Morning Charts 06/30/2016 SPX /es
Early post
On to the lie -
More to come below.
Have a good holiday weekend.
GL and GB!
On to the lie -
More to come below.
Have a good holiday weekend.
GL and GB!
The phrase they chanted during the violence-- Russkie Vperyod! (Forward, Russians!)-- happens to be emblematic of the brand of throwback patriotism that emerged from Putin's most recent run for re-election, in 2012.I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along a warning. I traveled with 2 friends, Roland and David. All 3 off us had all of our electronics hacked. David got home and found someone had withdrawn a considerable amount of money from his bank account. My e-mail list was bombarded with nonsense from the hackers and I had to change my passwords. Roland has to buy a new phone because his was so badly screwed up. So... yes Russia is wonderful to visit but, think about unplugging while you're there.Ahead of that vote, the Kremlin decided that the only way to galvanize a weary electorate was to play on the old fears and prejudices of the Cold War. It worked: Putin's popularity rose along with animosity toward the West. Ever since, a series of crises in Russia's relations with the West have helped the state's powerful propaganda channels [including high school curricula, I discovered] nurture a national siege mentality, portraying Russia as the victim of a bullying and treacherous West whose primary aim is to bring the country to its knees.
Khrushchev's grave
• Finland- 0.615So... the U.S. isn't the worst.
• Canada- 0.688
• U.K.- 0.697
• Russia- 0.699
• U.S.- 0.801
• Zimbabwe- 0.845
Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust. In practice, however, he and his executives have at times appeared to overlook details about the background of people he has chosen as business partners, such as whether they had dubious associations, had been convicted of crimes, faced extradition or inflated their resumes.Now all the employees have been laid off and everyone around Baku says they want to wait a little while for people to forget the Trump taint before they re-brand the building and re-open it as something else-- anything else. even a Motel 6 would be a better bet than something related to Trump at this moment.
...In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't researched the allegations against the Baku partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal.
"I've never heard that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010.
Garten subsequently said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.
Garten told the AP that Trump's company uses a third-party investigative firm, which he did not identify, that specializes in background intelligence gathering and searches global watch lists, warrant lists and sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations, Interpol and others.
...Any American contemplating a business venture in Azerbaijan faces a risk: "endemic public corruption," as the State Department puts it. Much of that money flows from the oil and gas industries, but the State Department also considers the country to be a waypoint for terrorist financiers, Iranian sanctions-busters and Afghan drug lords.
The environment is a risky one for any business venture seeking to avoid violating U.S. penalties imposed against Iran or anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
...Garten said the Trump Organization had performed background screening on all those involved in the deal and was confident Mammadov's father played no role in the project.
Experts on Azerbaijan were mystified that Trump or anyone else could reach that conclusion.
Anar Mammadov is widely viewed by diplomats and nongovernmental organizations as a transparent stand-in for the business interests of his father. Anar's business has boomed with regular help from his father's ministry, receiving exclusive government contracts, a near monopoly on Baku's taxi business and even a free fleet of autobuses.
"These are not business people acting on their own — you're dealing with daddy," said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s who went on to work under the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.
"Whatever the Trump people thought they were doing, that wasn't reality," Kauzlarich said.
Anar Mammadov, who is believed to be 35, has said in a series of interviews that he founded Garant Holdings' predecessor-- which has arms in transportation, construction, banking, telecommunications and manufacturing-- in 2000, when he would have been 19. Anar received his bachelor's degree in 2003 and a master's in business administration in 2005-- both from a university in London.
Mammadov's statement that he founded the business in 2000 appeared in a magazine produced by a research firm in partnership with the Azerbaijani government. In other forums, he has said he started the business in 2005, though several of its key subsidiaries predate that period.
"Furthermore, number of employees tumbled, New Orders fell to 4 month lows, and average workweek remains deep in contraction. Additionally, 'Hope' fell as the six month outlook dropped to 3 month lows. But apart from all that, yay... Philly Fed is up."