https://www.corriere.it/cronache/18_dicembre_03/segre-confine-che-nego-liberta-scuse-dalla-svizzera-shoah-antisemitismo-0438be98-f73f-11e8-a0e5-db54dd349ca5.shtml
Tuesday, December 04, 2018
Sunday, December 02, 2018
China interpol africa human rights
https://www.corriere.it/opinioni/18_dicembre_01/cina-senza-confini-4d426b94-f5a4-11e8-9c84-9babb02b8ffd.shtml
Friday, November 16, 2018
monaco gate tetiana bersheda :Rybolovlev
https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Societe/Monacogate-la-riposte-de-Tetiana-Bersheda-1369328
ai china usa failing to deliver
China’s once-hot
artificial intelligence sector is in a funk: spurned by investors,
failing to deliver on cutting-edge technology and struggling to
generate returns. It is a far cry from last year, when Beijing issued
plans to lead the world in AI by 2030, venture capital investors were
pumping up valuations and China’s big tech groups peppered their
earnings callsliberallywiththeirAIambitions. Disillusionment with the
progress of AI is not unique to China. In the US,IBM laid off
engineers at its flagship AI IBM Watson in the summer. Earlier Gary
Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University and longtime
sceptic, lamented that “six decades into the history of AI, our
bots do little more than play music, sweep floors and bid on
advertisements”. But in China, where the hype — and funding —
went into overdrive last year, the reversal has cut more deeply.
China last year overtook the US in terms of private sector
investment, pulling in just shy of $5bn, but the $1.6bn invested in
the first six months of this year is less than one-third of US
levels, according to ABIResearch. “[We’re] at a juncture where
the generic use cases have been addressed,” said Lian Jye Su,
principle analyst at the consultancy. “And building generic general
purpose chatbots is much easier than specific algorithms for
industries like banking, construction, or mining because you need
industry knowledge andbuy-infromtheindustry.” That inflection point
has combined withashortageofcomputingcapacityto power algorithms and
machine learning. What is left is familiar ground for
techinvestors:inflatedvaluations,overhyped pitches and threadbare
monetisationmodels. “We feel it’s a little bit over-invested,”
said Nisa Leung, managing partner at Qiming Venture Partners, a big
investor in China tech. “Many companies are unable to ramp up their
monetisation or they are over-promising their ability.” Venture
capital appetite has waned as valuations have soared, a trend boosted
bythedryingupofrenminbifunding. “If you had five engineers
fromBaidu or Google starting with nothing — that company today may
be valued at $60m to $80m. Nine months ago it would have been $110m,”
said Kai-Fu Lee, who headed Google’s operations in China at and now
runs Sinovation Ventures, a venturecapitalfirm. He anticipated
further falls: “It probablyshouldbebelow$50m.” For ZhenFund, an
early stage investor, the high point for machine learning and other
AI investments was around 2012-15. “I don’t see too many
innovative new AI start-ups at the moment,” said Anna Fang, chief
executive and partner. While many see industry specific applications
as the next big leap forward, there are still opportunities in what
Wei Zhou, who led the investments in China tech at Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers before setting up China Creation Ventures,
called “good enough”technology. “US investors always want to
invest in cutting edge technology, so for them they are always
thinking of advanced AI,” he said. “But for us, we are looking
for these kinds of ‘good enough’ AI to makeadifference.” As a
case in point he cited a recent investment in an online English
learning company that falls short of one-onone conversations with
students but customises sufficient scenarios depending on the
student’s response — wrong answer, correct answer — to make the
userfeeltheyhavearealteacher. “It’snotmagical,”hesaid,butitbrings
the cost of tuition own to under $1, he said. Such applications have
the advantage of addressing China-specific problems, such as a dearth
of Englishlanguage teachers, without requiring cutting edge
technology or significant computingpower.
Thelatterisperhapsthebiggestgapin China’s AI arsenal, and explains
this year’s move by the big Chinese tech companies into hardware.
Baidu, Huawei andAlibaba are among those working on building their
own AI chipsets, and the ecommerce group is also spearheading a drive
into quantum computing. Alibaba wants to have its first AI chips on
the market next year, although there is some scepticism about the
ability of Chinese companies to accelerate developmentinthefield. For
now, the chips driving much of China’s AI are from US manufacturers
such as Qualcomm or Nvidia, and the
softwareisalsolargelyfromoverseas. “The simple fact is most of the
large players in China use the US platforms and software tools such
as TensorFlow,” wrote UBS analysts in a recent report, drawing an
analogy to mobile phones, where popular Chinese apps sit atop
AppleandGoogleoperatingsystems. China has been made starkly aware of
this weakness. A US ban, since rescinded, on selling parts to handset
maker ZTE as punishment for ignoring penalties meted out for
sanction-busting sales to Iran, was a wake-up call for many China
tech players. Building the chips and computing capacity also sits
with Beijing’s aims, outlined in the Made in China 2025 industrial
policy, to enhanceselfsufficiency. But there are large hurdles that
China’s AI sector has yet to jump. Industries need to work together
with tech companies to develop specialised AI, while tech companies
need to increase their processing power and start-ups to
bemorerealistic,saidMrSu. Even then, he warned: “It will be slower.
Returns on investment will be lower.Itwilltakealongertimetorecoup
investments.”
LOUISE LUCAS —
SHENZHEN Pinduoduo, theTencent-backed ecommerce company that reached
a peak valuation of $33bn after listing in July, has been accused of
inflating revenues and falsely trimming losses in a scathing attack
by the Texas-based activist fundBlueOrca. Shanghai-based Pinduoduo
(PDD) is one of 30-odd Chinese tech companies that headed to the
public markets this year. A wave of enthusiasm for the sector boosted
valuations but a subsequent souring means that virtually all are now
belowtheirlistingprices. Shares in Pinduoduo, which were
pricedat$19initsUSinitialpublicoffering, closed on Wednesday slightly
above that level. In a 42-page report, Blue Orca alleged Pinduoduo,
founded by exGoogle engineer Colin Huang, made net losses last year
that were 65 per cent greater than the amount disclosed to US
investors. “PDD notes the Blue Orca report, which contains a series
of incorrect suppositions,” said the company. “PDD is announcing
its quarterly results on Tuesday 20 November and we will
addresstheissuesraisedatthattime.”
BlueOrcaisashort-sellerthatnotesin its report that “we will make
money if thepriceofPDDstockdeclines”. “I have heard Pinduoduo was
cooking its numbers before they were listed,” said one Hong
Kong-based analyst. “I findthisclaimtobeincredible,asyou’ve got
Tencent, Sequoia, and some of the world’s best minds looking at it,
so I’m sure they’ve conducted due diligence for rudimentary
stuff, such as revenue recognition.” The group’s shares rose 11.7
per cent inNasdaqtradingonWednesday. The company has been hit by a
probe and a lawsuit in recent months. In August, China’s market
regulator announced aninvestigationinto reports of counterfeit goods
sold on the site. The same month diaper brand Daddy’s Choice
alleged in a court filing in New York that products sold on the site
infringeditsintellectualproperty. A class-action lawsuit filed in New
York accused the group’s listing prospectus of containing false and
misleading statements, including a failure to
stopmerchantssellingfakegoods. Blue Orca, whose probe into Samsonite
earlier this year ousted the chief executive of the luggage maker,
alleged discrepancies between Pinduoduo’s
regulatoryfilingsintheUSandChina. Numbers reported to China’s State
Administration for Industry and Commerce often conflict with US
regulatory filings, partly — say analysts — due to company
efforts to downplay earnings for tax reasons. But SAIC filings have
also been used to shine a light on inflated numbers — of everything
from earnings to staff—at US-listed Chinese companies that have
subsequently seen theirsharepricestumble. Blue Orca also alleges the
ecommerce company used an undisclosed company related to the chairman
to hire staff — and that its headcount, as stated on the website,
is 4.3 times that stated in its filings to the Securities Exchange
Commission. Additional reporting by Emma Dunkley in HongKong
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Die verhassten Weltbürger
https://www.zeit.de/2018/47/akademiker-weltbuerger-populismus-feindbild-afd
Der ehemalige SPDVorsitzende Sigmar Gabriel hat vor einigen Monaten seine Partei davor gewarnt, einer »postmodernen Globalisierung« anheimzufallen und Themen wie Klima- und Datenschutz oder die Ehe für alle in den Vordergrund zu rücken: »Wer die Arbeiter des Rust Belt verliert, dem werden die Hipster in Kalifornien auch nicht mehr helfen.« Intellektuelle der AufstehenBewegung um Sahra Wagenknecht haben den gesinnungsethisch verfeinerten Globalisten genauso im Blick wie Gesundheitsminister Jens Spahn, der in der ZEIT problematisiert hat, dass in manchen Berliner Cafés die Bedienungen vorzugsweise englisch sprechen. Die jetsettenden, »elitären Hipster« hätten sich von der Normalbevölkerung abgespalten. Vor wenigen Wochen hat auch der AfD-Vorsitzende Alexander Gauland eine »urbane Elite« ausgemacht, die sozial unter sich bleibe, aber eine kulturelle Buntheit propagiere. Die Wähler der AfD rekrutierten sich hingegen aus dem alten wirtschaftlichen Mittelstand, »der nicht einfach seine Unternehmen nach Indien verlagern kann«, und aus dem Prekariat, wo Heimat, die durch Einwanderer bedroht werde, noch »ein Wert an sich« sei. Die parteiübergreifende Neigung zu derartigen Beobachtungen ist leicht erklärbar. Man kann von rechts Identitätsverluste beklagen, von links globale Ausbeutungsmechanismen. Die Kritik am Kosmopoliten ist querfrontfähig: Rechte Überfremdungsängste und linke Globalisierungskritik reichen sich nicht erst heute freudig die Hand. Der DDR-Philosoph Ernst Hoffmann hatte 1949 in dem seinerzeit lebhaft diskutierten Artikel Die Stellung des Marxismus zum bürgerlichen Kosmopolitismus Weltbürgern vorgeworfen, völlig gleichgültig gegenüber ihrer »Heimat« zu sein. Die Weltanschauung des Kosmopoliten bestehe in der »zynischen Verachtung aller moralischen Bindungen und Verpflichtungen gegenüber seiner Nation«, in der »Verschacherung« und dem »Verrat seines Volkes«. Der westliche Kosmopolitismus arbeite gegen jede »nationale Eigenart« an, er feiere den »entwurzelten, artlosen, abstrakten, also unmenschlichen Menschen, entweder in der Gestalt des Weltbörsenjobbers oder in der Form der unterschiedslosen grauen Masse heimatloser Lohnsklaven«. Hier war bereits ein Zusammenhang zwischen international tätigen Konzernen, ortsungebundenen Freelancern und armen Arbeitsmigranten angedeutet, den Globalisierungsgewinnern und Globalisierungsverlierern, die durch ihre Mobilität an der Erosion des Bestehenden mitwirkten.
Der ehemalige SPDVorsitzende Sigmar Gabriel hat vor einigen Monaten seine Partei davor gewarnt, einer »postmodernen Globalisierung« anheimzufallen und Themen wie Klima- und Datenschutz oder die Ehe für alle in den Vordergrund zu rücken: »Wer die Arbeiter des Rust Belt verliert, dem werden die Hipster in Kalifornien auch nicht mehr helfen.« Intellektuelle der AufstehenBewegung um Sahra Wagenknecht haben den gesinnungsethisch verfeinerten Globalisten genauso im Blick wie Gesundheitsminister Jens Spahn, der in der ZEIT problematisiert hat, dass in manchen Berliner Cafés die Bedienungen vorzugsweise englisch sprechen. Die jetsettenden, »elitären Hipster« hätten sich von der Normalbevölkerung abgespalten. Vor wenigen Wochen hat auch der AfD-Vorsitzende Alexander Gauland eine »urbane Elite« ausgemacht, die sozial unter sich bleibe, aber eine kulturelle Buntheit propagiere. Die Wähler der AfD rekrutierten sich hingegen aus dem alten wirtschaftlichen Mittelstand, »der nicht einfach seine Unternehmen nach Indien verlagern kann«, und aus dem Prekariat, wo Heimat, die durch Einwanderer bedroht werde, noch »ein Wert an sich« sei. Die parteiübergreifende Neigung zu derartigen Beobachtungen ist leicht erklärbar. Man kann von rechts Identitätsverluste beklagen, von links globale Ausbeutungsmechanismen. Die Kritik am Kosmopoliten ist querfrontfähig: Rechte Überfremdungsängste und linke Globalisierungskritik reichen sich nicht erst heute freudig die Hand. Der DDR-Philosoph Ernst Hoffmann hatte 1949 in dem seinerzeit lebhaft diskutierten Artikel Die Stellung des Marxismus zum bürgerlichen Kosmopolitismus Weltbürgern vorgeworfen, völlig gleichgültig gegenüber ihrer »Heimat« zu sein. Die Weltanschauung des Kosmopoliten bestehe in der »zynischen Verachtung aller moralischen Bindungen und Verpflichtungen gegenüber seiner Nation«, in der »Verschacherung« und dem »Verrat seines Volkes«. Der westliche Kosmopolitismus arbeite gegen jede »nationale Eigenart« an, er feiere den »entwurzelten, artlosen, abstrakten, also unmenschlichen Menschen, entweder in der Gestalt des Weltbörsenjobbers oder in der Form der unterschiedslosen grauen Masse heimatloser Lohnsklaven«. Hier war bereits ein Zusammenhang zwischen international tätigen Konzernen, ortsungebundenen Freelancern und armen Arbeitsmigranten angedeutet, den Globalisierungsgewinnern und Globalisierungsverlierern, die durch ihre Mobilität an der Erosion des Bestehenden mitwirkten.
“Most companies are using cash to buy back stock and make acquisitions, rather thaninvestin new facilities,”
“Most companies are using cash to
buy back stock and make acquisitions,
rather thaninvestin new facilities,” said
Walter Price, a te
Beijing is tightening controls on domestic press to avoid negative news as growth slows
Unirule, one of China’s few independent
economic think-tanks, was forced
out of its Beijing headquarters earlier
this year. Shen Hong, Unirule’s executive
director, was this month prevented
from leaving China to participate in a
forum at Harvard University. He said
immigration officia
Monday, November 12, 2018
1914-18, german dominance in europe , end of status quo
1914-18, german dominance in europe , end of status quo
tally,aboutwesternEuropebutabouta
struggleformasterybetweenGermany
and Russia. Each time German aggression sucked France and Britain into
war. Long before anyone had heard of
Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
wrote in 1914 that his regime’s aim was
“toeliminateforalltimethatwhichhas
been termed the European balance of
power and to lay the foundations for
GermanpredominanceinEurope”.
The German problem received no
solution in the 1919 Versailles treaty.
The new order, inspired by Woodrow
Wilson, was crippled by the US president’sfailuretosecureSenateapproval
for the treaty and US membership of
the League of Nations. The US disengagedfromEuropeanaffairs,withbalefulconsequences.Thankfully,Franklin
DRooseveltandHarryTrumandidnot
make the same mistake in the 1940s.
Unlike Wilson, they knew the val
struggleformasterybetweenGermany
and Russia. Each time German aggression sucked France and Britain into
war. Long before anyone had heard of
Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
wrote in 1914 that his regime’s aim was
“toeliminateforalltimethatwhichhas
been termed the European balance of
power and to lay the foundations for
GermanpredominanceinEurope”.
The German problem received no
solution in the 1919 Versailles treaty.
The new order, inspired by Woodrow
Wilson, was crippled by the US president’sfailuretosecureSenateapproval
for the treaty and US membership of
the League of Nations. The US disengagedfromEuropeanaffairs,withbalefulconsequences.Thankfully,Franklin
DRooseveltandHarryTrumandidnot
make the same mistake in the 1940s.
Unlike Wilson, they knew the val
bruegel icarus science copy
bruegel icarus science copy
Some scientific discoveries
are better not being madeJackie Wullschlager begins her review
of Heaven on Earth by TJ Clark with a
familiar quotation from WH Auden
and reference to Bruegel’s glorious
picture of the fall of Icarus (“Paradise
lost”, Life & Arts, October 27). She
clearly hasn’t yet made her way to the
stupendous, once-in-a-lifetime
exhibition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, because, if she had, like me
she would surely have been astonished
by the absence from the exhibition of
the said painting — and then dismayed
to discover that it is no longer
considered to be a Bruegel work.
Forensic art scholarship has
determined that the picture may be
based on an original by Bruegel, but
“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” is
by a copyist and not his work. Some
scientific discoveries are better not
made: the absence of this picture —
indelibly seared in my mind, thanks to
Auden, and in the minds of many of my
generation, I’m sure, as a quintessential
product of the fevered genius of the
great Flemish master — is about the
only blemish in this otherwise faultless
and extraordinary show.Christopher EnglishHarare, Zimbabwe
are better not being madeJackie Wullschlager begins her review
of Heaven on Earth by TJ Clark with a
familiar quotation from WH Auden
and reference to Bruegel’s glorious
picture of the fall of Icarus (“Paradise
lost”, Life & Arts, October 27). She
clearly hasn’t yet made her way to the
stupendous, once-in-a-lifetime
exhibition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, because, if she had, like me
she would surely have been astonished
by the absence from the exhibition of
the said painting — and then dismayed
to discover that it is no longer
considered to be a Bruegel work.
Forensic art scholarship has
determined that the picture may be
based on an original by Bruegel, but
“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” is
by a copyist and not his work. Some
scientific discoveries are better not
made: the absence of this picture —
indelibly seared in my mind, thanks to
Auden, and in the minds of many of my
generation, I’m sure, as a quintessential
product of the fevered genius of the
great Flemish master — is about the
only blemish in this otherwise faultless
and extraordinary show.Christopher EnglishHarare, Zimbabwe
benign neglect
benign neglect
Consider the office cubicle. Some people pile their desks with everything
from old newspapers to unwashed
mugs; others are fastidiously tidy. (I
fluctuate.) I’m not saying that people
with messy desks are more productive,
although there’s some evidence that
they are; I’m just saying that if your colleague is a messy-desker then he or she
shouldbeallowedtogetonwithit.
Support for this position comes from
a study conducted by two psychologists,
Alex Haslam and Craig Knight. A few
years ago they set up simple office
spaces in which they asked experimental subjects to spend an hour doing
administrativetasks.
Messrs Haslam and Knight wanted to
understand what made people productive and happy, and they tested four
arrangements in a randomised trial.
One was minimalist: chair, desk, bare
walls. A second was softened with tasteful prints and some greenery. Workers
werehappierthere,andgotmoredone.
The kicker comes with the third and
fourth arrangements. In each case,
workers were invited to rearrange the
pictures and pot-plants as they wished
before settling down to work. But while
some were then left to their labours,
others were second-guessed by an
experimenterwhosteppedinandfound
apretexttorearrangeeverything.
This, unsurprisingly, drove people
mad. “I wanted to hit you,” one participant later admitted. Empowering people to lay out their own space led to happier,moreproductiveworkers.Stripped
of that freedom, everyone’s productivityfellandsomefeltquiteill
from old newspapers to unwashed
mugs; others are fastidiously tidy. (I
fluctuate.) I’m not saying that people
with messy desks are more productive,
although there’s some evidence that
they are; I’m just saying that if your colleague is a messy-desker then he or she
shouldbeallowedtogetonwithit.
Support for this position comes from
a study conducted by two psychologists,
Alex Haslam and Craig Knight. A few
years ago they set up simple office
spaces in which they asked experimental subjects to spend an hour doing
administrativetasks.
Messrs Haslam and Knight wanted to
understand what made people productive and happy, and they tested four
arrangements in a randomised trial.
One was minimalist: chair, desk, bare
walls. A second was softened with tasteful prints and some greenery. Workers
werehappierthere,andgotmoredone.
The kicker comes with the third and
fourth arrangements. In each case,
workers were invited to rearrange the
pictures and pot-plants as they wished
before settling down to work. But while
some were then left to their labours,
others were second-guessed by an
experimenterwhosteppedinandfound
apretexttorearrangeeverything.
This, unsurprisingly, drove people
mad. “I wanted to hit you,” one participant later admitted. Empowering people to lay out their own space led to happier,moreproductiveworkers.Stripped
of that freedom, everyone’s productivityfellandsomefeltquiteill
But Jane Jacobs
argued in The Death And Life of Great
American Cities that cities desperately
need old buildings and not just glorious
masterpieces but “a good lot of plain,
ordinary, low-value old buildings,
includingsomerundownoldbuildings”.
Her reasoning: cities are always in
need of new experiments and economically marginal activities. “Neighbourhood bars . . . good bookshops . . . studios, galleries . . . hundreds of ordinary
enterprises” all need somewhere cheap.
There’s nothing wrong with new buildings, argued Ms Jacobs, frustratingly for
those who hold her up as a Nimby icon.
But they should not be built everywhere
all at once. Something has to be
neglected and run down, or the city has
nosoilfromwhichnewbudscanshoot.
There is always a balance to be struck.
Every old building was once new. Every
desk needs the occasional wipe. And my
daughter is currently engaged in an
extended programme of supervised
room-tidying. Yet neglect is undervalued. Sometimes we need to learn when
toleavewellalone.
argued in The Death And Life of Great
American Cities that cities desperately
need old buildings and not just glorious
masterpieces but “a good lot of plain,
ordinary, low-value old buildings,
includingsomerundownoldbuildings”.
Her reasoning: cities are always in
need of new experiments and economically marginal activities. “Neighbourhood bars . . . good bookshops . . . studios, galleries . . . hundreds of ordinary
enterprises” all need somewhere cheap.
There’s nothing wrong with new buildings, argued Ms Jacobs, frustratingly for
those who hold her up as a Nimby icon.
But they should not be built everywhere
all at once. Something has to be
neglected and run down, or the city has
nosoilfromwhichnewbudscanshoot.
There is always a balance to be struck.
Every old building was once new. Every
desk needs the occasional wipe. And my
daughter is currently engaged in an
extended programme of supervised
room-tidying. Yet neglect is undervalued. Sometimes we need to learn when
toleavewellalone.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
wenn-der-immobilienblase-die-luft-entweicht/ switzerland real estate
https://www.fuw.ch/article/wenn-der-immobilienblase-die-luft-entweicht/
Dadurch haben sich das Hypothekenvolumen und die Privatschulden massiv ausgeweitet. Gemessen am BIP hat sich die Verschuldung der Haushalte in Australien, Kanada und Schweden in zwanzig Jahren fast verdoppelt (vgl. Grafik 4). In der Schweiz war der Anstieg weniger dramatisch. Doch die Verschuldung der Haushalte erlangt mit 127% des BIP einen globalen Spitzenwert.
Dadurch haben sich das Hypothekenvolumen und die Privatschulden massiv ausgeweitet. Gemessen am BIP hat sich die Verschuldung der Haushalte in Australien, Kanada und Schweden in zwanzig Jahren fast verdoppelt (vgl. Grafik 4). In der Schweiz war der Anstieg weniger dramatisch. Doch die Verschuldung der Haushalte erlangt mit 127% des BIP einen globalen Spitzenwert.
Bitcoin echo of failed past
https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-bitcoin-the-future-or-an-echo-of-a-failed-past-1529460361
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Ciudadanos peronismo
http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20180609/444222032922/entrevista-guillem-martinez-proces-independentismo.html
He de decir que he cambiado de opinión: ahora es mucho más dura. Se les ha llamado “pagafantas”. El Procés se ha anclado finalmente donde se tenía que haber anclado mucho antes si hubiera habido información, que es entre los populismos autoritarios nacionalistas europeos. Punto pelota. No hay más recorrido. Si hay otra opción de independencia progresista está fuera del Procés, y ahora mismo no escucho a nadie hablar de ella. Quien participa de todo esto, participa de un marco autoritario, derechista y nacionalista europeo. Muy afortunado, eh, y que se tendría que exportar. De hecho, Ciudadanos lo está exportando; el proyecto de Albert Rivera básicamente es una lectura del Procés, que costará más implantar en España por la propia naturaleza del país. Pero es fácil hacerlo, es fácil construir estas organizaciones peronistas y reducirlo todo a un discurso nacionalista con vocabulario de izquierdas y anclado en la derecha.
Con lo cual, desde luego es inverosímil acabar en una cárcel por una protesta. Pero bueno, en un país donde puedes acabar en la cárcel por un rap, pues es bastante normal y ejemplarizante acabar en la cárcel por una protesta. Pero no contaban con ello
Ni siquiera el día 27 contaban con ello. Contaban con multas, eso sí. De hecho, todo lo hicieron con la idea de recibir las multas. Se ha sabido que muchos cedieron sus patrimonios a sus esposas para limitar el trance. Había información, no obstante, de que podía haber penas. A la que abres el código penal para solucionar todo, todos acabamos en la cárcel. La vida no puede funcionar por el código penal.
.....
Ahora el relato es sobre el sufrimiento. Afecta a un 45% de la sociedad o así y yo creo que se va a eternizar, porque existirá ese 45% durante muchos años, tal vez durante veinte años, y existirá esa capacidad de sufrir durante todo ese tiempo. Estos días, por ejemplo, he visto la noticia de que un pueblo pequeño va a organizar un concurso de balcones amarillos adornados. Pues esto se puede prolongar veinte año
.....
Es un partido, como todos los partidos españoles, muy vertical. Con lo cual, si chuleas a la jefatura, chuleas a todo el partido. Y es lo que ha pasado. La chulearon muy bien, y por marcos: “Si no te integras conmigo, pasarás a ser enemigo de la causa”. Y funcionó: se integró con Artur Mas. Y ahora está descabezado, sin líderes, e intentando hacer algo sin cabeza, que es muy difícil en un partido vertical. Tiene muy mala suerte Esquerra Republicana, es el partido con peor suerte en la Historia de la Humanidad. Es un partido gafe. El único jefe de gobierno fusilado en la II Guerra Mundial es de Esquerra Republicana....
Aquí, no se lo vas a escuchar a nadie en Catalunya, pero ha habido una política de comunicación tercermundista, en el sentido no democrático de la palabra. Y además, están muy orgullosos de ella; los técnicos de comunicación siguen ahí, cuando deberían alquitranarlos y emplumarlos solo por su incapacidad para hacer su trabajo. Llamaba puntualmente a algún político, tengo amigos en el exilio, mi vi autorizado a llamarles....
Si hubiéramos hecho un diario de las declaraciones, Catalunya no solo sería independiente sino que tendría ya una base en Marte.....
Pero solamente existió la independencia cuando tuvieron que ir en helicóptero al parlamento y tuvieron que buscarse algún tipo de representatividad, que está solventada....
Esto es importante y hace hincapié en el valor sagrado del voto. “La democracia es el voto”. ¿Qué es lo que pasó en la moción de censura de Pedro Sánchez? La democracia no es la discusión, no es la coalición, no es el debate. La democracia es el voto, y esta es una característica de las derechas europeas, también la española, y el PP la mantiene. Y Hungría es así, Polonia es así…, esto es muy inquietante....
l primer paso es hacer periodismo macarra, chulo, plantear conflicto y que la gente hable. No que te dé la razón. Lo único de lo que estoy orgulloso de este trabajo es que un día estaba en un hospital y había tres médicos discutiendo sobre un artículo mío, al lado, en el desayuno. Dije “bueno, este es el trabajo”. Discutían, nadie
Peronismo catalán
http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20180609/444222032922/entrevista-guillem-martinez-proces-independentismo.html
Tuesday, June 05, 2018
cdo s manipulation
https://www.ft.com/content/5e23e516-5cdc-11e8-ad91-e01af256df68
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https://www.ft.com/content/5e23e516-5cdc-11e8-ad91-e01af256df68
The mystery trader who roiled Wall Street Former Blackstone executive used complex credit derivatives to become a feared hedge fund manager but left behind a trail of recriminations © FT montage; Getty Images Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save Save to myFT Miles Johnson and Robert Smith in London YESTERDAY Print this page318 For hedge funds that make their money gambling on whether companies will go bust, it was an opportunity too tempting to ignore. In 2015, brokers working on behalf of a mystery client in London, offered these funds the chance to make a trade they thought was impossible to lose: betting that a teetering Norwegian paper company would imminently default on its debt. The hedge funds snapped up hundreds of millions of dollars of the derivatives contracts that would pay out in the event of a default. By the time the buyers realised who was on the other side of the trade it was too late: they had been trapped. One hedge fund manager recalls receiving a call from a sympathetic contact pleading with him to exit a trade. “It was an off-the-record warning in order to protect me,” he says. “He basically told me who was on the other side. It was him.” The “him” was Akshay Shah, at the time a managing director at the Blackstone Group’s GSO hedge fund unit, who for nearly a decade spearheaded a series of unconventional trades that made him the most feared operator in European credit markets, terrorising a string of rival hedge funds and costing them millions in trading losses. The aftermath of the complex trades Mr Shah helped pioneer have shaken the $10tn market for credit default swaps to its core, leaving a trail of at least three lawsuits and recriminations between the world’s largest private equity group and some of the most powerful names in finance. How it worked GSO buys a CDS contract on a struggling company from another hedge fund. The CDS is like an insurance contract: it pays out if the company defaults. GSO then approaches the company and offers it very attractive financing (a low interest loan for example) with an unusual condition: it has to default in a way that will trigger a payout on the CDS contract. The company carries out this proposal, for example by paying interest on a bond a few days late, causing little concern to bondholders but “triggering” the CDS contracts The hedge fund then has to pay a lump sum to GSO given that the company has defaulted The trades have also highlighted a shift in the balance of power on Wall Street since the financial crisis, where the so-called non-bank lenders such as GSO have leveraged the infrastructure and reach of parent private equity groups to become more feared than the once dominant proprietary trading desks of Goldman Sachs and the other leading investment banks. “This is symbolic of a shift in power away from banks like Goldman to non-bank institutions like Blackstone,” says a former Goldman Sachs partner. The credit default swap, a financial instrument intimately associated with the losses incurred by the banks during the US subprime mortgage crisis, is most commonly used to either hedge against a company falling into trouble and possibly not paying off its debts, or as a tool of outright speculation over whether a default will occur. Recommended Markets ‘Manufactured’ credit default called off after legal challenge The GSO unit at Blackstone where Mr Shah worked became the biggest predator in the global CDS market by going beyond merely trying to predict when companies would fail. Instead it used Blackstone’s substantial influence to directly intervene in struggling businesses, changing their fates in ways that maximised profits on GSO’s trades. The strategy allowed GSO, which has $140bn of assets under management, to radically alter the odds in its favour by inventing a trade that had never been seen before: the manufactured default. It is the debt equivalent of a controlled explosion: offering a company favourable financing, such as low interest loans, to convince it to intentionally default in a way that will trigger payouts on CDS contracts, but without bringing down the whole company. By doing this GSO pushed its trading edge on rivals to the limits of what many saw as legal. “I don’t believe it’s classified as insider trading, but it’s pretty damn close,” says one retired trader who came up against GSO and Mr Shah. “It’s quite frankly shocking that they were able to get away with doing that for so long and that no one was prepared to stand up to it.” “I compare it to sports gambling,” says Aitan Goelman, former head of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement division, about manufactured defaults. “If gamblers went out and paid players to throw games, everyone would intuitively know that was fraudulent. Highly sophisticated and not particularly upstanding actors are looking for any edge they can get: if they see areas of the law that are vague or poorly defined, they see this as an opportunity.” Hovnanian was at the centre of a controversial trade which was resolved when GSO and a rival fund reached a settlement © Bloomberg While rivals and observers are shocked at GSO’s tactics, it has never been accused of breaking any regulations. GSO argues that the assistance it provides to distressed businesses in exchange for them triggering payouts on CDS contracts are welcomed by those companies as it helps them to survive, and only damages other hedge funds caught out speculating on their failure. “Our financing solutions were determined in competitive processes and provided the most favourable terms and crucial financial support to businesses with thousands of employees,” Blackstone said in a statement. “They were also wholly compliant with the market’s well-established rules and consistent with the expectations of its sophisticated market participants.” So effective and surprising was GSO’s strategy that it ensnared some of the most revered names in trading, including BlueCrest, founded by billionaire Michael Platt, and Goldman Sachs. BlueCrest declined to comment. The controversy this year filtered up to the highest echelons of Wall Street, as a controversial trade GSO orchestrated around struggling US homebuilder Hovnanian was discussed in a meeting between Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein and Jon Gray, president and heir apparent of Blackstone. Goldman had earlier taken the unusual step of complaining in public about manufactured defaults, with the senior trader in charge of the trade telling the FT this year that “the Hovnanian situation could embolden investors to pursue manufactured credit events with other corporate issuers, which would undermine the true intention and spirit of the CDS market”. Having for years sat at the top of the trading food chain, observers said it would have been unthinkable in the past for a Goldman partner to complain in public about being bested in a trade. “It is ironic any Goldman guy would be asking in public to be protected [from GSO] like this,” says the retired Goldman partner. “Goldman always had a phrase internally, the ‘big boy letter’, the letter clients sign to show they knew what the risks were of trading with Goldman.” The trade involving the Spanish gaming company Codere in 2013 attracted the attention of the comedian Jon Stewart, who dissected it in a segment on 'The Daily Show' Rival hedge funds, investment bankers and consultants describe GSO’s success as being driven by both its traders’ attention to detail, as well as the unrivalled ability of Blackstone’s reputation and infrastructure to support its trades. When the India-born and Cambridge-educated Mr Shah joined GSO in 2008 from Lehman Brothers, few could fault his timing — the investment bank collapsed six months later. He had built a reputation as a sharp-minded analyst on Lehman’s fixed-income trading desk. And having arrived at GSO, which that year had been purchased by Blackstone, Mr Shah began working on finding ways to make money for its investment funds in the European debt market. People familiar with his trading style say he pores over hundreds of pages of bond or loan documents, trying to find tiny details that others in the market might miss. Once he identifies chinks in the wording of particular clauses he plots a way to construct trades using derivatives on whether a company will default on its debts, which would lure rivals to take the other side. Akshay Shah wasn’t some cowboy. He was reporting into the most senior people at GSO “He’s a sniper,” says one hedge fund manager. “He would call you up and say ‘Hey, what are you doing, what are you thinking on this?’ and he knows all the information already, he’s just fishing for what you know and what you think so he can work around it.” GSO would then directly approach company managements with proposals that guaranteed it would profit on the CDS. Ahead of the approach, Mr Shah would often hire external consultants for role-playing purposes, shadowboxing with them in a specific country’s law or corporate culture until the pitch was finely tuned. “You need to have a management team willing to screw people,” says one distressed debt investor. In the case of Codere, a cash-strapped Spanish gaming company, Mr Shah first used the manufactured default. GSO offered the struggling company a liquidity lifeline in 2013 with an unusual condition: Codere had to pay interest on its publicly traded bonds just a few days late, causing little concern to its bondholders but triggering CDS payouts. Despite the unwanted publicity the Codere trade attracted for Blackstone — it was dissected by comedian Jon Stewart on primetime US television in 2013 — Mr Shah grew to become one of GSO’s most senior managing directors, and sat on its European investment committee. “Akshay wasn’t some cowboy,” says a former trader. “He was reporting into the most senior people at GSO.” Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jon Gray of Blackstone discussed the unusual trades after Goldman Sachs complained publically about the complex financial arrangements surrounding Hovnanian © FT montage; Bloomberg Rivals argue that GSO was uniquely placed to not only gain access to greater information than many rivals, but could also use Blackstone’s reputation to open doors to corporate management teams. “To do these sorts of trades you need the size and the money. Only GSO had the money, the influence to pull this off,” says one person active in the European debt markets. “Blackstone is a great brand to have behind you.” Mr Shah used all the levers at Blackstone’s disposal to push through one of GSO’s most controversial trades in 2015-16. The tussle over the CDS of heavily indebted Norwegian paper company Norske Skog resulted in a bitterly fought court battle in New York, as rival hedge fund BlueCrest tried in vain to block GSO’s gambit. The trade was essentially the opposite of Codere: charging other hedge funds large premiums to bet on a company’s rapid demise before doing everything possible to keep it alive for long enough to avoid having to pay anything out. For Norske Skog, GSO pooled its firepower with rival hedge fund Cyrus to buy a substantial equity stake and then lobby for changes to its board, before getting management to formally adopt a proposal tailored to maximise the profits on the funds’ CDS positions. “We believe the company will once again run into trouble after GSO and Cyrus have cleared their CDS positions and no longer have the incentive to support the company with as much determination and creativity,” Rahul Gandhi, an analyst at research firm CreditSights, said in March 2016. His prediction proved prescient. The CDS contracts were settled in June 2016 and 18 months later, in December 2017, Norske Skog filed for bankruptcy. A complex deal involving the paper manufacturer Norske Skog led to a court case in New York as a rival hedge fund tried to prevent GSO's plans from going ahead By that point, Mr Shah’s career at GSO had also met a seemingly untimely end. In the spring of 2017 the scourge of London’s traders suddenly parted ways with the firm, which liquidated a more than $3bn distressed debt fund he managed. One former employee of the division says the headlines such controversial CDS trades generate are no longer compensated for by the gains, as Blackstone’s in-house credit unit shifts its focus to the less acrimonious practice of making direct loans to private companies. “It’s not a place that loves this publicity and in 2018 it has to look like a friendly provider of capital,” he says. This more conciliatory approach was clearly seen in the surprising resolution to the Hovnanian trade last month. The homebuilder announced at the last minute that it was not going through with the manufactured default, as GSO and rival hedge fund Solus reached a settlement over the trade. The Blackstone unit has also in recent months struck a deal with Goldman where GSO bought back some of the contracts the bank lost money on. Goldman Sachs declined to comment. The Hovnanian trade was devised and executed after Mr Shah left GSO, but the senior GSO executive who made use of his former colleague’s manufactured default template has now also left the firm, joining a rival distressed debt fund at the start of the year. Mr Shah says he left to set up his own hedge fund in London to focus on smaller distressed debt opportunities. His new fund, Kyma Capital, is in the early stages of fundraising. “The reason for leaving was simple: the European stressed and distressed opportunity set is a middle-market opportunity set,” he says. “These sized companies don’t lend themselves to megafunds.” Kyma Capital said it would “welcome any regulatory changes that would improve the stability, durability and liquidity of the CDS markets”. But experts believe the damage to the market is already done, as the run of trades from GSO have exposed how easy it is for big players to alter outcomes in the very markets they are betting on. “This kind of ‘gaming’ behaviour undermines the viability of the CDS market,” says Henry Hu, a professor and expert in derivatives at the University of Texas Law School. “The CDS market has shrunk terribly since the crisis. If this kind of behaviour continues, the market will shrink even further.” “We have heard with concern reports about recent ‘manufactured’ credit events,” says a spokesperson for the Financial Conduct Authority. “Such behaviour could also amount to market manipulation.” Mr Goelman, formerly of the CFTC, says he did look at manufactured defaults before stepping down last year, but could not say who was involved. “For a number of different reasons, we decided to not act on the case.” One of the hedge fund managers who came up against Mr Shah says he expects GSO to now shy away from such trades, given the potential regulatory scrutiny. “There are still going to be other guys out there who will be more aggressive and willing to put on these trades,” he says, adding that it would be hard for others to replicate the intricacy of the trades pioneered by GSO. “Being outside the behemoth of Blackstone, I don’t see how that’s going to work.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2018. All rights reserved. COMMENTS (318) Sign in + Follow Submit Comment Please keep comments respectful. By commenting, you agree to abide by our community guidelines and these terms and conditions. We encourage you to report inappropriate comments. Newest | Oldest | Most recommended Marty Edwards 5 minutes ago This wasn't a story I followed at the time. I assume that the CDS were cash-settled rather than the normal physical (bond) settlement otherwise there would be no money to make, or not much. Were they - anyone know? ReportShareRecommendReply Thomas Welting 37 minutes ago Sorry but this is a pretty weak article from the FT. How is it that the holder of a CDS can make a claim for loss when the whole scam depends on triggering a claim where the is no (of no proportional) financial loss? Has the journalist thought about explaining this? Making this scammer out to be some sort of genius who searches the minutiae of derivatives and loan contracts for hidden flaws is simply nonsense. He simply knows that, unlike insurance, a CDS pays out when an event happens and not if a loss is incurred - it is fundamental to the CDS market and it is a flaw. It is hard to feel too much sympathy for the hedge funds he has scammed but he is not clever or to me respected. ReportShareRecommendReply cynic007 1 hour ago It's great to hear that financial super-players got screwed by another of their own kind. The sad part is that scam involved real companies and people who were bit players for as long there were useful for GSO and then discarded like trash. Shocking story but nothing that happens in the finance sector is a surprise anymore. ReportShare1RecommendReply WendellMurray 2 hours ago "This kind of gaming" That is all that much of what players in paper do is. Artificially created paper constructs that involve billions of gains and losses, but have zero to do with real economic activity that employs people or that involves production of useful good or service. Disgusting world. ReportShare5RecommendReply Italian UK Taxpayer 3 hours ago This article seems to over-estimate the role Mr Shah had in all these transactions. Yes GSO was in all the trades mentioned (Norske Skog, Codere), but other funds with similar strategies were involved. Bluecrest was on the other side of the trade on Norske betting for a clean event of default in 2015 (as opposite to no event or a restructuring credit event, which was the GSO side). Cyrus was on the same GSO side. To highlight only GSO role in this transaction seems to me a journalistic device to back up the story. Norske Skog has been what people call in jargon a hedge fund hotel for the past decade. As for Codere, GSO came up with this idea, but there were a lot of smart funds and financial advisers involved that knew about the GSO plan of devising an artificial default for months and there were articles written at the time before the thing happened. But the company needed quick liquidity, bondholders and advisers needed the CDS to be washed away and the management to be cornered for a restructuring to be achieved. As for the insider trading allegations, on Norske the company was well aware of GSO conflict as shareholders, creditor etc but did not care much, nor did the Norwegian regulator. Also let's not forget that banks and other institutions often are in similar positions as shareholders/lenders and justify it arguing there are Chinese walls (remember EMI lawsuit of Terra Firma Vs Citigroup). On Codere, as I explained it above, everyone on the creditor side was complacent. The regulator looked into it and found no issues. Akshay Shah is one of the smartest guys in distressed debt out there, but let's not be ingenuous, these transactions do not happen just because one guy says so. ReportShare4RecommendReply Timber 2 hours ago @Italian UK Taxpayer I have a partner like this. If I want a 15-minute rant from him, all I have to do is call someone else clever. ReportShare1RecommendReply adamsmithfreetrader 4 hours ago One thing I don't quite understand. Given the underlying company was tottering the CDS sold by the other hedge funds would have been very pricey. Indeed I would have thought that other hedge funds would be very nervous of writing CDS's particularly if word got around that a mystery buyer was snapping up large quantities of CDSs for the given company. Also if other hedge funds were being rung up and offered CDSs as the article implies then wouldn't they gave gained from the company defaulted. Perhaps it's already been covered below but as I read it, it doesn't stack up... ReportShare3RecommendReply BA 5 hours ago Guys, the participants in Financial Markets are stated clear in all finance books, Hedgers and Speculators. Lets see both sides of the coin. Once you engage in CDS as seller you presumably took the risk into consideration but it's seems like information asymmetry gets into play. Not all players are well informed. Like it or not, he hasn't done something illegal. Was it ethical or moral? Maybe not. Doesn't matter what institution are you, bank, HF, PE, once you get into a risky instrument, there's always a counterparty who might speculate from it. That's the beauty of finance, you're not always winning or losing. The big problem is timing and liquidity. ReportShareRecommendReply Toronto M 2 hours ago @BA What he did amounts to taking a fire insurance on your neighbour's house and then setting it ablaze. The reason this isn't illegal is because the financial laws are silly. I really want to use another word, but 'silly' will have to do. ReportShare2RecommendReply LPC 1 hour ago @BA But if you can manipulate the outcome are you still 'speculating' and is that information asymmetry or material insight? ReportShareRecommendReply BA 1 hour ago @Toronto M I agree with you that laws are silly. But in the same time we will never have perfect laws so we will always have different or out of the box interpretations so that someone might take advantage of it. ReportShareRecommendReply 1 reply merel-an 5 hours ago Reminds me of Abacus, a CDO case, involving a bank: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldmansachs-abacus-factbox-idUSTRE63F5CZ20100416 The problem is not the instrument or type of company but the way the instrument is used, i.e. it's about incentives built into market structure and corporate governance. ReportShareRecommendReply I am free Capt Peacock 5 hours ago All of this from a PE that has acquired Thomson Reuters market data business. How are the users suppose to trust that? ReportShare3RecommendReply Toronto M 2 hours ago @I am free Capt Peacock Because unlike the case above, feeding trusting users false information and then betting against their obvious responses is against the law. ReportShareRecommendReply I am free Capt Peacock 2 hours ago @Toronto M What about using data on what customers are using? and How does one know they are not tracking key customers? ReportShareRecommendReply I'd rather be sailing 6 hours ago One has to wonder, in what shape or form do these people add anything of value to the world? ReportShare6RecommendReply Tom 6 hours ago Why do you need to add value to the world? Is it not enough to earn money within the parameters of what is legal? ReportShareRecommendReply Vectorious 6 hours ago @I'd rather be sailing I was just thinking the same thing - in what way is this activity aiding the ability of the real economy to operate or adding to the information discovery of the market? in fact it appears to be doing the opposite, which undermines the case for CDSs existing at all
https://www.ft.com/content/5e23e516-5cdc-11e8-ad91-e01af256df68
The mystery trader who roiled Wall Street Former Blackstone executive used complex credit derivatives to become a feared hedge fund manager but left behind a trail of recriminations © FT montage; Getty Images Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save Save to myFT Miles Johnson and Robert Smith in London YESTERDAY Print this page318 For hedge funds that make their money gambling on whether companies will go bust, it was an opportunity too tempting to ignore. In 2015, brokers working on behalf of a mystery client in London, offered these funds the chance to make a trade they thought was impossible to lose: betting that a teetering Norwegian paper company would imminently default on its debt. The hedge funds snapped up hundreds of millions of dollars of the derivatives contracts that would pay out in the event of a default. By the time the buyers realised who was on the other side of the trade it was too late: they had been trapped. One hedge fund manager recalls receiving a call from a sympathetic contact pleading with him to exit a trade. “It was an off-the-record warning in order to protect me,” he says. “He basically told me who was on the other side. It was him.” The “him” was Akshay Shah, at the time a managing director at the Blackstone Group’s GSO hedge fund unit, who for nearly a decade spearheaded a series of unconventional trades that made him the most feared operator in European credit markets, terrorising a string of rival hedge funds and costing them millions in trading losses. The aftermath of the complex trades Mr Shah helped pioneer have shaken the $10tn market for credit default swaps to its core, leaving a trail of at least three lawsuits and recriminations between the world’s largest private equity group and some of the most powerful names in finance. How it worked GSO buys a CDS contract on a struggling company from another hedge fund. The CDS is like an insurance contract: it pays out if the company defaults. GSO then approaches the company and offers it very attractive financing (a low interest loan for example) with an unusual condition: it has to default in a way that will trigger a payout on the CDS contract. The company carries out this proposal, for example by paying interest on a bond a few days late, causing little concern to bondholders but “triggering” the CDS contracts The hedge fund then has to pay a lump sum to GSO given that the company has defaulted The trades have also highlighted a shift in the balance of power on Wall Street since the financial crisis, where the so-called non-bank lenders such as GSO have leveraged the infrastructure and reach of parent private equity groups to become more feared than the once dominant proprietary trading desks of Goldman Sachs and the other leading investment banks. “This is symbolic of a shift in power away from banks like Goldman to non-bank institutions like Blackstone,” says a former Goldman Sachs partner. The credit default swap, a financial instrument intimately associated with the losses incurred by the banks during the US subprime mortgage crisis, is most commonly used to either hedge against a company falling into trouble and possibly not paying off its debts, or as a tool of outright speculation over whether a default will occur. Recommended Markets ‘Manufactured’ credit default called off after legal challenge The GSO unit at Blackstone where Mr Shah worked became the biggest predator in the global CDS market by going beyond merely trying to predict when companies would fail. Instead it used Blackstone’s substantial influence to directly intervene in struggling businesses, changing their fates in ways that maximised profits on GSO’s trades. The strategy allowed GSO, which has $140bn of assets under management, to radically alter the odds in its favour by inventing a trade that had never been seen before: the manufactured default. It is the debt equivalent of a controlled explosion: offering a company favourable financing, such as low interest loans, to convince it to intentionally default in a way that will trigger payouts on CDS contracts, but without bringing down the whole company. By doing this GSO pushed its trading edge on rivals to the limits of what many saw as legal. “I don’t believe it’s classified as insider trading, but it’s pretty damn close,” says one retired trader who came up against GSO and Mr Shah. “It’s quite frankly shocking that they were able to get away with doing that for so long and that no one was prepared to stand up to it.” “I compare it to sports gambling,” says Aitan Goelman, former head of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement division, about manufactured defaults. “If gamblers went out and paid players to throw games, everyone would intuitively know that was fraudulent. Highly sophisticated and not particularly upstanding actors are looking for any edge they can get: if they see areas of the law that are vague or poorly defined, they see this as an opportunity.” Hovnanian was at the centre of a controversial trade which was resolved when GSO and a rival fund reached a settlement © Bloomberg While rivals and observers are shocked at GSO’s tactics, it has never been accused of breaking any regulations. GSO argues that the assistance it provides to distressed businesses in exchange for them triggering payouts on CDS contracts are welcomed by those companies as it helps them to survive, and only damages other hedge funds caught out speculating on their failure. “Our financing solutions were determined in competitive processes and provided the most favourable terms and crucial financial support to businesses with thousands of employees,” Blackstone said in a statement. “They were also wholly compliant with the market’s well-established rules and consistent with the expectations of its sophisticated market participants.” So effective and surprising was GSO’s strategy that it ensnared some of the most revered names in trading, including BlueCrest, founded by billionaire Michael Platt, and Goldman Sachs. BlueCrest declined to comment. The controversy this year filtered up to the highest echelons of Wall Street, as a controversial trade GSO orchestrated around struggling US homebuilder Hovnanian was discussed in a meeting between Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein and Jon Gray, president and heir apparent of Blackstone. Goldman had earlier taken the unusual step of complaining in public about manufactured defaults, with the senior trader in charge of the trade telling the FT this year that “the Hovnanian situation could embolden investors to pursue manufactured credit events with other corporate issuers, which would undermine the true intention and spirit of the CDS market”. Having for years sat at the top of the trading food chain, observers said it would have been unthinkable in the past for a Goldman partner to complain in public about being bested in a trade. “It is ironic any Goldman guy would be asking in public to be protected [from GSO] like this,” says the retired Goldman partner. “Goldman always had a phrase internally, the ‘big boy letter’, the letter clients sign to show they knew what the risks were of trading with Goldman.” The trade involving the Spanish gaming company Codere in 2013 attracted the attention of the comedian Jon Stewart, who dissected it in a segment on 'The Daily Show' Rival hedge funds, investment bankers and consultants describe GSO’s success as being driven by both its traders’ attention to detail, as well as the unrivalled ability of Blackstone’s reputation and infrastructure to support its trades. When the India-born and Cambridge-educated Mr Shah joined GSO in 2008 from Lehman Brothers, few could fault his timing — the investment bank collapsed six months later. He had built a reputation as a sharp-minded analyst on Lehman’s fixed-income trading desk. And having arrived at GSO, which that year had been purchased by Blackstone, Mr Shah began working on finding ways to make money for its investment funds in the European debt market. People familiar with his trading style say he pores over hundreds of pages of bond or loan documents, trying to find tiny details that others in the market might miss. Once he identifies chinks in the wording of particular clauses he plots a way to construct trades using derivatives on whether a company will default on its debts, which would lure rivals to take the other side. Akshay Shah wasn’t some cowboy. He was reporting into the most senior people at GSO “He’s a sniper,” says one hedge fund manager. “He would call you up and say ‘Hey, what are you doing, what are you thinking on this?’ and he knows all the information already, he’s just fishing for what you know and what you think so he can work around it.” GSO would then directly approach company managements with proposals that guaranteed it would profit on the CDS. Ahead of the approach, Mr Shah would often hire external consultants for role-playing purposes, shadowboxing with them in a specific country’s law or corporate culture until the pitch was finely tuned. “You need to have a management team willing to screw people,” says one distressed debt investor. In the case of Codere, a cash-strapped Spanish gaming company, Mr Shah first used the manufactured default. GSO offered the struggling company a liquidity lifeline in 2013 with an unusual condition: Codere had to pay interest on its publicly traded bonds just a few days late, causing little concern to its bondholders but triggering CDS payouts. Despite the unwanted publicity the Codere trade attracted for Blackstone — it was dissected by comedian Jon Stewart on primetime US television in 2013 — Mr Shah grew to become one of GSO’s most senior managing directors, and sat on its European investment committee. “Akshay wasn’t some cowboy,” says a former trader. “He was reporting into the most senior people at GSO.” Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jon Gray of Blackstone discussed the unusual trades after Goldman Sachs complained publically about the complex financial arrangements surrounding Hovnanian © FT montage; Bloomberg Rivals argue that GSO was uniquely placed to not only gain access to greater information than many rivals, but could also use Blackstone’s reputation to open doors to corporate management teams. “To do these sorts of trades you need the size and the money. Only GSO had the money, the influence to pull this off,” says one person active in the European debt markets. “Blackstone is a great brand to have behind you.” Mr Shah used all the levers at Blackstone’s disposal to push through one of GSO’s most controversial trades in 2015-16. The tussle over the CDS of heavily indebted Norwegian paper company Norske Skog resulted in a bitterly fought court battle in New York, as rival hedge fund BlueCrest tried in vain to block GSO’s gambit. The trade was essentially the opposite of Codere: charging other hedge funds large premiums to bet on a company’s rapid demise before doing everything possible to keep it alive for long enough to avoid having to pay anything out. For Norske Skog, GSO pooled its firepower with rival hedge fund Cyrus to buy a substantial equity stake and then lobby for changes to its board, before getting management to formally adopt a proposal tailored to maximise the profits on the funds’ CDS positions. “We believe the company will once again run into trouble after GSO and Cyrus have cleared their CDS positions and no longer have the incentive to support the company with as much determination and creativity,” Rahul Gandhi, an analyst at research firm CreditSights, said in March 2016. His prediction proved prescient. The CDS contracts were settled in June 2016 and 18 months later, in December 2017, Norske Skog filed for bankruptcy. A complex deal involving the paper manufacturer Norske Skog led to a court case in New York as a rival hedge fund tried to prevent GSO's plans from going ahead By that point, Mr Shah’s career at GSO had also met a seemingly untimely end. In the spring of 2017 the scourge of London’s traders suddenly parted ways with the firm, which liquidated a more than $3bn distressed debt fund he managed. One former employee of the division says the headlines such controversial CDS trades generate are no longer compensated for by the gains, as Blackstone’s in-house credit unit shifts its focus to the less acrimonious practice of making direct loans to private companies. “It’s not a place that loves this publicity and in 2018 it has to look like a friendly provider of capital,” he says. This more conciliatory approach was clearly seen in the surprising resolution to the Hovnanian trade last month. The homebuilder announced at the last minute that it was not going through with the manufactured default, as GSO and rival hedge fund Solus reached a settlement over the trade. The Blackstone unit has also in recent months struck a deal with Goldman where GSO bought back some of the contracts the bank lost money on. Goldman Sachs declined to comment. The Hovnanian trade was devised and executed after Mr Shah left GSO, but the senior GSO executive who made use of his former colleague’s manufactured default template has now also left the firm, joining a rival distressed debt fund at the start of the year. Mr Shah says he left to set up his own hedge fund in London to focus on smaller distressed debt opportunities. His new fund, Kyma Capital, is in the early stages of fundraising. “The reason for leaving was simple: the European stressed and distressed opportunity set is a middle-market opportunity set,” he says. “These sized companies don’t lend themselves to megafunds.” Kyma Capital said it would “welcome any regulatory changes that would improve the stability, durability and liquidity of the CDS markets”. But experts believe the damage to the market is already done, as the run of trades from GSO have exposed how easy it is for big players to alter outcomes in the very markets they are betting on. “This kind of ‘gaming’ behaviour undermines the viability of the CDS market,” says Henry Hu, a professor and expert in derivatives at the University of Texas Law School. “The CDS market has shrunk terribly since the crisis. If this kind of behaviour continues, the market will shrink even further.” “We have heard with concern reports about recent ‘manufactured’ credit events,” says a spokesperson for the Financial Conduct Authority. “Such behaviour could also amount to market manipulation.” Mr Goelman, formerly of the CFTC, says he did look at manufactured defaults before stepping down last year, but could not say who was involved. “For a number of different reasons, we decided to not act on the case.” One of the hedge fund managers who came up against Mr Shah says he expects GSO to now shy away from such trades, given the potential regulatory scrutiny. “There are still going to be other guys out there who will be more aggressive and willing to put on these trades,” he says, adding that it would be hard for others to replicate the intricacy of the trades pioneered by GSO. “Being outside the behemoth of Blackstone, I don’t see how that’s going to work.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2018. All rights reserved. COMMENTS (318) Sign in + Follow Submit Comment Please keep comments respectful. By commenting, you agree to abide by our community guidelines and these terms and conditions. We encourage you to report inappropriate comments. Newest | Oldest | Most recommended Marty Edwards 5 minutes ago This wasn't a story I followed at the time. I assume that the CDS were cash-settled rather than the normal physical (bond) settlement otherwise there would be no money to make, or not much. Were they - anyone know? ReportShareRecommendReply Thomas Welting 37 minutes ago Sorry but this is a pretty weak article from the FT. How is it that the holder of a CDS can make a claim for loss when the whole scam depends on triggering a claim where the is no (of no proportional) financial loss? Has the journalist thought about explaining this? Making this scammer out to be some sort of genius who searches the minutiae of derivatives and loan contracts for hidden flaws is simply nonsense. He simply knows that, unlike insurance, a CDS pays out when an event happens and not if a loss is incurred - it is fundamental to the CDS market and it is a flaw. It is hard to feel too much sympathy for the hedge funds he has scammed but he is not clever or to me respected. ReportShareRecommendReply cynic007 1 hour ago It's great to hear that financial super-players got screwed by another of their own kind. The sad part is that scam involved real companies and people who were bit players for as long there were useful for GSO and then discarded like trash. Shocking story but nothing that happens in the finance sector is a surprise anymore. ReportShare1RecommendReply WendellMurray 2 hours ago "This kind of gaming" That is all that much of what players in paper do is. Artificially created paper constructs that involve billions of gains and losses, but have zero to do with real economic activity that employs people or that involves production of useful good or service. Disgusting world. ReportShare5RecommendReply Italian UK Taxpayer 3 hours ago This article seems to over-estimate the role Mr Shah had in all these transactions. Yes GSO was in all the trades mentioned (Norske Skog, Codere), but other funds with similar strategies were involved. Bluecrest was on the other side of the trade on Norske betting for a clean event of default in 2015 (as opposite to no event or a restructuring credit event, which was the GSO side). Cyrus was on the same GSO side. To highlight only GSO role in this transaction seems to me a journalistic device to back up the story. Norske Skog has been what people call in jargon a hedge fund hotel for the past decade. As for Codere, GSO came up with this idea, but there were a lot of smart funds and financial advisers involved that knew about the GSO plan of devising an artificial default for months and there were articles written at the time before the thing happened. But the company needed quick liquidity, bondholders and advisers needed the CDS to be washed away and the management to be cornered for a restructuring to be achieved. As for the insider trading allegations, on Norske the company was well aware of GSO conflict as shareholders, creditor etc but did not care much, nor did the Norwegian regulator. Also let's not forget that banks and other institutions often are in similar positions as shareholders/lenders and justify it arguing there are Chinese walls (remember EMI lawsuit of Terra Firma Vs Citigroup). On Codere, as I explained it above, everyone on the creditor side was complacent. The regulator looked into it and found no issues. Akshay Shah is one of the smartest guys in distressed debt out there, but let's not be ingenuous, these transactions do not happen just because one guy says so. ReportShare4RecommendReply Timber 2 hours ago @Italian UK Taxpayer I have a partner like this. If I want a 15-minute rant from him, all I have to do is call someone else clever. ReportShare1RecommendReply adamsmithfreetrader 4 hours ago One thing I don't quite understand. Given the underlying company was tottering the CDS sold by the other hedge funds would have been very pricey. Indeed I would have thought that other hedge funds would be very nervous of writing CDS's particularly if word got around that a mystery buyer was snapping up large quantities of CDSs for the given company. Also if other hedge funds were being rung up and offered CDSs as the article implies then wouldn't they gave gained from the company defaulted. Perhaps it's already been covered below but as I read it, it doesn't stack up... ReportShare3RecommendReply BA 5 hours ago Guys, the participants in Financial Markets are stated clear in all finance books, Hedgers and Speculators. Lets see both sides of the coin. Once you engage in CDS as seller you presumably took the risk into consideration but it's seems like information asymmetry gets into play. Not all players are well informed. Like it or not, he hasn't done something illegal. Was it ethical or moral? Maybe not. Doesn't matter what institution are you, bank, HF, PE, once you get into a risky instrument, there's always a counterparty who might speculate from it. That's the beauty of finance, you're not always winning or losing. The big problem is timing and liquidity. ReportShareRecommendReply Toronto M 2 hours ago @BA What he did amounts to taking a fire insurance on your neighbour's house and then setting it ablaze. The reason this isn't illegal is because the financial laws are silly. I really want to use another word, but 'silly' will have to do. ReportShare2RecommendReply LPC 1 hour ago @BA But if you can manipulate the outcome are you still 'speculating' and is that information asymmetry or material insight? ReportShareRecommendReply BA 1 hour ago @Toronto M I agree with you that laws are silly. But in the same time we will never have perfect laws so we will always have different or out of the box interpretations so that someone might take advantage of it. ReportShareRecommendReply 1 reply merel-an 5 hours ago Reminds me of Abacus, a CDO case, involving a bank: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldmansachs-abacus-factbox-idUSTRE63F5CZ20100416 The problem is not the instrument or type of company but the way the instrument is used, i.e. it's about incentives built into market structure and corporate governance. ReportShareRecommendReply I am free Capt Peacock 5 hours ago All of this from a PE that has acquired Thomson Reuters market data business. How are the users suppose to trust that? ReportShare3RecommendReply Toronto M 2 hours ago @I am free Capt Peacock Because unlike the case above, feeding trusting users false information and then betting against their obvious responses is against the law. ReportShareRecommendReply I am free Capt Peacock 2 hours ago @Toronto M What about using data on what customers are using? and How does one know they are not tracking key customers? ReportShareRecommendReply I'd rather be sailing 6 hours ago One has to wonder, in what shape or form do these people add anything of value to the world? ReportShare6RecommendReply Tom 6 hours ago Why do you need to add value to the world? Is it not enough to earn money within the parameters of what is legal? ReportShareRecommendReply Vectorious 6 hours ago @I'd rather be sailing I was just thinking the same thing - in what way is this activity aiding the ability of the real economy to operate or adding to the information discovery of the market? in fact it appears to be doing the opposite, which undermines the case for CDSs existing at all
Monday, June 04, 2018
Sunday, June 03, 2018
ross commerce secretary ties with Russia , Trumps bankrupcy
The commerce secretary trumpeting stringent tariffsonUSalliesisa
ShawnDonnan
From his expansive wood-panelled office a short walk from the White House,MrRosshasweatheredcontroversyoverbusinesstiestoRussianoligarchsandinvestmentsintheBankof Cyprus as well as questions about the true size of a personal fortune that was once estimated in the billions. Rivalshaveleakedreportsofhimfalling asleep in meetings and being shoutedatbyMrTrump,amanwhose businesscareerheoncehelpedsalvage. Asabanker,MrRossoptednottoforce thecasinodeveloperintobankruptcy.
AregularforyearsonthePalmBeach andHamptonspartycircuits,MrRoss hasalsoemergedasavividexampleof the Gilded Age-style opulence that wealthy Trump cabinet members inhabit. He wore $600 velvet slippers embroideredwithhisdepartment’slogo toMrTrump’sfirstaddresstoCongress.
In public, Mr Ross retains a defiant poker face mastered over decades of dealmaking and high-stakes art auctions. He and his third wife, Hilary Geary Ross, own a collection of paintings by Belgian surrealist artist René Magrittethathasbeenvaluedatmore than $100m and the couple are regularly listed in ArtNews’list of the top200collectorsintheworld
ShawnDonnan
From his expansive wood-panelled office a short walk from the White House,MrRosshasweatheredcontroversyoverbusinesstiestoRussianoligarchsandinvestmentsintheBankof Cyprus as well as questions about the true size of a personal fortune that was once estimated in the billions. Rivalshaveleakedreportsofhimfalling asleep in meetings and being shoutedatbyMrTrump,amanwhose businesscareerheoncehelpedsalvage. Asabanker,MrRossoptednottoforce thecasinodeveloperintobankruptcy.
AregularforyearsonthePalmBeach andHamptonspartycircuits,MrRoss hasalsoemergedasavividexampleof the Gilded Age-style opulence that wealthy Trump cabinet members inhabit. He wore $600 velvet slippers embroideredwithhisdepartment’slogo toMrTrump’sfirstaddresstoCongress.
In public, Mr Ross retains a defiant poker face mastered over decades of dealmaking and high-stakes art auctions. He and his third wife, Hilary Geary Ross, own a collection of paintings by Belgian surrealist artist René Magrittethathasbeenvaluedatmore than $100m and the couple are regularly listed in ArtNews’list of the top200collectorsintheworld
Friday, June 01, 2018
the next crisis : the italian spread , the VIX and the algos
Many pinpoint the cause of such a
dramatic dislocation as post-financial
crisis regulations which have made it
harder for banks to play their historic
roleinlubricating bond trading.
Higher capital costs have forced them
to retreat from being active players,
while the embrace of technology and
rise of electronic market makers have
leftmarketswithless support.
“We all know the dealer community’s
balance sheets aren’t what they were,
and the bids aren’t as deep,” said Jim
Caron, a senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
“It should absolutely be a systemicworry.”
Some argue there is mounting evidence
— from a series of sharp sell-offs,
such as February’s volatility spike in US
equities and now the Italian debt crisis
— that the deteriorating health of bond
market trading could exacerbate financial
turmoil.
“I do think that the VIX blow-up and
the Italian explosion are reflective of a
market structure that is flawed and
where we should expect more such
events rather than fewer, and that at
some point, one will be larger and last
longer,” said Peter Tchir, head of macro
strategyatAcademySecurities. Charles Himmelberg, a senior strategist
at Goldman Sachs who formerly
worked at the New York Federal
Reserve, recently caused a stirby saying
that “liquidityis the newleverage”.
“The rising frequencyof‘flash crashes’
across many major markets may be an
important earlywarning sign that something
is not quite right with the current
stateof tradingliquidity,”he noted.
Mr Himmelberg highlighted how
bank trading desks had increasingly
been replaced by high-frequency traders when it
came to supporting two-way
market prices, especially in stocks but
alsoincreasinglyin bondmarkets.
That may make markets seem more
efficient most of the time, but when
severe shocks happen these algorithmic traders can pull back and add to the
dislocations.
Another factor has been the presence
of central banks as big buyers of government
bonds and the unwillingness of
policymakers to upset markets. This
has helped contain yields at extremely
lowlevelsand reducedvolatility.
“The long expansion accompanied
by relatively low market volatility
may have helped disguise an underappreciated
rise in market fragility,” Mr
Himmelberg warned. “Just as the rapid
growth of financial innovation and leverage
during the pre-crisis period contributed
to the crisis in ways that were
not fully anticipated, we will not really
know whether markets have in fact
become more fragile until after the next
downturnor crisis.”
Dan Ivascyn, global chief investment
officer of Pimco, said that the decline in
liquidity usually goes unnoticed but
during periods of sharp retrenchment
when investors seek to shed riskier
assets, it can cause sharp price movements
which are “characteristic of markets
today”.
In the case of Italian bonds, investors
are asking how a developedworld fixedincome
market buckled so quickly. The
unsettling conclusion is that the regulatory
inspired changes in the bond market’s
ecosystem mean there is little difference
between how some government
debt trades compared with lower-qualityand
riskierassets.
spain political reform
The change in mood has also led to the
emergence of new political movements.
But since the instinct for control runs
deep in the Spanish system, both old
and new parties continue being tight
pyramidal structures with leaders who
havequasi-absolutecontrol.
As a result, they are failing to open up
the system. Crucially, they are not
attracting Spain’s able, professional
middle classintopolitics. The party that
manages to do so will hold the country’s
futureinitshands.
The Spanish establishment is already
manoeuvring to end the crisis faced by
Mr Rajoy. The stock exchange has suffered
losses and the risk premium has
shot up. In addition, the nervousness of
European markets is being used as an
excuse for fixing things fast. But tinkering
at the margins is unlikely to do the
trick. The answer to the political discontent
in Spain is not quick changes, or
evenmedium-termtechnocraticones.
To succeed, Spain needs to think
deeply and seriously about political and
constitutional reform.
Miriam González Durántez
Miriam González Durántez
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Big data instead of prices Viktor Mayer
https://it.businessinsider.com/il-capitalismo-finanziario-e-al-capolinea-largo-ai-mercati-basati-sui-big-data/
Monday, May 28, 2018
Switzerland digital taxation /EU rules compliance
its für 2019 erwartet.
In Anlehnung an den OECD-Entwurf
hat die EU-Kommission erst kürzlich, am
21.März, einen Entwurf zu «Richtlinien
zur Besteuerung einer digitalen Wirtschaft» publiziert. Nach Auffassung der
EU-Kommission findet die Wertschöpfung von digitalen Unternehmen dort
statt, wo die Interaktion mit Kunden vonstattengeht und wo diese die Daten zur
Verfügung stellen. Sie stützt die Besteuerung damit stark auf die Tatsache, dass
viele der betroffenen Unternehmen ihren
Umsatz unter Verwendung der Daten
ihrer Kunden erzielen.
Der Gewinn, den eine Gesellschaft im
Hoheitsgebiet eines Mitgliedstaates erwirtschaftet, soll in Zukunft daher auch
ohne physische Präsenz bei Vorliegen
einer virtuellen Betriebsstätte besteuert
werden können. DieserVorschlag wird begleitet von einer Empfehlung an die EUMitgliedstaaten, ihre mit Drittländern wie
beispielsweise der Schweiz geschlossenen
Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen dergestalt anzupassen, dass für Unternehmen
aus der EU wie auch solche aus Drittländern dieselbenVorschriften gelten
In Anlehnung an den OECD-Entwurf
hat die EU-Kommission erst kürzlich, am
21.März, einen Entwurf zu «Richtlinien
zur Besteuerung einer digitalen Wirtschaft» publiziert. Nach Auffassung der
EU-Kommission findet die Wertschöpfung von digitalen Unternehmen dort
statt, wo die Interaktion mit Kunden vonstattengeht und wo diese die Daten zur
Verfügung stellen. Sie stützt die Besteuerung damit stark auf die Tatsache, dass
viele der betroffenen Unternehmen ihren
Umsatz unter Verwendung der Daten
ihrer Kunden erzielen.
Der Gewinn, den eine Gesellschaft im
Hoheitsgebiet eines Mitgliedstaates erwirtschaftet, soll in Zukunft daher auch
ohne physische Präsenz bei Vorliegen
einer virtuellen Betriebsstätte besteuert
werden können. DieserVorschlag wird begleitet von einer Empfehlung an die EUMitgliedstaaten, ihre mit Drittländern wie
beispielsweise der Schweiz geschlossenen
Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen dergestalt anzupassen, dass für Unternehmen
aus der EU wie auch solche aus Drittländern dieselbenVorschriften gelten
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Berlino immobiliare
http://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/22/esteri/berlino-capitale-degli-affitti-stellari-i-residenti-occupano-le-case-per-protesta-aO2Bcuzp33WBG9vTSu5HkO/pagina.html
Berlino
http://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/22/esteri/berlino-capitale-degli-affitti-stellari-i-residenti-occupano-le-case-per-protesta-aO2Bcuzp33WBG9vTSu5HkO/pagina.html
Monday, May 21, 2018
Bernard Lewis Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bernard-lewis-eminent-historian-of-the-middle-east-dies-at-101/2018/05/19/4f0db6b8-5bad-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html
Bernard Lewis
http://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/21/cultura/addio-a-bernard-lewis-ci-ha-spiegato-il-suicidio-dellislam-Sucjm7ka6V3szCUik4CmjJ/premium.html#acquistaregistraaccedi
Friday, May 18, 2018
Amnesia dissociativa
https://www.corriere.it/salute/neuroscienze/18_maggio_18/amnesia-dissociativa-buco-memoria-dovuto-stress-fed4b080-5aac-11e8-be88-f6b7fbf45ecc.shtml
Farà ed Ayisha
http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/05/18/news/liberata_faraha_a_islamabad-196726713/
Condizionamento non Solo fisico ma anche psicologico
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Wolfe attaccabrighe
http://www.repubblica.it/venerdi/interviste/2016/11/10/news/intervista_a_un_magnifico_attaccabrighe_chiamatotom_wolfe-151726555/
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Picasso Crowdfunding
http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2018/04/27/news/un_picasso_come_bene_collettivo_in_mostra_il_busto_appartiene_a_25mila_persone-194939291/
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Facebook regulation
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-24/make-facebook-and-google-information-fiduciaries
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
inverted curve , flat curve
Experten sehen in der
grossen Neuverschuldung der USA einen
möglichen Grund für den hohen Libor.
Das Schatzamt nimmt Kapital vor allem
über kurzfristige Geldmarktpapiere auf,
sogenannte Bills. Das neue Angebot begünstigt höhere Zinsen. Darunter leidet
der gesamte Geldmarkt. Zudem führt die
Steuersenkung der Regierung dazu, dass
US-Unternehmen Milliarden, die sie bisher in Geldmarktpapieren im Ausland
parkten, in die Heimat überführen. Auch
das erhöht den Druck auf die Geldmarktzinsen. Liquidität wird auch deshalb teurer, weil die US-Notenbank den Erlös auslaufender US-Treasuries nicht mehr voll
in neue Papiere anlegt und die Überschussreserven der Banken schrumpfen.
grossen Neuverschuldung der USA einen
möglichen Grund für den hohen Libor.
Das Schatzamt nimmt Kapital vor allem
über kurzfristige Geldmarktpapiere auf,
sogenannte Bills. Das neue Angebot begünstigt höhere Zinsen. Darunter leidet
der gesamte Geldmarkt. Zudem führt die
Steuersenkung der Regierung dazu, dass
US-Unternehmen Milliarden, die sie bisher in Geldmarktpapieren im Ausland
parkten, in die Heimat überführen. Auch
das erhöht den Druck auf die Geldmarktzinsen. Liquidität wird auch deshalb teurer, weil die US-Notenbank den Erlös auslaufender US-Treasuries nicht mehr voll
in neue Papiere anlegt und die Überschussreserven der Banken schrumpfen.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Étienne Klein, matière à contredire
https://www.letemps.ch/lifestyle/etienne-klein-futur-existetil-autant-passe
FB gaggia algoritmo
https://video.repubblica.it/rubriche/racconti-di-corrado-augias/racconti-augias-gli-algoritmi-di-fb-ci-mangeranno-vivi/300167/300797
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Portugal top education system
http://aprendemosjuntos.elpais.com/especial/es-portugal-la-nueva-finlandia-de-la-educacion-escuela-publica-carcavelos/
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Monday, April 16, 2018
Saturday, April 07, 2018
Giustizia Croazia
http://www.corriere.it/cronache/18_aprile_08/coppia-uccisa-magnate-croato-assolto-nonostante-31-processi-74c70400-3a91-11e8-a94c-7c30e3109c4d.shtml
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Persecuzioni parchístan
http://www.corriere.it/esteri/18_marzo_29/coppia-cristiani-bruciata-viva-20-assolti-ab8d801e-3360-11e8-8d05-67d9ee233e6b.shtml
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Germans don't swap secret banking for sovereignty, Swiss do except with Americans
https://www.letemps.ch/suisse/herve-falciani-arrete-espagne-demande-suisse
Cowardice has no limits. Hand in Falciani if you want us to apply the Swiss laws. Is this the rule of law? Sure they don't dare to act similarly with other superpowers such as the USA. Pure Cynicism, this is our main feature, our survival DNA where we can trade anything, even the rule of law
Berlin high tech scene real estate prices triple
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-05/berlin-tech-scene-beats-frankfurt-brexit-boon-for-office-buyers
Monday, April 02, 2018
The toxic garbage dump of Moscow raises opposition.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-30/putin-s-imperial-rule-spurs-wave-of-trash-protests-around-moscow
Sunday, April 01, 2018
Gerichte berücksichtigen vormaliges Engagement der Väter nicht
https://m.tagesanzeiger.ch/articles/26751280
Friday, March 30, 2018
http://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2018/03/27/5ab9412446163f970f8b45e7.html?cid=MOTB27001
Aunque es cierto que, tras el súbito enamoramiento de la épica callejera del procés que hechizó a los enviados especiales extranjeros durante las tristes semanas de octubre, produce una inevitable satisfacción leer la fría prosa de algunos editoriales.
Spain Catalonia Germany referendum
http://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2018/03/27/5ab9412446163f970f8b45e7.html?cid=MOTB27001
El ejemplo de Alemania vuelve a ser pertinente. En enero del pasado año, su Tribunal Constitucional prohibió un referéndum de independencia en Baviera con el argumento de que "en la República Federal de Alemania como Estado nacional la soberanía recae en el pueblo alemán, por lo que estados federados no son los dueños de la Constitución". Las penas que contempla su legislación para el delito de alta traición tienen como límite la cadena perpetua.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Seven sisters golden age
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/oil-s-seven-sisters-enter-a-golden-age-goldman-sachs-says
Catalonia psychanalyse the smart catalán
http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2018/03/26/5ab7f4c6e5fdea93688b457a.html?cid=OUTSINER003&s_kw=marca
Uno de los yerros recurrentes del Estado a propósito del problema catalanista es el de presumir, contra las enseñanzas de varias toneladas de evidencias empíricas, que yace oculta entre bambalinas una lúcida inteligencia superior moviendo en todo momento los hilos del secesionismo. Por alguna misteriosa razón que tal vez se pudiera aflorar en el diván de un psicoanalista argentino, las élites políticas españolas, y tanto a diestra como a siniestra, han querido persuadirse de que tras la muy tosta estampa atrabiliaria de gentes como ese payés asilvestrado se escondía un genial estratega híbrido entre Napoleón, Churchill y Washington....
. Y en esto llegó el ido ahora vuelto. Por algo dijo su paisano común que todo lo que no sea tradición es plagio.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Ethiopia china fashion district
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-02/china-is-turning-ethiopia-into-a-giant-fast-fashion-factory
Marisco furtivo Galicia
https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/03/16/actualidad/1521220117_231825.html
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Almodovar mujeres al borde de una crisis de
http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli/cinema/2018/03/23/news/amodovar-191946933/
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Ascetic billionaire India
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/this-multibillion-dollar-corporation-is-controlled-by-a-penniless-yoga-superstar
swiss car suppliers
Der Diesel schafft Kummer und Chancen
SCHWEIZ / EUROPA Die Bedrängnis des Dieselmotors stellt Automobilkonzerne v
Nimmt daneben die Elektrifizierung des Automobils an Fahrt auf, kommen noch andere, teils branchenfremde Namen ins Spiel, darunter ABB, Huber + Suhner, Inficon, Lem und Schaffner (vgl. www.fuw.ch/2103185). Verglichen mit den Aktien der Autobauer, zeigen die der Zulieferer deutlich höhere KGV (vgl. Tabelle). Gutwettergewinne werden hier an Kursen gemessen, die weitgehend freundliches Wetter ankünden. Luft für höhere Kursniveaus ist vorhanden, zum Teil ist sie aber schon recht dünn. Dazu kommt ein labiles Börsenumfeld. Nichtsdestotrotz bieten Sika attraktive Aussichten. Sie werden zwar nicht wegen des AutomotiveGeschäfts gekauft, doch gibt auch dieses wertvolle Impulse. Ebenfalls reizvoll und daher für risikofähige Anleger kaufenswert sind EmsChemie und Feintool. Autoneum und Georg Fischer bleiben haltenswert.or Probleme, bringt die Stärken hiesiger Zulieferer aber noch mehr zu Geltung.
Nimmt daneben die Elektrifizierung des Automobils an Fahrt auf, kommen noch andere, teils branchenfremde Namen ins Spiel, darunter ABB, Huber + Suhner, Inficon, Lem und Schaffner (vgl. www.fuw.ch/2103185). Verglichen mit den Aktien der Autobauer, zeigen die der Zulieferer deutlich höhere KGV (vgl. Tabelle). Gutwettergewinne werden hier an Kursen gemessen, die weitgehend freundliches Wetter ankünden. Luft für höhere Kursniveaus ist vorhanden, zum Teil ist sie aber schon recht dünn. Dazu kommt ein labiles Börsenumfeld. Nichtsdestotrotz bieten Sika attraktive Aussichten. Sie werden zwar nicht wegen des AutomotiveGeschäfts gekauft, doch gibt auch dieses wertvolle Impulse. Ebenfalls reizvoll und daher für risikofähige Anleger kaufenswert sind EmsChemie und Feintool. Autoneum und Georg Fischer bleiben haltenswert.or Probleme, bringt die Stärken hiesiger Zulieferer aber noch mehr zu Geltung.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Monday, March 19, 2018
Snowden: from deep Web to deep state...
http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/03/19/news/snowden_how_the_deep_state_shapes_presidents_-191619170/
Tax tech
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-17/tech-giants-set-to-face-3-tax-on-revenue-under-new-eu-plan
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Monday, March 12, 2018
Multinationals pay lower taxes than a decade ago - Financial Times
Multinationals pay lower taxes than a decade ago - Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/.../2b356956-17fc-11e8-9376-4a6390addb4... - Traduci questa pagina
17 ore fa - Big multinationals are paying significantly lower tax rates than before the 2008 financial crisis, according to Financial Times analysis showing that a decade of government efforts to cut deficits and reform taxes has left the corporate world largely unscathed. Companies' effective tax rates — the proportion of ...free market economy is not locusts destruction economy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-08/josh-hawley-s-missouri-senate-bid-could-be-a-problem-for-google
another example on how a tech monopolists battles against free market economy principles by highjacking the legislation process . these are locuusts destroying the surrounding environment with an exponential multiplication allowed by environment factors such as double edged rules in their favour
another example on how a tech monopolists battles against free market economy principles by highjacking the legislation process . these are locuusts destroying the surrounding environment with an exponential multiplication allowed by environment factors such as double edged rules in their favour
Thursday, March 08, 2018
Tuesday, March 06, 2018
Friday, March 02, 2018
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Trump bribed by Tech?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/trump-antitrust-cop-splits-with-eu-over-probes-of-big-tech
Anti trust tech monopoly
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-23/choose-your-top-tech-monopolist-fully-charged
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
AI human intelligence aesthetic pursuit
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stupid-economy-declining-human-intelligence-by-harold-james-2018-01
The technological revolution now underway is generating a different sort of replacement. Many tasks that once required human intelligence – making connections and drawing inferences; recognizing patterns; tracing the implications of complex events – are now better handled by AI applications. Whether the job is to scan thousands of pages of legal contracts for inconsistencies, or to make radiological assessments, an algorithm can now do it more reliably and less expensively. Soon, this will also be true of driving a vehicle.
The technological revolution now underway is generating a different sort of replacement. Many tasks that once required human intelligence – making connections and drawing inferences; recognizing patterns; tracing the implications of complex events – are now better handled by AI applications. Whether the job is to scan thousands of pages of legal contracts for inconsistencies, or to make radiological assessments, an algorithm can now do it more reliably and less expensively. Soon, this will also be true of driving a vehicle.
Friday, February 16, 2018
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Friday, February 09, 2018
Thursday, February 08, 2018
The discreet terror of the American bourgeoisie Elites thought they could have it both ways: capital gains and moral certainty
https://www.ft.com/content/c0237568-0b30-11e8-8eb7-42f857ea9f09
So are cultural advantages. America’s elites preach the gospel of a so-called stem education — science, technology, engineering and maths. But that is for other people. Social capital is about knowing what to say to whom and when, which is a sophisticated skill. Technical learning is for others. Children of the elites are learning how to raise money for philanthropic causes. Economists define this as a positional good. Sociologists call it virtue signalling. Mr Trump calls it political correctness....
The children of the wealthiest do not need student loans and live off their parents’ capital. The rest are struggling to justify the expense. It is as though they were led up to the promised land at sundown. The ratio of effort to outcome is rising. The more people study, the lower the returns to education. You always need more credentials, which most cannot afford. Instead of c...
Yet he eats away at it too. Somewhere in our bourgeois subconscious is the realisation that Mr Trump is no accident. He holds up a cracked mirror to our illusions. When we mock him, he draws strength. When he provokes, we stumble. Yet we cannot helpourselves.Heisdeeplyoutrageous
So are cultural advantages. America’s elites preach the gospel of a so-called stem education — science, technology, engineering and maths. But that is for other people. Social capital is about knowing what to say to whom and when, which is a sophisticated skill. Technical learning is for others. Children of the elites are learning how to raise money for philanthropic causes. Economists define this as a positional good. Sociologists call it virtue signalling. Mr Trump calls it political correctness....
The children of the wealthiest do not need student loans and live off their parents’ capital. The rest are struggling to justify the expense. It is as though they were led up to the promised land at sundown. The ratio of effort to outcome is rising. The more people study, the lower the returns to education. You always need more credentials, which most cannot afford. Instead of c...
Yet he eats away at it too. Somewhere in our bourgeois subconscious is the realisation that Mr Trump is no accident. He holds up a cracked mirror to our illusions. When we mock him, he draws strength. When he provokes, we stumble. Yet we cannot helpourselves.Heisdeeplyoutrageous
fuw. 3.2.18
Mit 3a-Sparen ins Ziel treffen, Die freiwillige Altersvorsorge in der steuerlich geförderten Säule 3a wird bedeutsamer, weil die Pensionskassenrenten künftig weniger hergeben. Für engagierte 3a-Sparer sind Lösungen mit selbst sehr hohem Aktienanteil zugänglich THOMAS HENGARTNER
vom steuerlichen Einkommen absetzen, selbstständig Erwerbende ohne beruflicheVorsorge gar knapp 34 000 Fr. Die dritteVorsorgesäule gewinnt an Bedeutung, weil die Pensionskassenrenten wegen der längeren Rentenphase und der niedrigen Zinsen rückläufig sind. Aus staatlicher AHV und Pensionskasse kommt in der Regel nur ein 60- bis 70%iger Ersatz des vormaligen Erwerbseinkommens zustande
Wie die Aktienmärkte frühere Zinsanstiege bewältigt haben Anders 1987. Der Crash stellte sich im Nachhinein als Momentereignis heraus, als blosse Korrektur eines zu schnellen und zu steilen Kursanstiegs. Weil die Konjunktur robust blieb, wurde das Hoch von 1987 schon 1989 übertroffen. ...dass ein zinsbedingter Kursrückschlag an den Börsen eher dem Muster von 1987 folgt und also eine blosse Episode bleibt
Pionier im digitalen Bauen > RIB Software
Profs setzen auf zyklischen Konsum & Finanz
Banken-IT-Spezialisten bleiben im Hoch, Die Digitalisierung des Finanzsektors beschert IT-Zulieferern und Fintechs eine Auftragsschwemme. Ein Ende des Booms ist nicht absehbar
Wirecard wächst zehn Jahre stark»
Wächter der Unabhängigkeit>>> history indipendenceJerome Powell löst dieses Wochenende Janet Yellen an der Spitze der amerikanischen Notenbank ab. Seine wichtigste Aufgabe wird sein, die Eigenständigkeit der Geldpolitik zu verteidigen.
Die Autoren setzen sich für mehr Wettbewerb im Gesundheitssystem ein. Es «sollte deshalb mit einem auf Qualitätskriterien, Transparenz und Eigenverantwortung basierenden und nicht durch
staatliche Eingriffe unterdrückten Wettbewerb reformiert werden». Dabei huldigen sie nicht etwa schrankenloser Konkurrenz – es brauche Regulierungen. Schips und Borner schlagen ein schrittweises Vorgehen vor. Als Anfang und zen trale Massnahme betrachten sie die Aufhebung desVertragszwangs zwischenVersicherern und Leistungserbringern. Mit der Einführung vonVertragsfreiheit könne «der angebotsseitig bedingten Ausweitung von Leistungen und damit auch den Ausgaben begegnet werden». Als weitere Schritte müssten altersabhängige
vom steuerlichen Einkommen absetzen, selbstständig Erwerbende ohne beruflicheVorsorge gar knapp 34 000 Fr. Die dritteVorsorgesäule gewinnt an Bedeutung, weil die Pensionskassenrenten wegen der längeren Rentenphase und der niedrigen Zinsen rückläufig sind. Aus staatlicher AHV und Pensionskasse kommt in der Regel nur ein 60- bis 70%iger Ersatz des vormaligen Erwerbseinkommens zustande
Wie die Aktienmärkte frühere Zinsanstiege bewältigt haben Anders 1987. Der Crash stellte sich im Nachhinein als Momentereignis heraus, als blosse Korrektur eines zu schnellen und zu steilen Kursanstiegs. Weil die Konjunktur robust blieb, wurde das Hoch von 1987 schon 1989 übertroffen. ...dass ein zinsbedingter Kursrückschlag an den Börsen eher dem Muster von 1987 folgt und also eine blosse Episode bleibt
Pionier im digitalen Bauen > RIB Software
Profs setzen auf zyklischen Konsum & Finanz
Die Finalisten der Swiss FinTech Awards Die Start-ups Proxeus, VIAC, Loanboox und PriceHubble stehen in der letzten Runde. Zwei von ihnen werden am 15. März ausgezeichnet VALENTIN ADE
Revolut greift Banken mit ultratiefen Gebühren an
Roche sucht die neuenWachstumstreiber
Bernd Schips, Silvio Borner: «Genesung durch Wettbewerb. Vorschläge zur Stärkung des schweizerischen Gesundheitssystems.» Die Kostensteigerungen im Gesundheitswesens sind ein politischer
Dauerbrenner. Seit Jahren befasst sich das Parlament mit Vorlagen und Vorstössen dazu, setzt punktuelle Massnahmen in Kraft – die Kosten steigen trotzdem weiter
Dauerbrenner. Seit Jahren befasst sich das Parlament mit Vorlagen und Vorstössen dazu, setzt punktuelle Massnahmen in Kraft – die Kosten steigen trotzdem weiter
staatliche Eingriffe unterdrückten Wettbewerb reformiert werden». Dabei huldigen sie nicht etwa schrankenloser Konkurrenz – es brauche Regulierungen. Schips und Borner schlagen ein schrittweises Vorgehen vor. Als Anfang und zen trale Massnahme betrachten sie die Aufhebung desVertragszwangs zwischenVersicherern und Leistungserbringern. Mit der Einführung vonVertragsfreiheit könne «der angebotsseitig bedingten Ausweitung von Leistungen und damit auch den Ausgaben begegnet werden». Als weitere Schritte müssten altersabhängige
Versicherungsprämien, der Übergang zu einer monistischen Spitalfinanzierung oder mehr Freiheit in der Ausgestaltung der Versicherungsmodelle folgen.
In der politischen Aktualität allerdings stehen die Zeichen auf Regulierung statt auf Wettbewerb. Setzt sich dieser Trend fort, ist gemäss den Autoren der Weg zu einer Einheitskrankenkasse mit staatlicher Planwirtschaft vorgezeichnet.
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