Tag: Fraud

March 29, 2018

Perspective

The Big Picture – Deutsche Bank: Household Net Worth is Down, except for Top 10% – Barry Ritholtz 3/28

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

CNBC – Investment chief of $250 billion firm (Guggenheim investments) says financial markets are on a ‘collision course for disaster’ – Tae Kim 3/27

NYT – Income Mobility Charts for Girls, Asian-Americans and Other Groups. Or Make Your Own. – Emily Badger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce and Kevin Quealy 3/27

  • Visually stunning interactive income-mobility graphics.

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Wall Street Bankers Get Biggest Raise in Four Years – Telis Demos 3/26

Visual Capitalist – Wealth 101: Visualizing the Extraordinary Power of Compound Interest 3/28

Real Estate

WSJ – Retail Landlords Sell Assets to Raise Cash – Esther Fung 3/27

  • “Shares of real-estate investment trusts have underperformed the broader equity market for the third year running, in part because of rising interest rates, which cause these dividend-paying stocks to lose some of their appeal.”
  • “Because it would be difficult to issue new shares if REITs continue to trade at discounts, some are now compelled to sell assets to raise cash to help them reposition their remaining assets or fund share buybacks.” 
  • “REITs could sell individual assets, sell stakes in assets to other institutional investors and enter joint ventures where they also could earn some management fees, or be acquired entirely and privatized by an investor.”
  • “Industry insiders noted that while there are more for-sale signs popping up, these sales aren’t driven by the need to reduce debt because REITs have been more disciplined since the financial crisis, so property prices aren’t likely to fall drastically.”
  • “Listed REITs have been net sellers of assets since 2015, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. From January to March 23 of 2018, there were $6.91 billion in disposals, compared with $5.38 billion in acquisitions.”
  • “Disposals topped acquisitions in 2017 and 2016, $60.9 billion to $56.1 billion and $71.4 billion to $48.4 billion respectively, Real Capital said.”

Energy

FT – Subsidy-free renewable projects on ‘cusp of breakthrough’ – Sylvia Pfeifer 3/27

  • “In a few months’ time, if all goes to plan, designs will be drawn up for a wind farm that will be built 22km off the Netherlands’ coast. Once up and running in 2022, Hollandse Kust Zuid will be able to call itself Europe’s first offshore wind farm built without government subsidies.”
  • “The wind farm, expected to be fully operational in 2023, will boast around 90 turbines that will deliver up to 750MW of power — enough to produce renewable electricity for up to 2m homes.”

WSJ – China Tries to Lift Yuan’s Profile With Oil Futures – Mike Bird 3/26

Finance

Investment News – Real estate fraudsters to repay $30 million to investors – Jeff Benjamin 3/28

  • “SEC settles with McKinley Mortgage, which promised secure investments and 6% returns.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – 5-trading day ETF Flows by category 3/28

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 3/28

WSJ – Daily Shot: Charlie Bilello – Cryptocurrency Returns 3/28

Australia

FT – China academics divided over Australia influence crackdown – Jamie Smyth 3/27

  • “Canberra’s proposed crackdown on Chinese government influence in Australia has prompted a bitter split among academics, following claims the policy is driven by racism and is stigmatizing Chinese Australians.”
  • “A group of 35 China scholars based in Australia signed an open letter on Wednesday defending the Australian government’s efforts to identify and wind back Chinese Communist party (CCP) influence in the country.”
  • “Canberra is proposing to ban foreign political donations and target covert, deceptive and threatening actions by foreign groups and individuals in response to alleged interference by the CCP in the country’s internal affairs and in Chinese diaspora communities.”
  • “The letter said accusations of racism were a tool used by the CCP to silence the debate over foreign influence and drive a wedge between Chinese communities and the rest of Australia.” 

China

FT – China lets its rich invest more offshore as cash outflow fears ease – Don Weinland and Gabriel Wildau 3/27

  • “After a two-year wait, Chinese regulators have revived a program allowing global asset managers including JPMorgan Chase to raise funds from Chinese onshore clients for investment in offshore hedge funds.”
  • “The easing of capital controls shows how Chinese regulators are increasingly relaxed about cross-border capital flows amid a stable Chinese economy and persistent dollar weakness.”
  • “JPMorgan Asset Management has received a new quota for the program, and several other asset managers are expecting similar allotments, according to three people familiar with the situation. JPMorgan received a $50m quota in January, one of those people said.”

 

February 15, 2018

Perspective

WEF – Norway’s Central Bank has recommended oil and gas holdings are removed from its sovereign wealth fund – Thomas Colson 11/20/17

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – Ten Years After the Crisis, Banks Win Big in Trump’s Washington – Robert Schmidt and Jesse Hamilton 2/9

Economist – As California’s fires died down, fraudsters arrived 2/8

  • “David Passey, a spokesperson for FEMA, says that more than 200,000 applications for relief related to the hurricanes and northern California wildfires are suspected to be fraudulent.”

Economist – China is in a muddle over population policy 2/8

Economist – The merits of revisiting Michael Young – Bagehot 2/8

  • “A book published 60 years ago predicted most of the tensions tearing contemporary Britain apart.”

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg – Teslas Are Finally Replacing Porsches on the Autobahn – Elisabeth Behrmann 2/12

WSJ – Daily Shot: NY Fed – US Consumer Debt Balance 2/14

WSJ – Daily Shot: NY Fed – US Consumer Delinquent Debt Percentage 2/14

WSJ – Brace Yourself for Higher Cellphone Bills This Year – Drew FitzGerald 2/8

Real Estate

Economist – How a brothel owner created the world’s biggest industrial park 2/10

  • “Google, eBay, Tesla and dozens of other tech firms have bought nearly all of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center’s vast tract of land.”

Energy

Bloomberg Gadfly – OPEC’s Oil Price Nightmare Is Coming True – Julian Lee 2/11

Tech

NYT – The Autonomous Selfie Drone Is Here. Is Society Ready for it? – Farhad Manjoo 2/13

  • “Autonomous drones have long been hyped, but until recently they’ve been little more than that. The technology in Skydio’s machine suggests a new turn. Drones that fly themselves — whether following people for outdoor self-photography, which is Skydio’s intended use, or for longer-range applications like delivery, monitoring and surveillance — are coming faster than you think.”

Environment / Science

Economist – Antidepressants are finding their way into fish brains 2/8

China

Bloomberg Businessweek – China Takes a Hard Look at Corporate Borrowers – Enda Curran 2/6

  • “China’s total debt equaled 162% of gross domestic product in 2008. By 2016 it had climbed to 259%, an increase of more than $22 trillion, in large part because of massive corporate borrowing. And even with the current push to deleverage, it could reach 327% by 2022, according to Bloomberg Economics.”

  • “China’s banking regulator last summer ordered lenders to examine their exposure to private conglomerates, which was a way to slow borrowing by corporations without raising benchmark interest rates. In China, the amount of lending, rather than official interest rates, is the best indicator of how tight or loose government monetary policy is. And the picture is pretty clear: Broad-based money supply growth slowed to 8.2% in December, the weakest since data became available in 1998. ‘They are tightening,’ says Chetan Ahya, chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. ‘China has always relied more on actually controlling the flow of credit through direct measures’.”

Bloomberg – China’s War on Risk Has Banks Fleeing Shadowy Wealth Products – Jun Luo 2/7

  • “Chinese regulators appear to be winning their war against risk in one of the more dangerous corners of the country’s shadow banking industry — the so-called wealth management products that banks buy from each other in a search for easy profits.”
  • “Interbank holdings of WMPs more than halved last year, to 3.25 trillion yuan ($514 billion) in December from 6.65 trillion yuan a year earlier, according to the annual report of China Central Depository & Clearing Co., an industry body. That suggests higher interest rates and increased scrutiny by regulators are deterring Chinese banks from their previous practice of using cheap interbank borrowing to invest in each others’ higher-yielding WMPs.”
  • “The interbank WMP market will continue to contract this year, as China keeps interest rates high as part of its campaign against financial-sector risk, according to analysts from Shenwan Hongyuan Group Co. and Macquarie Group Ltd. Higher rates make it less profitable to use interbank borrowings to invest in WMPs. And many were deterred after the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) ordered banks to ‘self-review’ their interbank and shadow banking exposures in April, widely seen as a move to rein in the lenders.”
  • “The CBRC and other regulators are working closely in an unprecedented campaign to curb the $16 trillion shadow banking industry, of which WMPs issued by banks are the largest component. Another risky area that is contracting rapidly is some $3.8 trillion of so-called trust products, which have been a popular way for debt-ridden property developers and local governments to raise funds. That market has been hit by delayed payments as wealthy Chinese savers turn sour on the products.”
  • “Despite the retreat in the interbank sector, the wider WMP market continued to grow last year, albeit at a slower pace, according to the industry body. Strong appetite among individual investors helped the outstanding balance of WMPs rise 1.7% to 29.5 trillion yuan in December from a year earlier. Still, the escalating clampdown on all types of asset management products slowed the growth rate markedly from an average compound rate of about 50% between 2013 and 2015.”

Economist – Creditors call time on China’s HNA 2/8

  • “Analysts had foreseen an unravelling for some time, before even the regulatory wrist-slapping. A Chinese business expert calls HNA’s empire-building ‘a classic case of overextending’. For five years it has only been able to service its debts by taking on new ones. Returns on its investments have not exceeded 2% in almost a decade, according to calculations by Bloomberg, a data provider. As a result, HNA’s ratio of debt to earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization is around a lofty ten, estimates Standard & Poor’s, a ratings agency. Bond investors have grown nervous, and the firm’s financing costs have soared.”

South America

WSJ – Daily Shot: Venezuela Official Exchange Rate VEF/USD 2/13

  • “Venezuela has devalued its official exchange rate to be closer to the levels seen in the black market. This chart shows how many (bags of) bolivares are needed to buy one dollar – the official rate.”

  • “This move eliminated a major source of corruption.”
    • “BMI Research: – The move to … devalue the … official exchange rate is a positive step, as it will help to correct some of the extreme distortions in the market for foreign exchange. The massive discrepancy between the official and black market exchange rates has been a major source of corruption and arbitrage over recent years. Those with access to the subsidized exchange rate typically re-sell dollars on the black market at a substantial profit, rather than using the currency to import goods that must be sold at artificially low prices due to the country’s system of price controls. The market has reacted positively to the news of the devalued exchange rate, with the black market value of the bolivar rising to VEF233,531.1/USD as of February 6, up from a low of VEF266,630.7/USD on January 28.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: BMI Research – Venezuela Black Market Exchange Rate VEF/USD 2/14

 

December 13, 2017

Perspective

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market – Olga Kharif 12/8

  • “Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3% of all the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses control 40% of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and Storj, top holders control more than 90%. Many large owners are part of the teams running these projects.”

WEF – This is every US state’s biggest trading partner – Andy Kiersz 11/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon? – Lauren Etter 12/7

  • “Internet.org was just one part of a decade-long campaign of global expansion for Facebook. In countries such as the Philippines, the efforts have been so successful that the company is able to tout to its advertisers that its network is, for many people, the only version of the internet they know. Repressive governments originally treated Facebook, and all social media, with suspicion—they saw how it could serve as a locus for dissidents, as it had in the Arab Spring in 2011. But authoritarian regimes are now embracing social media, shaping the platforms into a tool to wage war against a wide range of opponents—opposition parties, human-rights activists, minority populations, journalists.”
  • Maria Ressa, co-founder of the country’s leading online news site “recalled that she started as a journalist in the Philippines in 1986, the year of the People Power Revolution, an uprising that ultimately led to the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and the move from authoritarian rule to democracy. Now she’s worried that the pendulum is swinging back and that Facebook is hastening the trend. ‘They haven’t done anything to deal with the fundamental problem, which is they’re allowing lies to be treated the same way as truth and spreading it,’ she says. ‘Either they’re negligent or they’re complicit in state-sponsored hate’.”

Bloomberg Businessweek – Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance – Zeke Faux 12/6

  • “The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.”
  • “Americans are currently late on more than $600 billion in bills, according to Federal Reserve research, and almost one person in 10 has a debt in collectors’ hands. The agencies recoup what they can and sell the rest down-market, so that iffier and iffier debt is bought by shadier and shadier individuals. Deception is common. Scammers often sell the same portfolios of debt, called ‘paper,’ to several collection agencies at once, so a legitimate IOU gains illegitimate clones. Some inflate balances, a practice known as ‘overbiffing.’ Others create ‘redo’ lists—people who’ve settled their debt, but will be harassed again anyway. These rosters are actually more valuable, because the targets have proved willing to part with money over the phone. And then there are those who invent debts out of whole cloth.”

The Guardian – Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart – Julia Carrie Wong 12/11

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Prime-age male labor-force participation 12/11

Real Estate

FT – New Zealand looks to ban foreigners from buying houses – Jamie Smyth 12/9

FT – Unibail-Rodamco sees €100m annual synergies in $24.7bn Westfield takeover – Jamie Smyth 12/11

FT – Hong Kong investors go defensive in $3bn property auction – Henny Sender 12/11

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 12/11

  • “Bitcoin’s volatility is on the rise as the cryptocurrency hit new highs.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity – Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel 12/11

  • “Mexico began lifting tariffs and allowing more foreign investment in the 1980s, a transition to free trade given an exclamation point in 1994, when Mexico, the United States and Canada enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Opponents in Mexico warned that the country would lose its cultural and economic independence.”
  • “But few critics predicted it would transform the Mexican diet and food ecosystem to increasingly mirror those of the United States. In 1980, 7% of Mexicans were obese, a figure that tripled to 20.3% by 2016, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Diabetes is now Mexico’s top killer, claiming 80,000 lives a year, the World Health Organization has reported.”

China

WSJ – China’s Clean Energy Future Has a $1.2 Trillion Problem – Nathaniel Taplin 12/11

  • “China’s enormous coal-power debt overhang limits its ability to shift rapidly to cleaner fuels.”

Europe

WEF – Which countries feel they’ve benefitted from the EU? – Niall McCarthy 11/6

Other Interesting Links

Bloomberg Businessweek – This Crowdfunding Site Runs on Hate – Adam Popescu 12/4