Monthly Archives: June 2014

Bill Bonner: It’s a Mad, Mad World… and Getting Madder

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“Want to make beaucoup money? Start a company. Borrow money. Buy your own shares.  Everybody does that, right?  But our innovation is this: Buy your own products too!  Raise $1 billion by selling bonds to the public. You have no credit and no credibility? No worries. The companies that have done best lately are those with the worst credit.  You have to pay $40 million in annual interest. But you take the $1 billion and use it to buy your products (whatever they are). Your company shows sales of $1 billion. Then, if your shares sell for 20 times earnings (modest for a tech company), the capital value of your company will soar by 20 x $400,000,000 = $8 billion!  Sound crazy?”

http://www.bonnerandpartners.com/its-a-mad-mad-world-and-getting-madder/

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Strategies Overseas Retirees Need to Handle a Multi Currency Lifestyle

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“Americans who move overseas often lose money or have problems with the tax authorities because they live a multi-currency lifestyle. In this 19 minute webinar, hear international money expert Douglas Goldstein, CFP® summarize the strategies that every American needs to know who is planning to move abroad, or has already moved overseas. In this program, find out: (a) The 3 Reasons Currency Traders Get it Wrong… and The #1 Thing Clients Need to Understand About Currency, (b) What Everybody Ought to Know About Transferring Money (money changers vs. banks vs. cash), and (c) The Tax Form Which is Hitting U.S. Expats Hard.”

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US Foreign Wealth Confiscation Begins: FinCen, FATCA and FBAR

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“Carl Zwerner, an 87-year old Florida man, must pay the US government a 150% penalty on the value of his Swiss bank account, amounting to the biggest penalty by percentage on record.  Zwerner testified, telling jurors that he tried to enter the IRS voluntary disclosure program, and that he didn’t know until 2008 that he must file FBARs. ‘Zwerner’s original tax returns for 2004 to 2007 didn’t report any income from the Swiss bank account,’ reads a US complaint filed in June 2013. ‘The first time he reported such income was when he amended those returns.’ He failed to declare interest on his foreign account. The account was opened in the 1960s, and was held in the name of two foundations.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35372/Jeffrey-Berwick-US-Foreign-Wealth-Confiscation-Begins-Under-the-Code-Names-FinCen-FATCA-and-FBAR/

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The Great Deception, Part II

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“In each of these cases, brokerages made millions. The analysts made millions. The companies they promoted raked in millions. But investors lost their shirts.  Not one major firm on Wall Street tied its analysts’ compensation to their actual track record in picking stocks. Analysts could be wrong once, wrong twice, wrong a hundred times, and they’d still earn huge bonuses, as long as they continued to recommend the shares and as long as there were still enough investors who continued to buy into the hype. The current cycle of complacency does not favor investor vigilance — let alone Wall Street transparency.  Quite to the contrary, it’s the perfect climate for more scams and deceptions.”

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/the-great-deception-part-ii-61958

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U.S. Regulators Mull Yanking Access To USD As Punishment For Banks

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“BNP Paribas is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks to charges that it processed payments for companies and countries that were subject to United States sanctions.  BNP Paribas is also expected to pay financial penalties of about $8 billion, which would leave a sizable, though manageable, dent on its balance sheet.  Despite those potential punishments, some regulators want to do more.  Specifically, Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York State’s top financial regulator, is considering whether to temporarily suspend BNP Paribas’s ability to process dollar payments, according to people briefed on the settlement talks.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/regulators-explore-options-for-suitable-penalties-in-bnps-sanctions-inquiry/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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Cops In Texas Seize Millions By ‘Policing for Profit’

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“Pursuing forfeiture cases related to cannabis has generated millions for Texas police. Between 2002 and 2012, the federal government processed $64.3 million in cash and other valuables in civil and criminal marijuana forfeitures in Texas.  The Institute for Justice found that the average law enforcement agency in Texas took in forfeiture proceeds equal to about 14% of its budget in 2007.  Between 2001-2007, law enforcement agencies seized and kept over 35,000 cars, homes and electronics, forfeiting more than $280 million. District attorneys have used these forfeiture funds on ridiculous purchases, including visiting casinos, a vacation to Hawaii and a margarita machine.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/06/05/cops-in-texas-seize-millions-by-policing-for-profit/

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Uncertainty dominates new hemp market

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“Would-be hemp farmers are having mixed success navigating red tape on everything from seed acquisition to processing the finished plant. It will take years, farmers and regulators agree, before there’s a viable market for hemp.  Hemp is prized for oils, seeds and fiber, but its production was prohibited for five decades because the plant can be manipulated to enhance a psychoactive chemical, THC, making the drug marijuana.  The Farm Bill enacted this year ended decades of required federal permission to raise hemp, but only with state permission and checks to make sure the hemp doesn’t contain too much THC.  Fifteen states have removed barriers to hemp production.”

http://www.dailynews.com/business/20140607/uncertainty-dominates-new-hemp-market

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Reefer Madness Redux

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“What’s especially obnoxious about these conclusions is that they argue marijuana ‘damages lives’ but ignore the devastating effects of long-term incarceration on the individuals and families swept up for non-violent criminal violations into the West’s massive penal-industrial complex. There is plenty of evidence that prohibition doesn’t work and that the blight from those kinds of policies – as well as the individual and familial ruin – is considerably worse than the item being prohibited. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies that are doubtless supportive of ‘studies’ like this don’t care about the larger social costs.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35376/Anthony-Wile-Reefer-Madness-Redux/

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The day I left my son in the car

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“Over the past two years, I’ve replayed this moment in my mind again and again, approaching the car, getting in, looking in the rearview mirror, pulling away. I replay it, trying to uncover something in the recollection I hadn’t noticed at the time. A voice. A face. Sometimes I feel like I can hear something. A woman? A man? “Bye now.” Something. But I can’t be sure.  We flew home. My husband was waiting for us beside the baggage claim with this terrible look on his face. ‘Call your mom,’ he said.  I called her, and she was crying. When she’d arrived home from driving us to the airport, there was a police car in her driveway.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/

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VTA can keep transit cardholders’ personal data for seven years [2012]

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“The resolution also calls on the commission to encrypt travel information on the Clipper card, which can be read by scanning it with a smartphone app called FareBot.  Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the transportation commission, said he did not see the need for the legislation.  Use of the card, accepted by every major Bay Area public transit system, is soaring with 689,000 transactions a day and more than 1 million active Clipper cards. Every time a user swipes the card for BART or Muni, the information is saved.  In 2010, California enacted a law limiting the use of data collected on bridges and toll roads through FasTrak devices, but Clipper cards were not included in the legislation.”

https://www.baycitizen.org/news/transportation/supervisor-seeks-more-privacy-clipper/

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