism. It also happens to beget more disastrous behavior...

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-wells-fargos-stumpf-cant-remember-much-about-what-happened-2016-9

20160908

5,300 Wells Fargo employees fired over 2 million phony accounts


Everyone hates paying bank fees. But imagine paying fees on a ghost account you didn't even sign up for.

That's exactly what happened to Wells Fargo customers nationwide.

On Thursday, federal regulators said Wells Fargo employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts -- without their customers knowing it -- since 2011.

The phony accounts earned the bank unwarranted fees and allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales figures and make more money.

"Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses," Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in a statement.

Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees over the last few years related to the shady behavior. Employees went to far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said...

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/index.html

20160828

Rothschild Net Worth: Billionaire Family Dumps US Dollar For Gold


The Rothschild family recently said that they are shifting from the U.S. Dollar, which is considered the global reserve currency, into gold and “other currencies.”

The Rothschild family is currently being headed by Lord Jacob Rothschild.

The decision to move to gold was addressed by Lord Jacob Rothschild in a statement. “Our significant U.S. Dollar position has now been somewhat reduced as, following the Dollar’s rise, we saw interesting opportunities in other currencies as well as gold, the latter reflecting our concerns about monetary policy and ever declining real yields,” the report said.

Lord Jacob Rothschild: The world is in ‘uncharted waters’

As reported by the Dollar Vigilante, by 19th century, it came to light that the Rothschild family held around half of the world’s wealth. The Rothschild family has said that they will be limiting stock market and currency exposure, and will up their gold holdings. Lord Jacob Rothschild warned that the world is in “uncharted waters,” with consequences being “impossible” to foresee.

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“It is impossible to predict the unintended consequences of very low interest rates, with some 30% of global government debt at negative yields, combined with quantitative easing on a massive scale,” Lord Jacob Rothschild said...

http://www.morningnewsusa.com/rothschild-net-worth-billionaire-family-dumps-us-dollar-gold-2399454.html

20160818

How The Globalists Will Attempt To Control Populations Post-Collapse

There is an interesting disconnect with some people when discussing the concept of global centralization. Naturally, the mind reels in horror at the very idea, because many of us know, deep down at our core, that centralization is the root of tyranny. We know that when absolute power is granted into the hands of an elite few over the lives of the masses, very bad things happen. No small group of people has ever shown itself trustworthy, rational, empathic or wise enough to handle such a responsibility. They ALWAYS screw it up, or, they deliberately take advantage of their extreme position of influence to force a particular ideology on everyone else.

This leads to resistance, resistance leads to sociopolitical crackdown and then great numbers of people are imprisoned, enslaved or even murdered. This leads to even more resistance until one of two possible outcomes emerges — chaos and revolution or complete totalitarianism and micro-managed collectivism.

There is no way around this eventual conflict. As long as the centralists continue to pursue total power, men and women will gather to fight them and the situation will escalate. The only conceivable way that this fight could be defused is if the elites stop doing what they do. If they suddenly become enlightened and realize the error of their ways, then perhaps we could escape the troubles unscathed. Or, if those same elites all happen to meet an abrupt end and their influence is neutralized, then the world might have a chance to adjust and adapt in a more organic fashion.

Unfortunately, there are people who refuse to believe that a fight is unavoidable. They desperately want to believe there is another way, and they will engage in an amazing display of mental gymnastics in order to justify this belief.

First, I think it is important to note that I have always argued that the globalists will eventually fail in their pursuit. I find that some folks out there misinterpret my position when I outline the strategies of globalists and they assume I am presenting global centralization as a “sine qua non.” I do not argue that the elites will win the fight, I only argue that there is no way to avoid the fight.

Those that want to know my views on why globalist defeat is a certainty can read my article The Reasons Why The Globalists Are Destined To Lose.

The rhetorical question always arises: “How could the globalists ever hope to secure dominance over the entire world; isn’t that an impossible task?”

I believe according to my knowledge of history and human psychology that it IS an impossible task, but that is NOT going to stop the globalists from trying.

This is what the cynics just don’t seem to grasp; we are dealing with a group of narcissistic psychopaths organized around a cult ideology and with nearly unlimited resources at their fingertips. These people think they are rising man-gods, like the Egyptian pharaohs of old. They cannot be persuaded through superior logic or emotional appeal. They will not be deterred by mass activism or peaceful redress. They only understand one thing — the force of arms and the usefulness of lies.

Such people are notorious for taking entire civilizations down with them rather than ceding their thrones. It is foolish to plan a response to them on the assumption that a fight can be avoided. When I say that the globalists are “destined to lose,” this is predicated on my understanding that a certain percentage of human beings will always have an inherent capacity for resistance to tyranny. The globalists will be defeated because there is no way to quantify every single threat to their utopian framework. As long as people continue to fight them, physically and with information, regardless of the personal cost, their weaknesses will be found and they will fall.

This will not be accomplished, however, without considerable sacrifice.

When I talk about "collapse", I am talking about a process. Collapse is not an singular event, it is an ongoing series of events. The U.S. has, for example, been in the middle of a collapse since 2008. The end of this collapse will come when the final economic bubble propping up our system has burst and the process of rebuilding begins. The most important questions is, WHO will do the rebuilding? The globalists with their power agenda, or common people seeking freedom and prosperity?

I have outlined in numerous articles the reality that an ongoing destabilization of large portions of the global economic framework will be used by the elites as leverage to convince the public that greater centralization is necessary, including global economic management through the IMF and BIS, a global currency using the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights as a bridge and global governance through the United Nations or a similar body not yet developed. This plan is becoming more and more openly discussed by globalists within the mainstream media. It’s hardly a secret anymore.

Many people will undoubtedly support this centralization out of fear of instability. That said, many people will also refuse to support it.

Here is how I believe, according to historical precedence and the globalist’s own writings, that they will attempt to assert global centralization post-collapse and enforce compliance...

20160812

The Pentagon Money Pit

What if the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services were to report that $6.5 billion in spending by that federal agency was unaccounted for and untraceable? You can imagine the headlines, right? What if it was $65 billion? The headlines would be as big as for the first moon landing or for troops landing on Omaha Beach in World War II.

But how about a report by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General saying that the US Army had $6.5 trillion in unaccountable expenditures for which there is simply no paper trail? That is 6,500 billion dollars! Have you heard about that? Probably not. That damning report was issued back on July 26 — two whole weeks ago — but as of today it has not even been reported anywhere in the corporate media.

It’s not that it’s secret information, or hard to come by. The report is available online at the Department of Defense’s OIG website. And as it states:

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) (OASA[FM&C]) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter journal voucher (JV) adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend JV adjustments made to AGF data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation.2 The unsupported JV adjustments occurred because OASA(FM&C) and DFAS Indianapolis did not prioritize correcting the system deficiencies that caused errors resulting in JV adjustments, and did not provide sufficient guidance for supporting system‑generated adjustments.

In addition, DFAS Indianapolis did not document or support why the Defense Departmental Reporting System‑Budgetary (DDRS-B), a budgetary reporting system, removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million records during third quarter FY 2015. This occurred because DFAS Indianapolis did not have detailed documentation describing the DDRS-B import process or have accurate or complete system reports.

As a result, the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and yearend financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. Furthermore, DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/11/pentagon-money-pit/

20160723

The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed





'The Carlyle Group is a massive "private equity firm," which raises money from wealthy individuals and companies, and then reinvests the money into private defense companies with extremely high profit margins. It is made up of well known politicians such as George Bush, Sr. and James Baker, and it is one of the most powerful elements of the "military industrial complex," which is a business built around the defense industry being so large and powerful that it able to influence the politics of war. This video discusses the structure of the group and explains its history of many abuses.'