It turns out that big tech companies may not be as committed to your privacy as their PR departments would have you believe – go figure.

The latest example of this reality appears to be Google, who was revealed last week by MarketWatch to have data-mining practices that employees say that they sometimes “don’t understand and can’t describe”.

The report cited a class action lawsuit alleging that Google “violated promises not to collect data of those using the browser without signing into their Google accounts”. Documents recently became unsealed in the case, offering a look into how privacy is discussed internally at Google. 

In the lawsuit, one unnamed employee seemed to make it clear that Google’s privacy policies are opaque, stating: “I don’t have the faintest idea what Google has on me. The fact what we can’t explain what we have […] on users is probably our biggest challenge.” 

“Users have a right to know,” one employee said. Another commented: “The reasons we provide are so high level and abstract that they don’t make sense to people.” A third employee said: “Consent is no longer consent if you think of ads as a product.”

Additional employees seemed to solidify the ethos within the company. A former employee who recently left the company said: “I am more than willing to believe this is how executives talked to each other.”

“Even people I was organizationally close to, knew well, and respected, were finding ways to justify that stuff to themselves,” they said about the company’s privacy teams. “The individual contributors [on Google’s privacy teams] are always idealistic people. Some of these quotes [from the case] look to me like things that idealistic people would say; others look like things management would say when the idealistic people aren’t around.”

When asked by MarketWatch, Google responded to the report by stating that “privacy controls have long been built into our services and we encourage our teams to constantly discuss or consider ideas to improve them.” 

As the report notes, ads are a material revenue generator for Google, making up $209.5 billion in sales for the company in its 2021 fiscal year. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

For those of us who have written about the Hunter Biden scandal and the family’s influence-peddling operation for years, it is routine to read media stories denying the facts or dismissing calls to investigate the foreign dealings. However, this weekend, the Associated Press made a whopper of a claim that there is no evidence even suggesting that President Joe Biden ever spoke to his son about his foreign dealings. I previously discussed how the Bidens have succeeded in a Houdini-like trick in making this elephant of a scandal disappear from the public stage. They did so by enlisting the media in the illusion. However, this level of audience participation in the trick truly defies belief.

The statement of the Associated Press at this stage of the scandal is breathtaking but telling: “Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and nothing the Republicans have put forth suggests otherwise.”

For years, the media has continued to report President Biden’s repeated claim that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” At the outset, the media only had to suspend any disbelief that the president could fly to China as Vice President with his son on Air Force 2 without discussing his planned business dealings on the trip.

Of course, the emails on the laptop quickly refuted this claim. However, the media buried the laptop story before the election or pushed the false claim that it was fake Russian disinformation.

President Biden’s denials continued even after an audiotape surfaced showing President Biden leaving a message for Hunter specifically discussing coverage of those dealings. The call is specifically referring to these dealings:

“Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you.”

But who are you going to believe, the media or your own ears.

Some of us have written for two years that Biden’s denial of knowledge is patently false. It was equally evident that the Biden family was selling influence and access.

There are emails of Ukrainian and other foreign clients thanking Hunter Biden for arranging meetings with his father. There are photos from dinners and meetings that tie President Biden to these figures, including a 2015 dinner with a group of Hunter Biden’s Russian and Kazakh clients.

People apparently were told to avoid directly referring to President Biden. In one email, Tony Bobulinski, then a business partner of Hunter’s, was instructed by Biden associate James Gilliar not to speak of the former veep’s connection to any transactions: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”

Instead, the emails apparently refer to President Biden with code names such as “Celtic” or “the big guy.” In one, “the big guy” is discussed as possibly receiving a 10 percent cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm; other emails reportedly refer to Hunter Biden paying portions of his father’s expenses and taxes.

Bobulinski has given multiple interviews that he met twice with Joe Biden to discuss a business deal in China with CEFC China Energy Co. That would seem obvious evidence. In addition, the New York Post reported on a key email that discussed “the proposed percentage distribution of equity in a company created for a joint venture with CEFC China Energy Co.” That was the email on March 13, 2017 that included references of “10 held by H for the big guy.”

The Associated Press later revised the line after an outcry from some of us. It now ends “there is no indication that the federal investigation involves the president.”  The revision creates a new problem. Rather than simply stating the fact, AP seems to struggle to shield the President. There is every indication that “the federal investigation involves the president.” Not only is the President discussed in key emails under investigation, but the grand jury heard testimony that the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

That brings us back to Houdini’s trick of making his 10,000 pound elephant Jennie disappear every night in New York’s Hippodrome. He succeeded night after night because the audience wanted the elephant to disappear even though it never left the stage.

I previously wrote about how the key to the trick was involving the media so that reporters are invested in the illusion like calling audience members to the stage. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. The media cannot see the elephant without the public seeing something about the media in its past efforts to conceal it.

The media is now so heavily invested in the trick that they are sticking with the illusion even after “the reveal.” The Associated Press story shows that even pointing at the elephant — heck, even riding the elephant around the stage — will not dislodge these denials. This is no elephant because there cannot be an elephant. Poof!

N.B.: This column was revised to add discussion of the AP revision of the line on the investigation.

The Federal Reserve has hiked 375bps in just six meetings this year. Mortgage rates have followed suit, skyrocketing from a low of 2.7% in February to 7.35% earlier this month. The aggressive tightening of monetary conditions has sparked an affordability crisis — sidelining millions of potential homebuyers while existing home sales crash to the worst level since 2008. 

Higher borrowing costs triggered a sharp drop in mortgage applications and home sales in the back half of the year. Deal flow is drying up for many real estate agents, resulting in financial duress that may worsen into early 2023. 

In October, a shocking 37% of real estate agents struggled to pay office rent — a 10% increase from the prior month, according to Yahoo, citing a new report via Redfin. The figure could worsen as the housing market rapidly cools via the Fed-induced demand side crunch. 

Such rapid heating of the housing market during the pandemic era brought in an influx of new agents. The National Association of Realtors said membership hit an all-time high of 1.56 million in 2021 (pandemic boom year) — up from 1.49 million the year before. 

While we don’t expect a similar 2008-09 housing crash, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas warned last week that home prices could plunge 20% next year due to affordability woes. 

In October, existing home sales tumbled to 28.4% – its worst since 2008. 

Absent the nadir of the COVID lockdowns, this is the lowest existing home sales SAAR since Dec 2011…

Deal flow slump for agents comes as lagged Case-Shiller Index showed US housing prices dropped 1.3% from their June 2022 peak in August. This is the most significant monthly decline since the Lehman collapse.  

The national home price index growth has slowed for five straight months (below 13% YoY for the first time since Feb 2021). The absolute drop in the growth rate of 2.62 percentage points is the largest ever…

Researchers at Goldman Sachs aren’t as bearish as the Dallas Fed, expect a 5-10% slump from peak to trough in home prices — with their official forecast model predicting a 7.6% decline. 

The unprecedented explosion in mortgage rates and freezing of the housing market is terrible news for all those newly minted agents during the pandemic. Mounting financial hardships and slumping deal flow, with the inability to service office rent, could result in many leaving the industry, perhaps, returning to their old bartending jobs. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Authorities in Oregon say they’re looking into a report they published that falsely claims sky-high COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children.

“We are working with the company that completed the report, Rede Group, to look into that data question,” Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, told The Epoch Times in an email on Nov. 19.

Modie said authorities would be able to provide an update as early as Monday.

The report in question was produced by a firm called the Rede Group as a contractor to the health authority, as outlined in a Senate bill that was passed this year.

The bill says that the authority “shall study the state’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic” and prepare various reports, including one that includes “a broad review of the COVID-19 pandemic” and identification of areas in the public health response to the pandemic that need improvement.

The 725-page report includes multiple instances of misinformation, including the false claim that COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children were as high as 47.4 percent.

In a graph, the report depicts the hospitalization rates as above 30 percent for all childhood age groups, with the highest being 47.4 percent among children aged 12 to 17 as of June.

According to Oregon Health Authority (pdf), the hospitalization rate in 2021 among children aged 0 to 9 was just 0.9 percent and the hospitalization rate among those aged 10 to 19 was 0.6 percent. A report issued in July (pdf) looking at the first six months of 2021 had the percentages at 0.6 and 0.3, respectively.

Hospitalization rates are the percentage of people who test positive for COVID-19 who were admitted to a hospital.

Robb Hutson, a spokesman for the Rede Group, told The Epoch Times via email that he would have the company’s data team look into the matter.

States across the country, as well as federal officials and media outlets, have repeatedly put forth COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic, including exaggerating the risk the disease poses to people and hyping vaccine effectiveness.

Eric Happel, a Nike employee who has criticized Oregon’s COVID-19 restrictions, flagged the false information in the new report.

He said the graph on hospitalization rates “is so wrong that everyone in OHA should know it’s wrong,” adding that “this is just so incompetent it is beyond embarrassing.”

Happel also said he did not appreciate how the report does not address how school closures, which took place in many U.S. states in 2020 and into 2021, affected children apart from saying health officials had to “balance the potential benefit” of such measures “against the serious ramifications,” including “creating social isolation.”

Read more here…

During the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers socked away an unprecedented amount of cash thanks to government stimulus and a locked down economy. There was such a surplus that people were able to also pay down debt, buy new appliances, and take vacations once draconian lockdowns were lifted. And of course, businesses raised prices and hired more workers to meet the flood of demand.

Now that we’re ‘enjoying’ inflation while wages have struggled to keep up, the question becomes – how long can consumers maintain this level of spending with their “excess” savings, which was estimated at $1.2 – $1.8 trillion heading into Q3 of this year?

Around nine to twelve months, according to the Wall Street Journal.

What’s more, consumers have already been loading up credit cards to supplement their incomes.

A brief history of recent savings trends via the Journal;

In 2019, before the pandemic hit, households saved 8.8% of their disposable income. That saving rate jumped to 16.8% in 2020, the highest annual saving rate on record, as government stimulus and unemployment benefits left many consumers flush with cash but with few opportunities to spend during lockdowns.

In 2021 the saving rate moderated to 11.8%, and it has fallen further during 2022. The rate has been below 4% for seven straight months and in September it stood at 3.1%, near its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

In short; consumers are spending more and saving less of their monthly income thanks to inflation.

What’s more, there are signs that consumers aren’t using their savings to pay down credit card debt like they used to – with the Federal Reserve Bank of NY reporting that credit card balances increased 15% YoY in the third quarter – the largest increase in more than two decades. Delinquencies, meanwhile, rose across all income groups.

According to JPMorgan, at this rate the excess savings could be ‘entirely spent by the second half of next year.’

Goldman economists estimate that households have depleted around 25% of their excess savings, and will have spent around 60% of it by the end of 2023.

“The growth boost from strong balance sheets is probably mostly behind us but … elevated wealth levels will provide a backstop to spending for households that are hit with a negative economic shock,” they wrote last week.

Analysts say a feature of this holiday spending season will be the divide between high-income households that still have savings and low-income households that have spent most of their rainy-day funds and are being squeezed by food, gasoline, and shelter inflation.

Economists at the Federal Reserve last month said households in the top half of the income distribution held the lion’s share of excess savings in mid-2022 at $1.35 trillion, and the lower half of the income distribution held about $350 billion. -WSJ

According to Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US LLP, “It’s going to be an upscale holiday season, with strong spending in luxury names, experiential travel, upper-end resorts—and a more modest holiday season in bottom [income] quintiles.”

Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,

Everstake, a Ukraine-based cryptocurrency firm, has been caught in the crosshairs of a controversial relationship involving Kyiv, Democrats, and the beleaguered FTX exchange that has captured the attention of Washington officials.

As part of efforts to generate more funds for the war effort, the Ukrainian government launched “Aid for Ukraine,” a website that accepted cryptocurrency donations that would be converted into fiat money and then deposited at the National Bank of Ukraine. The contributions would be used to purchase a wide range of essential items, from medical supplies to military clothing.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation partnered with FTX, Ukraine’s Kuna exchange, and Everstake to help facilitate crypto-denominated donations, which have totaled between $60 million and $100 million.

Because of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s immense donations to Democrat lawmakers and the timing between the creation of the fund and President Joe Biden’s billions in financial and military assistance to Kyiv, there has been speculation of wrongdoing. Critics allege that Ukraine invested in FTX to funnel money to the Democratic Party.

According to Everstake CEO Sergey Vasylchuk, it is a ridiculous assertion to think that the Ukrainian government would invest in private companies at a time of war and utilize critical resources for political payoffs, noting that Kyiv is “investing in the needs of families” with the aid it receives.

“Technically, the Ministry of Digital Transformation mostly supported the information point of view,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that it was chaotic in the early days of the war, requiring the use of backups to receive funds.

“It was messed up at the time,” the head of the staking service platform noted. “I never felt this was like a wonderful cheat. For me, when they say Ukraine invests in companies, I just ignore it.”

Vasylchuk confirmed that he was never in contact with Bankman-Fried during the process, explaining that FTX maintained only a small role in the fundraising effort.

“We have six people who were part of the compliance legal team” who helped get the Aid for Ukraine project off the ground, Vasylchuk averred.

Sergey Vasylchuk, CEO of Everstake, a Ukraine-based cryptocurrency firm. (Courtesy of Everstake)

Crypto has turned into a vital tool in the military conflict in Eastern Europe.

In recent months, pro-Russia organizations have been accepting donations through cryptocurrency exchanges, raising millions of dollars in digital currencies that are then used to support Moscow’s military campaign.

In the aftermath of the FTX collapse, there have been widespread concerns this would trigger a contagion effect. Cryptocurrency prices have plummeted, crypto-related firms have tumbled, and many parties that have been exposed to Bankman-Fried’s empire have experienced financial pressures.

But Vasylchuk says that Everstake is weathering the storm because it maintains diversified assets and, depending on a treasure trove of web reports, the company uses various wallets to ensure the safety and security of its holdings.

‘UNITED24’

Ukraine officials have also addressed the recent allegations, including Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov, who described the latest rumors as “nonsense.”

“A fundraising crypto foundation @_AidForUkraine used @FTX_Official to convert crypto donations into fiat in March. Ukraine’s gov never invested any funds into FTX. The whole narrative that Ukraine allegedly invested in FTX, who donated money to Democrats is nonsense, frankly,” he wrote in a tweet last week.

Aid for Ukraine was recently taken down and replaced with “UNITED24.”

“UNITED24 was launched by the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, as the main venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine. Funds will be transferred to the official accounts of the National Bank of Ukraine and allocated by assigned ministries to cover the most pressing needs,” the new website states.

The website also informed visitors that “we are looking for companies or enterprises that can help Ukraine with specific needs.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting with the U.S. secretary of state in Kyiv on Sept. 8, 2022. (Genya Savilov/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Washington Probing FTX-Ukraine Connections

A growing number of U.S. officials are not convinced by these explanations.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, several House Republicans, led by Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), wrote that it had recently come to their “attention that billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine to assist with their war efforts were potentially invested in a crypto exchange that then made massive donations to Democrats” during the 2022 midterm election campaign.

“While this partnership was touted as a way to assist Ukraine in cashing out crypto donations for ammunition and humanitarian aid, we have serious concerns that the Ukrainian government may have invested portions of the nearly $66 billion of U.S. economic assistance into FTX to keep Democrats in power—and keep the money coming in,” the lawmakers explained in a letter (pdf) exclusively obtained by FOX Business.

“We sincerely hope the primary driver behind the billions in congressional assistance to Ukraine was not Democrats attempting to keep themselves in power, and that none of the missing funds were used as a passthrough to avoid campaign finance laws or end up in Democrat pockets.”

A State Department spokesperson told the business news network that there is “no reason to believe that these reports are anything but pure falsehoods and misinformation.”

The House Financial Services Committee, led by Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), announced a bipartisan hearing into the FTX debacle and what it could mean for the digital asset economy. The committee plans to hear from Bankman-Fried and individuals involved in Alameda Research, Binance, and FTX.

Iran has launched another round of attacks on Kurdish groups in northern Iraq in connection with ongoing anti-government protests inside the Islamic Republic. This as Iran’s own neighboring Kurdistan region has continued to be a hotbed of the now two-month long “anti-hijab” protests sparked by the death in police custody of a 22-year old Iranian Kurdish woman from Saqqez. 

Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced early Monday that it struck three areas of the northern Iraqi Kurdish region with drones and missiles the day prior, causing “heavy damage” on the camps. Tehran has said that “terrorist groups”.

Iranian statement media said that 26 members Komala and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan were killed as a result. 

Iran had first carried out a similar cross-border attack in September, which was said to have killed an American citizen who was a dual national. There were more reported Iranian strikes last week.

The IRGC claims that the groups being targeted are behind weapons smuggling operations, as well as sabotage actions inside Iran, which aim to destabilize the country. 

Like with the last major cross-border attack, the US Central Command condemned the fresh Iranian military aggression, saying the strikes violate Iraq’s sovereignty and “jeopardize the hard-fought security and stability of Iraq and the Middle East.”

Consequences of Iranian strike in Northeastern Iraq pic.twitter.com/CLYTNoK3K5

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) November 20, 2022

Tehran has meanwhile been demanding that Baghdad take concrete action to disarm the outlawed Kurdish militia groups while holding open the possibility of more cross-border strikes.

A Monday Iranian foreign ministry statement said its military had no choice to act to “protect its borders and security of its citizens based on its legal rights.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Hill on the appointment of a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump. All of the three main players – Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Special Counsel Jack Smith – will face immediate challenges in the legal arm’s race unfolding in Washington.

Here is the column:

There seemed to be enough torpedoes in the water in Washington this week that you could walk across the Potomac without getting your feet wet. On Capitol Hill, the new House Republican majority announced a series of subpoena-ready investigations of President Biden and administration officials. At the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate former President Trump for possible crimes ranging from the 2020 election to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to the Mar-a-Lago documents controversy.

It was all reminiscent of the movie “The Lord of War,” in which a fictional arms dealer warns that “the problem with gunrunners going to war is that there is no shortage of ammunition.” The same appears true of rival government officials having no shortage of subpoenas.

In this atmosphere of politically and mutually assured destruction, there are some immediate threats for the three main combatants:

Attorney General Garland

When he announced the appointment of Jack Smith to investigate Trump, Garland explained that “based on recent developments, including the former president’s announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel.”

In making that case for a Trump special counsel, however, Garland may have made a case against himself for refusing to appoint a Biden special counsel in the Hunter Biden scandal. Garland’s department is investigating potential wrongdoing that could involve the other referenced candidate, President Biden, in the Hunter Biden matter. That investigation should be looking at numerous alleged references to the president using code names such as “the Big Guy” in the context of receiving percentages on foreign deals and other perks. Yet Garland has refused to appoint a special counsel in an investigation that not only could prove highly embarrassing to the president but, in the view of some of us, could implicate him as well.

Congressional Democrats repeatedly voted to block an investigation of this alleged multimillion-dollar influence peddling by the Biden family. House Republicans are now poised to look into these foreign deals — and how the Justice Department may have stymied or slowed any investigation before the 2020 election.

While the special counsel appointment helps insulate Garland from claims about the use of his department for political purposes on any Trump charges, he may soon face new challenges, including possible contempt referrals if Biden officials or Democrats refuse to supply information or testimony to Republican House investigators. Garland has sharply departed from prior cases in which the Justice Department largely refused to prosecute such contempt referrals; he has been very active in pursuing Trump officials who failed to cooperate with Congress. He now may be asked to show the same willingness to pursue those who obstruct or defy House Republican investigations.

Former President Trump

The greatest threat clearly faces Trump himself. His announced intention to run for the presidency in 2024 may have expedited the appointment of a special counsel. With the expectation of a possible indictment, Trump may have wanted to frame the optics as a vendetta against a declared Biden opponent before his administration took any major step toward prosecution. Instead, it likely sealed the need for a special counsel.

Trump already has declared the move to be political and says he will not “partake in” an investigation.

A special counsel could make fast work of controversies such as Mar-a-Lago, which have been investigated for months and already have secured grand jury testimony. For Trump, having a special counsel in control, rather than an attorney general, may prove even more precarious. Some of the potential charges for unlawful transfer or possession of classified material historically have resulted in relatively minor charges. If this investigation produces the basis for an obstruction charge or misdemeanors, Garland might have been inclined to use his discretion to forgo prosecution and avoid political disruption or questions of bias. In contrast, after the expense and effort to create his office, a special counsel may feel less inclined to overlook a chargeable offense. The majority of people charged by former special counsel Robert Mueller faced relatively minor charges and served short terms in jail.

Trump also will face practical barriers. Prosecutors usually start with the low-hanging fruit in an organization, to coerce people to cooperate by threatening criminal charges. On issues such as obstruction, Trump did not allegedly act alone; there were staff and lawyers who made what the FBI claims were knowingly false or misleading representations. Those individuals must now be viewed by Trump’s counsel as having potential conflicts of interest, including his former counsel. The only way to avoid conflicts or vulnerabilities is to assemble a largely new staff that was not involved in either the Jan. 6 or Mar-a-Lago episodes.

That is the difference between “partaking” in a personal excursion and a criminal investigation: The latter does not depend on your participation.

Special Counsel Smith

Smith faces the unenviable task of investigating a presidential candidate less than two years before the election. Given the advanced stage of prior investigations, he could bring charges before Sept. 5, 2024 (or roughly 60 days before the election under Justice Department guidelines for election year filings). It is unlikely, however, that a charge against Trump could be tried in that time.

However, Smith’s first test will be to avoid the initial mistakes of a predecessor, Mueller.

Like Smith, Mueller was considered a natural choice as special counsel, given his extensive experience as a career prosecutor. However, Mueller’s investigation was undermined by his selection of a team — starting with his top aide, Andrew Weissmann, a controversial prosecutor who was accused of political bias. The investigation was further undermined by FBI personnel, including Special Agent Peter Strzok, who was later removed from the team and fired by the Justice Department; Strzok has since filed a wrongful termination lawsuit.

Smith can avoid tripping a similar explosive wire by selecting a team that is defined by its prior professional expertise, not its prior political views or associations.

He also needs to be wary of creative avenues to indict Trump. Smith was part of the prosecution team that convicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) on federal corruption charges in 2014. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned that conviction as having stretched the law beyond its breaking point. If Smith is going to be the first prosecutor to indict a former president, he needs to do so with unimpeachable evidence of an unchallengeable crime.

Only one thing is certain in any of this: It will not end well.

With both sides loading up staff and subpoenas, the start of the 2024 campaign season has all of the makings of an utter bloodletting. There will be ample support for both sides to fulfill their respective narratives — and no shortage of legal weapons — in this political war of attrition.

For all those wondering how it is possible that nobody, not a single regulator acted out on the countless red warning signs (with even CME CEO Terry Duffy issuing an explicit warning to Congress that SBF was a fraud months ago) amid the fawning and fellating media and the countless bribed politicians, we may have an answer: according to Bloomberg, long before Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency empire imploded, “it already was on the radar of federal prosecutors in Manhattan.”

According to Bloomberg sources “familiar with the investigation”, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led by Damian Williams, spent several months working on a sweeping examination of crypto currency platforms with US and offshore arms and had started poking into FTX’s massive exchange operations.

The focus of the probe was on compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act which requires financial institutions take steps to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing, and which has been used by authorities to go after crypto platforms that allegedly falsely claimed that they don’t serve US customers. The Bahamas-based FTX, which operated one of the world’s largest international crypto exchanges as well as a separate and much more limited venue called FTX US that said it complies with the act.

Now just because the NYSD AG was probing FTX doesn’t mean they actually found anything – after all, as we all know, the “effective altruist” and generous Democratic donor that is SBF was protected by powerful political interests – and as BBG adds, it’s unclear whether prosecutors in Manhattan reached any conclusion in their probe before FTX collapsed. That put the federal investigation into a new trajectory, the people said.

If only the Attorney’s Office – headed since October 2021 by Democrat Damian Williams – had done its job better and faster, much of the ensuing fallout may have been contained.

Some more details on this particular toothless office:

Long known for its prowess in tackling complex financial crimes, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan has handled the lion’s share of the government’s crypto cases since digital assets came into vogue a decade ago. That includes a half-dozen in the year through October, roughly double the number brought by other Justice Department offices in that period, an analysis of federal dockets shows.

The office benefits from longstanding working relationships between its prosecutors and FBI and SEC investigators, as well as its location in the nation’s largest financial hub. Funds passing through Wall Street, or an email exchange with one of the city’s many firms, can help give prosecutors there an edge in claiming jurisdiction.

Prosecutors and regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are now seeking help from new FTX Chief Executive Officer John J. Ray III, who took over as part of its bankruptcy proceeding and is navigating what he described as “a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.”

As we reported last week, Ray told the bankruptcy court in a filing that his team had found loans of more than $1 billion made by Alameda to Bankman-Fried and other executives. The filing also alleged software was used to conceal the use of customer funds. Whether any such conduct broke laws will be left to prosecutors. So far, they haven’t accused anyone of wrongdoing.

While Southern District prosecutors did exactly nothing to contain the FTX fraud enabled by both the fawning media and bribed politicians, that’s not to say they have never acted: according to Bloomberg, they previously invoked the Bank Secrecy Act in 2020 against senior employees at the Seychelles-based crypto platform BitMEX, which allegedly allowed more than $209 million of transactions with known dark-net markets. BitMEX argued it didn’t need anti-money laundering or know-your-customer policies in part because it didn’t have US customers and wasn’t registered in the US. But clients circumvented the platform’s attempts to block IP addresses in the US, according to a government sentencing memo filed in federal court.

As attention now turns to FTX, the loss of customer funds at the exchange means authorities will examine whether the exchange misled clients about how their assets would be held, former prosecutors said. To prove wire fraud, investigators would have to show someone at FTX did so for gain using a wire, such as a phone call, email or text. Which they did, of course. Repeatedly.

Separately, the FTX bankruptcy case will aid prosecutors in figuring out what documents exist to subpoena. Investigators will also seek communications between employees, whether that’s via email, Slack, Signal or WhatsApp, as well as testimony from witnesses, said Anand Sithian, a former federal prosecutor now at Crowell & Moring.

“What is going to be hard when you issue a subpoena to financial institutions it can take 30, 60, 90, days to process,” Sithian said. “Here if you send a subpoena, I don’t know that the company, FTX, would have that ready. They might need to recreate that.”

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Please consider these COP 27 Closing Statements by the Secretary-General.

• COP27 took place not far from Mount Sinai, a site that is central to many faiths and to the story of Moses, or Musa. It’s fitting. Climate chaos is a crisis of biblical proportions. 

• Instead of a burning bush, we face a burning planet.  

• Justice for those on the frontlines who did so little to cause the crisis – including the victims of the recent floods in Pakistan that inundated one-third of the country.   

• I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period. 

• But let’s be clear. Our planet is still in the emergency room. 

• Unlike the stories from the Sinai peninsula, we cannot wait for a miracle from a mountaintop.  

• We can and must win this battle for our lives.  

Team Biden in Action

On November 12, president Biden’s climate ambassador, John Kerry, made this statement:

“It’s a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish…some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability. That’s just not happening.“

Guess What Happened

In case you are wondering about the Secretary-General’s statement regarding a loss and damage fund, John Kerry signed up for it at the conference.

Please note Biden Signs Up for Climate Reparations

The use of climate policy to soak Americans keeps getting worse, and the United Nation’s climate conference in Egypt ended this weekend with agreement on a new fund to pay reparations to poor countries. Welcome to the latest climate shakedown.

Poor countries have long sought to force wealthy countries to pay for the “loss and damage” they suffer from natural disasters that are supposedly climate-related. This is separate from the $100 billion a year that rich countries have promised to help poor countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

Wealthy countries will now set up a fund to cover climate damage for the least developed countries—i.e., not China or middle-income nations. This will be financed from “a broad donor base” and “mosaic of solutions,” such as international development banks and taxes on aviation, shipping and fossil fuels.

In return for climate reparations, Mr. Kerry tried to force an agreement to phase down “unabated” fossil fuels. Low-income countries understandably refused since doing so would consign their citizens to poverty. The Biden climate agenda has increased energy prices in the U.S., and the climate lobby doesn’t mind if this misery spreads around the world.

Sketchy Details

Details aren’t just sketchy, they’re nonexistent. Amusingly Biden promises no new liabilities for the US. 

Somehow this is more magic money from somewhere and no one has to pay a dime. 

This is why there are no details now. The magic will be flushed out later after people have long forgotten the promise that it won’t cost anything. 

A Comment on the Hypocrisy 

800 private jets flew to Egypt to tell you to ride your bike to work. #COP27 pic.twitter.com/x2ondjyyqG

— Lynne McCarthy (@LynneMcCarthy) November 20, 2022

Meanwhile, the WSJ notes that China emits two-thirds more CO2 than Europe and the U.S. combined. Coal accounts for 60% of China’s power generation, and more new coal plants are set for approval through 2025 than the entire existing U.S. fleet. China says it needs more coal power for energy security and, unlike Europe and the U.S., it won’t commit climate suicide.

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