“The decision by federal regulators to reject a bid by a Chinese-led investor group to buy the Chicago Stock Exchange is a major blow to its international aspirations, but it may not derail the sale entirely, the exchange’s chief executive said Friday.”
“The FBI and other US intelligence agencies are suddenly and ever so deeply concerned with preserving your smart phone privacy. Testifying before the US Senate Intelligence Committee, officials from the FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. warned Americans against using phones made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. Why? Because, Christopher Wray (Comey’s successor at the FBI) explains, the Chinese government might equip, or find and exploit weaknesses in, such phones to ‘maliciously modify or steal information’ and ‘conduct undetected espionage.'”
Read more: http://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/12874
“More than a dozen former Pentagon officials, CIA analysts, US military officers, and think tank experts, as well as a retired South Korean general who spent his entire professional life preparing to fight the North, have all said variants of the same thing: There is a genuine risk of a war on the Korean Peninsula that would involve the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Several estimated that millions — plural — would die.”
Read more: https://www.vox.com/world/2018/2/7/16974772/north-korea-war-trump-kim-nuclear-weapon
“Personal information, along with your biometric data, resides in a database tied to your ID number. The system crunches all of this into a composite score that ranks you as ‘safe,’ ‘normal’ or ‘unsafe.’ Based on those categories, you may or may not be allowed to visit a museum, pass through certain neighborhoods, go to the mall, check into a hotel, rent an apartment, apply for a job or buy a train ticket. Or you may be detained to undergo re-education, like many thousands of other people. A science-fiction dystopia? No. This is life in northwestern China today if you are Uighur.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surveillance-state-uighurs.html
“The move comes months after China formally banned investments in initial coin offerings (ICOs), deeming the blockchain use case to constitute a form of illegal financing. Authorities there also shuttered online websites for crypto-trading, with the ‘Big Three’ exchanges closing this past fall. The new reports show that China is now targeting overseas websites catering to local users. According to the translation from SCMP, the actions are begin taken because ‘after the closure of the domestic virtual currency exchanges, many people turned to overseas platforms to continue participating in virtual currency transactions.'”
Read more: https://www.coindesk.com/report-china-cutting-access-to-overseas-crypto-trading-websites/
“Anxiety is only increased by the latest report from Reuters that cash withdrawals at Hong Kong ATMs have surged, prompting scrutiny from monetary authorities, the banking industry, and police amid media reports that mainland Chinese are withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars using up to 50 cards at a time. China has battled to curb capital outflows for years. A move that took effect on Jan. 1 caps overseas withdrawals using domestic Chinese bank cards.”
“The annual deposit war is particularly fierce this year. The last day of January in the [WeChat] friend groups, bankers ‘beg’ for deposits one after another. ‘There are more than 20 banks looking, every one is asking for deposits.’ a listed company’s small partner told reporters that he had been too busy to reply, however. The banker’s nickname is ‘Guixie.’ [a combination of beg and thanks] ‘Perhaps because the New Year approached, company payments are more numerous, bank account capital is less, bank competition for deposits is even more intense.’ A banking source told reporters bluntly, these days are quite difficult.”
“Despite being one of China’s largest conglomerates, HNA has been shut out of stock and bond markets as lenders worry about its outsized debt load, forcing the company to pledge some of its core holdings as collateral for short-term loans, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month. And yet, even as the company resorted to loaning out shares and entering into arcane derivative financing agreements to finance its debt-service payments, it quickly found out that traditional avenues of financing are disappearing or becoming too costly.”
Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-30/chinas-largest-conglomerate-verge-bankruptcy
“Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fight for scores of nations, with troops on every continent, and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-gate.”
Read more: https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/01/18/too-many-wars-too-many-enemies
“Trump national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network to guard against China, according to sensitive documents obtained by Axios. In the memo, the Trump administration likens it to ‘the 21st century equivalent of the Eisenhower National Highway System’ and says it would create a ‘new paradigm’ for the wireless industry by the end of Trump’s current term.”