. . . . that seniors and others on Social Security will likely not receive any cost of living increase for 2016, primarily due to lower gas prices through most of 2015.

Then when you look at the graph above, things get a bit scary.

and so that's totally non-sequitur. And those that still drive don't do much of it. Owning a car is expensive...it's not just the gas.

affect the price of everything, whether one drives a car or not.

Some areas of the Twin Cities. I guess. They are hiring private drivers.

Just because you might be able to do it does not mean you should.

There was a great article in the latest Discover Magazine talking about our two system that fight for our decisions. Immediate gratification and long term. It is estimated that we have become 500% more likely to go for immediate gratification. The Churches are on board, corporations, schools, TV due in big part to our online world.

Glad I got to live when this was not so and I hope that humanity survives itself but I now am doubtful too.

http://robertreich.org/post/130820178090

Giant Wall Street banks continue to threaten the well-being of millions of Americans, but what to do? Bernie Sanders says break them up and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated investment from commercial banking. Hillary Clinton says charge them a bit more and oversee them more carefully. Most Republicans say don’t worry...Clearly, there’s reason to worry. Back in 2000, before they almost ruined the economy and had to be bailed out, the five biggest banks on Wall Street held 25 percent of the nation’s banking assets. Now they hold more than 45 percent. Their huge size fuels further growth because they’ll be bailed out if they get into trouble again. This hidden federal guarantee against failure is estimated be worth over $80 billion a year to the big banks. In effect, it’s a subsidy from the rest of us to the bankers. And they’ll almost certainly get into trouble again if nothing dramatic is done to stop them. Consider their behavior since they were bailed out...

In 2012 JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank on Street, lost $6.2 billion betting on credit default swaps tied to corporate debt – and then publicly lied about the losses. It later came out that the bank paid illegal bribes to get the business in the first place.

Last May the Justice Department announced a settlement of the biggest criminal price-fixing conspiracy in modern history, in which the biggest banks manipulated the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market in a “brazen display of collusion,” according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Wall Street is on the road to another crisis. This would take a huge toll. Although the banks have repaid the billions we lent them in 2008, many Americans are still living with the collateral damage from what occurred – lost jobs, savings, and homes. But rather than prevent this by breaking up the big banks and resurrecting Glass-Steagall, Hillary Clinton is taking a more cautious approach. She wants to impose extra fees on the banks, with the amounts turning not on the bank’s size but how much it depends on short-term funding (such as fast-moving capital markets), which is a way of assessing riskiness. So a giant bank that relies mainly on bank deposits wouldn’t be charged.

Clinton would also give bank regulators more power than they have under the Dodd-Frank Act (passed in the wake of the last banking crisis) to break up any particular bank that they consider too risky. And she wants more oversight of so-called “shadow” banks – pools of money (like money market mutual funds, hedge funds, and insurance funds) that act like banks. All this makes sense. And in a world where the giant Wall Street banks didn’t have huge political power, these measures might be enough. But, if you hadn’t noticed, Wall Street’s investment bankers, key traders, top executives, and hedge-fund and private-equity managers wield extraordinary power. They’re major sources of campaign contributions to both parties. In addition, a lucrative revolving door connects the Street to Washington. Treasury secretaries and their staffs move nimbly from and to the Street, regardless of who’s in the Oval Office. Key members of Congress, especially those involved with enacting financial laws or overseeing financial regulators, have fat paychecks waiting for them on Wall Street when they retire. Which helps explain why no Wall Street executive has been indicted for the fraudulent behavior that led up to the 2008 crash. Or for the criminal price-fixing scheme settled in 2012. Or for other excesses since then. And why even the fines imposed on the banks have been only a fraction of the banks’ potential gains.

And also why Dodd-Frank has been watered down into vapidity. For example, it requires major banks to prepare “living wills” describing how they’d unwind their operations if they get into serious trouble. But no big bank has come up with one that passes muster. Federal investigators have found them all “unrealistic.” That’s not surprising because if they were realistic, the banks would effectively lose their hidden “too-big-to-fail” subsidies.

Given all this, Hillary Clinton’s proposals would only invite more dilution and finagle.

The only way to contain the Street’s excesses is with reforms so big, bold, and public they can’t be watered down – busting up the biggest banks and resurrecting Glass-Steagall.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/clinton-outdoes-tsipras-in-kolotoumbas-with-her-reversals-on-tpp-bank-regulations.html

In the last two days, we’ve seen the faltering Democratic party front runner decide that it might behoove her to distance herself from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the centerpiece of her “pivot to Asia” strategy, and America’s most hated oligarchs, big banksters. Might the timing of this sudden change of heart have a wee bit to do with the Presidential debates next week, and it not being all that easy to defend the pet causes of the privileged classes in crowd-pleasing soundbites when challenged by Sanders?

As least Greek prime minister Alex Tsipras, who engaged in similar reversals, can at least be credited with fighting hard for what he’d promised Greeks, even if those promises were contradictory, and then retreating only in the face of overwhelming force, namely, having the ECB put a choke hold on the Greek banking system. By contrast, Hillary’s sudden shift is simply a not-terribly-well-executed attempt to reposition herself. As Jeb Lund described her increasingly obvious problem in Rolling Stone:



On the TPP, Clinton’s shift in position, while not exactly credible, also amounts to less than she’d like the great unwashed bottom 90% to believe. As Lambert and others have pointed out, the press did her a huge favor via headlines that considerably overstated her distaste for the “trade” agreement. It falls short of opposition; it’s of the form, “Based on what I know now, I don’t like it.” That gives her plenty of leeway to claim she’s gotten more comfortable as she has learned more or contend that she’s won concession (say improved side deals) that allow her to support the pact. But even if Clinton actually does oppose the deal, the cost to her in donor funds is not likely to be high, so she might stick with this position to bolster her progressive bona fides. Beltway insiders tell me that despite all the weight Obama threw behind getting an agreement done, corporate support was narrow. The TPP’s and its ugly sister, the TTIP’s seemingly natural base, multinationals, were not pushing for it because trade is already substantially liberalized. They didn’t see much to be gained. And of the industries that were keen about the deal, such as Hollywood, tech, Big Pharma and Big Ag, enthusiasm has also cooled due to the concessions made in the Atlanta round, particularly on the agriculture and drug fronts. Plus with the House leadership now in disarray, the Republican rebels who oppose to the deal are ascendant. So Clinton is not spending anywhere near as much in the way of big donor chips as one might think if she continues to express antipathy for the TPP.

On the banking front, even though Clinton has just served up a not-too-bad menu of bank reforms, it’s inconceivable to see her as doing more than head-fakery. The Clintons have ridden to success on the back of the fundraising of the powerful Robert Rubin faction in the Democratic party. And Obama, who has been similarly dependent on Big Finance as donors, has also made crowd-pleasing gestures to go after the banksters and never followed through in any serious way. Remember how the Administration kept talking up its plans to close the carried interest loophole in 2011 and 2013? Yet Obama held big fundraisers in New York City and the homes of private equity barons whose lucre had come from that ruse. It’s hardly surprising that Obama was somehow never able to secure anything more than optical tax increases on the rich...

MORE

That is of course, the day of the football game outing. I should be grateful it will neither rain nor snow.

I wouldn't mind so much if I were feeling completely recovered. Went to my first rehearsal since recovering my voice, and my ribs ache from the gentle exercise of breathing. Or maybe from lifting 4 gallons of wet dirt in the pot for the rose tree. In any event, it's going to need another bottle of aspirin. And a couple bottles of wine, I think...if this is a presage of really old age (meaning older than I am now), I am against it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-all-we-feared



Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations.

Since we now have the agreed text, we'll be including some paragraph references that you can cross-reference for yourself—but be aware that some of them contain placeholders like “x” that may change in the cleaned-up text. Also, our analysis here is limited to the copyright and Internet-related provisions of the chapter, but analyses of the impacts of other parts of the chapter have been published by Wikileaks and others.
Binding Rules for Rightsholders, Soft Guidelines for Users

If you skim the chapter without knowing what you're looking for, it may come across as being quite balanced, including references to the need for IP rules to further the “mutual advantage of producers and users” (QQ.A.X), to “facilitate the diffusion of information” (QQ.A.Z), and recognizing the “importance of a rich and accessible public domain” (QQ.B.x). But that's how it's meant to look, and taking this at face value would be a big mistake.

If you dig deeper, you'll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding. That paragraph on the public domain, for example, used to be much stronger in the first leaked draft, with specific obligations to identify, preserve and promote access to public domain material. All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever...

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/trans-pacific-currency-deal-puts-yellen-s-fed-in-the-spotlight


As part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, emerging markets want to know what Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is thinking. As a sidebar to the largest trade pact in two decades, the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries agreed not to manipulate foreign-exchange rates and to consult on monetary policies. Economies like Vietnam and Malaysia, which rely heavily on exports, promised not to devalue their currencies in order to gain a competitive advantage. In exchange, they want to get more insights into U.S. monetary policy. An interest rate hike, the first in almost a decade, will probably prompt capital to flee developing nations, causing their currencies to slump.

History shows those concerns are justified. Back in 2013, when then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested the central bank would soon wind down its bond-buying program, currencies from India’s rupee to Turkey’s lira plunged. His successor, Yellen, has been hinting for a while that a rate rise in on the cards while the timing remains elusive.

“Part of the deal is that they get to ask more intrusive questions about what the Federal Reserve is doing,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to the other nations in the TPP. “From the viewpoint of these countries, the longer the Fed stays at zero, the better.”

During the negotiations, some of the smaller economies highlighted the far-reaching impact monetary policies in larger developed countries — read the U.S. — have on them, according to a person familiar with the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the details of the talks aren't public.

MORE BACKGROUND REVIEW AT LINK

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/10/tpp-ip-chapter-a-disaster-for-global-health/

By Leith van Onselen who has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.



Wikileaks leaked the final draft of the Intellectual Property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter-051015.pdf over the weekend, which has been panned by various “experts”. Most notable of these is La Trobe Universtity lecturer in Public Health, Dr Deborah Gleeson, who has analysed the chapter and concluded that it “represents nothing less than a disaster for global health”:



MORE

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/small-town-mayor-relinquishes-electronics-and-passwords-to-agents-at-sfo/

Stockton, California Mayor Anthony R. Silva attended a recent mayor's conference in China, but his return trip took a bit longer than usual. At the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) this week, agents with the Department of Homeland Security detained Silva and confiscated his personal cell phone among other electronics. According to comments from the mayor, that may not even be the most alarming part.

“Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property," Silva told SFGate. "In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices.”

The mayor's attorney, Mark Reichel, told SFGate that Silva was not allowed to leave the airport without forfeiting his passwords. Reichel was not present for Silva's interaction with the DHS agents, either. The mayor was told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a US citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought,” according to the paper...As of Friday, Silva had not yet received his property from the SFO detention. SFGate reports Reichel contacted the US Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, but they would not comment on whether they still had the mayor's possessions. The paper also reached out to a spokesperson at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but that office also refused comment. (Ars has reached out to the mayor's office for any new information, and we'll update this story accordingly if we hear back.)

Authorities demanding access to password-protected devices has become a hot-button issue across the country, highlighted in particular by the federal government's ongoing battle with Silicon Valley over the lack of crypto backdoors in modern smartphones. At the end of last month, one US District Judge in Pennsylvania ruled that forcing suspects to surrender their passwords was unconstitutional on Fifth Amendment grounds.

Evidently, Silva was well aware of the situation and only had his concerns heightened by first-hand experience. Talking to SFGate, he briefly compared the government battle on privacy to notorious dictatorships worldwide.

“I think the American people should be extremely concerned about their personal rights and privacy,” Silva told the paper. “As I was being searched at the airport, there was a Latino couple to my left, and an Asian couple to my right also being aggressively searched. I briefly had to remind myself that this was not North Korea or Nazi Germany. This is the land of the Free.”

http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/no-safe-harbour-transatlantic-data-pact-struck-down-by-eus-highest-court-20151006-gk2x3b.html

A trans-Atlantic pact that potentially allows US spies to get their hands on European citizens' private data was declared illegal by the EU's highest court, in a ruling that threatens to plunge internet companies into a legal limbo.

Judges at the European Union's top court struck down the so-called safe-harbour accord after a 28-year old Austrian law student complained about how US security services can gain unfettered access to Facebook customer information sent to the US.

The 15-year-old agreement compromises the privacy of EU citizens and their right to challenge the use of their information, the EU Court of Justice said in a ruling in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

"This judgment is a bombshell," said Monika Kuschewsky, special counsel at lawfirm Covington & Burling in Brussels. "The EU's highest court has pulled the rug under the feet of thousands of companies that have been relying on Safe Harbour. All these companies are now forced to find an alternative mechanism for their data transfers to the US. And, this, basically overnight."

MORE

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-11/the-russians-are-going-london-sees-listing-exodus-as-prices-sag

Russian expansionism is going into reverse, at least on the London stock market.

Three of Russia’s major commodity-related companies are already preparing to withdraw their listings after the bursting of the raw-materials boom and a slump in share sales by the nation’s companies from more than $30 billion in 2007 to below $1 billion this year.

Eurasia Drilling Co. Ltd., the country’s largest oil driller, said Monday that it agreed on terms of a buyout by a group of management and some shareholders which would take the company private. That follows a move by potash miner Uralkali PJSC to buy back a major part of its free float, saying in August it may delist shares in London as a result. Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov’s family also plans to take Polyus Gold International Ltd. private...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-08/lagarde-says-she-s-open-to-second-term-as-imf-managing-director

Christine Lagarde said she’s open to serving another term as head of the International Monetary Fund after her current tenure ends in July.

"Clearly, this could be my last annual meeting. I’m certainly open to the fact that it would not be my last annual meeting," the IMF managing director told reporters Thursday at the Washington-based fund’s annual meetings in Lima. Managing directors are typically appointed for five-year terms.

Lagarde, 59, took over as head of the IMF in 2011 after Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned. The former French finance minister is the first woman to lead the institution, which was conceived during World War II to coordinate international monetary policy and lend to countries facing balance-of-payments shortfalls.

The managing director is selected by the IMF’s 188 member nations.

"This is not for me to decide. It is for the membership. And, I have served, done my best," Lagarde said, adding that she’s "prepared to serve" for longer.

...No challengers have raised their hands as yet and Lagarde, a former French finance minister who is well regarded by the international community, is expected to have broad support should she push for another term.

But there has also been speculation she may return to France and growing calls to end the monopoly Europe has had on the top job at the Fund, handing the reins to an emerging market representative instead.


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/08/uk-imf-lagarde-idUKKCN0S22OH20151008

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/09/imf-g-idUSL1N1281HM20151009

Central banks have little room for error in a low-growth world in which over-leveraged and commodity-dependent emerging economies and a slowing China are major risks, top international financiers told the International Monetary Fund's meeting.

Despite $7 trillion in quantitative easing from banks in industrial nations since the global financial crisis, the world is stuck in a "new mediocre" growth pattern, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said on Thursday. In a bid to shore up finances and punish companies that arbitrage tax regimes, governments pushed ahead with plans to improve tax collection.

The IMF meeting comes as the Bank of Japan looks poised to extend its money printing program, known as quantitative easing, as it stares down the barrel of a fifth year of recession. The European Central Bank is also expected to extend quantitative easing, while the two major central banks closest to raising rates, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, are holding their fire.

"It is not the kind of economy in which you can make a mistake," Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told the meeting.

For both the Fed and the Bank of England, inflation targets are far out of reach, although both central banks insist they are ready to hike rates. The Fed's chair, Janet Yellen, has said the U.S. central bank is on track to raise rates this year. Markets, however, are not pricing in hikes until next year for both.

The IMF has urged the Fed and the Japanese and European central banks to wait for more signs of recovery before tightening. Lagarde on Thursday repeated her plea to Yellen to stay her hand.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-11/oil-holds-gains-near-50-a-barrel-as-opec-sees-demand-growth

...Oil rose above $50 a barrel in New York on Oct. 8 for the first time since July, yet failed to settle above that mark on speculation the crude surplus will persist. U.S. oil explorers idled rigs for a sixth week as they struggle with low prices, data from Baker Hughes Inc. showed on Friday. That may whittle away inventories in the nation, which remain about 100 million barrels above the five-year average.

“The whole process of action and reaction in the market makes a lot of sense,” Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by e-mail. “OPEC refused to cut production and instead expanded it to damage the shale boom. Now, with some delay, U.S. production slides and prices recover.”..

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-11/opec-sees-oil-demand-growth-hopeful-for-market-balance-in-2016

Oil demand will grow and non-OPEC supply is due to contract, OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem El-Badri said, hoping to see a more balanced market in 2016.

The oil industry’s “best days are yet to come” as demand will grow to 110 million barrels a day by 2040, El-Badri said at a conference in Kuwait City on Sunday. The gap in crude oil supply and demand is due to close in the third quarter of 2016, Mohammad Ghazi Al-Mutairi, chief executive officer of state-run Kuwait National Petroleum Co., said at the same event.

“At OPEC, we are hopeful that the industry will see a more balanced oil market in 2016,” El-Badri said. “We have recently seen a contraction in production from some non-OPEC producers and an uptick in demand growth.”


PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL...MORE AT LINK

AND JAM EVERY OTHER DAY....JAM TOMORROW, JAM YESTERDAY, BUT NEVER ANY JAM TODAY

---LEWIS CARROLL

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-11/fed-s-fischer-signals-economy-may-merit-liftoff-later-this-year

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said the U.S. economy may be strong enough to merit an interest-rate increase by year end, while cautioning that policy makers are monitoring slower domestic job growth and international developments in deciding the precise timing of liftoff.

At the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting in September, “most participants, myself included, anticipated that achieving these conditions would entail an initial increase in the federal funds rate later this year,” Fischer said Sunday in Lima, where attended the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund.

“Of course, that assessment was premised on the assumption of continued solid economic growth and further improvement in the labor market, which are key factors supporting our expectation that inflation will rise to our 2 percent objective,” he said in prepared remarks released by the Fed...MORE

Fischer was addressing a banking seminar in the Peruvian capital as the International Monetary Fund wrapped up its annual meeting, which Chair Janet Yellen also attended. Emerging-market officials from Indonesia to South Africa are concerned about the spillover effects of higher U.S. interest rates. Joyce Chang, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s global head of research, said in an interview in Lima that the Fed “should get it over with’’ to help reduce uncertainty.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-08/hillary-clinton-steps-into-hft-controversy-with-tax-proposal

Hillary Clinton is proposing a tax on the flash boys that may be unlike any in the world.

She wants to penalize traders who use super-fast computers to repeatedly submit and then retract their stock orders by charging a fee for transactions they cancel. The proposal, released by her presidential campaign late Wednesday, will gratify critics of high-frequency trading, who’ve long argued that the industry’s reliance on orders that are never executed is a hallmark of unfair markets, and worse, manipulation.

But some academics say her idea shows a misunderstanding of modern markets, will hurt all types of investors and could even rob high-frequency traders of an invaluable defense against real predators....

MORE

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/09/usa-bonds-liquidity-idUKL1N1290PG20151009

The growth of high-frequency trading in U.S. Treasuries has made it more difficult to gauge real-time liquidity to trade U.S. government debt in futures and cash exchanges, according to a New York Federal Reserve blog published on Friday.

High-frequency trading is an automated strategy that can move billions of dollars worth of trades among different markets in a fraction of a second. How easily investors and traders can buy and sell Treasuries, a $12.7 trillion sector, has become a concern in the wake of the Oct. 15 "flash" rally, when Treasuries registered wild price swings in just a 12-minute period.

While high-frequency trading strategy has helped market makers maintain tight yield spreads and consistent prices of closely related assets, traders and investors act not only on fundamental news but also the price movements themselves, economists Dobrislav Dobrev of the Federal Reserve Board and Ernst Schaumburg of the New York Fed said in their blog. Dobrev and Schaumburg termed this situation a "liquidity mirage."

"The modern market structure therefore implicitly involves a trade-off between increased price efficiency and heightened uncertainty about the overall available liquidity in the market," they wrote.

Prices of recently issued or on-the-run Treasuries on platforms operated by BrokerTec and eSpeed, and futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are probably competitive as a result of high-frequency trading, the economists said. BrokerTec is owned by interdealer broker ICAP Plc, and eSpeed is part of exchange operator Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.

The actual liquidity available to an investor on these systems at any given time may not be as deep as it seems, the economists said. Their study of liquidity reactions across the platforms found as many as 20 percent of Treasuries futures trades on the CME were associated with a depth reduction on the BrokerTec system.

"The evidence therefore supports the hypothesis that rapid depth reduction by (high-frequency trading) contributes to the liquidity mirage," Dobrev and Schaumburg wrote.

Friday's online article is a sixth and final in a second series from the New York Fed that examines changes in liquidity in the stock and bond markets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-12/he-s-a-banker-crocodile-farmer-and-wanted-in-the-united-states

Honduran banking magnate Jaime Rosenthal has a $690 million family fortune, 10,000 crocodiles and one big problem: the U.S. Treasury Department.

Rosenthal, 79, a former vice president with ties to the U.S., was indicted last week along with his son Yani, 50, and nephew Yankel, 46, on charges they laundered money for drug traffickers. The Treasury Department placed sanctions on the family’s holdings, and Yankel Rosenthal, a former minister of investment and president of the Club Deportivo Marathon soccer team, was arrested in Miami.

“We are sure that we will prevail in the trial because the accusations are false,” Jaime Rosenthal said via e-mail. “We will fight very hard. And we hope the truth prevails with the help of God.”

The accusations stunned the elite in Honduras, one of the poorest and most violent nations in Latin America, and represented a sharp turn for the Rosenthals, one of Honduras’ wealthiest clans. It’s a new theme in the region, said Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America.

“There is more attention being placed on powerful peoples’ links to the criminal underworld,” he said. “The pressure being put on Honduras now is to separate ties between the state and narco-trafficking and the government and organized crime. The Rosenthals aren’t in the government but they are quite close to power.”

MUCH MORE BOOT-LICKING AT LINK

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-12/hsbc-whistle-blower-falciani-to-skip-trial-after-court-no-show



Tax whistle-blower Herve Falciani’s trial will resume next month in his absence after the former HSBC Holdings Plc employee failed to turn up at a Swiss courtroom on Monday.

Switzerland’s highest criminal court set a fresh trial date of Nov. 2 for Falciani, who’s accused of industrial espionage and violation of bank secrecy after he took client documents from HSBC.

Falciani, who’s currently in France, has no plans to attend the new date after skipping the hearing in the Swiss town of Bellinzona, according to his lawyer, Marc Henzelin. While Falciani’s absence will complicate his defense, his cause is worth defending because he’s the only one on trial and the bank has got off lightly, Henzelin said.

“In two years, this trial wouldn’t happen” given the global outrage against tax-dodging and the assault on banking secrecy, Henzelin said.

Falciani’s revelations, first leaked to the French government, prompted probes by the French, Belgian, U.S. and U.K. authorities into how HSBC’s Geneva-based private bank helped clients avoid taxes. Geneva prosecutors began an investigation after the so-called SwissLeaks reports revealed the breadth of HSBC’s activities. The bank struck a deal in June that allowed the bank to pay a 40-million Swiss franc ($41.7 million) penalty for “past organizational deficiencies” to close the Geneva probe and avoid criminal charges.

Laurent Moreillon, lawyer for HSBC, said he was not surprised that Falciani did not show up in Bellinzona. “But justice needs to be rendered in an area that could touch any bank,” Moreillon said.

The Swiss court said Monday that Falciani in July was offered passage of safe conduct to Bellinzona so he could testify without risking arrest.

Henzelin said after the hearing that while the matter was discussed with the court, no firm offer was made as no firm application for such a right was ever made, given that Falciani had no intention of appearing.

Last edited Mon Oct 12, 2015, 08:53 AM - Edit history (1)

EXTRA CREDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/10/us-imf-g20-taxation-idUSKCN0S400V20151010

The Group of 20 major economies have endorsed a package of measures to tackle corporate tax avoidance, but questions remain about whether countries will follow through on the plans or leave loopholes multinationals can exploit. G20 finance ministers agreed to back proposals drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which aim to shake up rules dating back almost a century that govern taxation of profits from international commerce. The ministers reached the agreement against a backdrop of concern about weak economic growth, tight government finances and media reports on the tax structuring used by companies including Starbucks and Google that have spurred public anger in Europe and the United States in recent years over tax avoidance.

"This is a reaction of people who cannot stand anymore that they pay their fair share of taxes, that they contribute to fiscal consolidation while companies, especially multinationals, can avoid tax," European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told Reuters.

The practise of so-called Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) has allowed companies to move profits out of the countries where money is earned and into jurisdictions such as Luxembourg, Ireland or Bermuda that do not tax them. The agreement endorsed by the G20 ministers late on Thursday aims to close the gaps in existing international rules. The plans include provisions to give governments a global picture of the operations of multinational companies, and minimum standards on so-called "treaty shopping" to put an end to the use of conduit companies to channel investments.

"The challenge is consistent implementation," said Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration.

The OECD said a conservative estimate of the amount of untaxed money moved by companies into tax havens was $100 billion to $240 billion annually, suggesting tens of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue. Technology companies are seen as the most adept at exploiting loopholes, but drug makers, medical device groups, banks, fast food groups and retailers all commonly use contrived arrangements to cut their tax bills.

Tax advisers agree the measures could force many companies to restructure their operations and rethink how they fund themselves. However, multinational enterprises (MNEs) will try to exert influence over the way the plans are implemented.

"The implementation phase now starts and MNEs and their advisers will have to continue to make their voice heard in the implementation phase to limit negative impacts on business," said Keith O'Donnell, board member at Taxand, which provides tax advice to multinational businesses. "If certain states don't implement or implement partially, MNEs may be able to take advantage of this," he added.

The crackdown on corporate tax avoidance has been led by governments, who asked the OECD to develop the plans. British Finance Minister George Osborne urged OECD chief Angel Gurria to put pressure on countries to enact the measures.

"I think he should call out countries that are not implementing what has been signed up to and hold our feet to the fire," Osborne said after the meeting of G20 ministers in Lima.

THIS I GOT TO SEE

THE VALUE OF LOW EXPECTATIONS....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-10/draghi-says-ecb-s-bond-buying-plan-working-better-than-expected

Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank’s quantitative-easing program is working better than expected, even though the institution will take longer than intended to reach its inflation goal.

"We are satisfied with QE, as it has met and even surpassed our initial expectations," the ECB president said in an interview with Greece’s Kathimerini published on Saturday. While “it presently appears that it will take somewhat longer than previously anticipated for inflation to come back to, and stabilize around, levels that we consider sufficiently close to 2 percent,” that is largely because of a drop in oil prices, he said.

Draghi cited lower borrowing costs, rising credit volumes and better access to loans for small businesses as signs that QE is having a positive effect. Even so, with the inflation rate below zero for the first time since March, and an emerging-market slowdown posing risks, he has said the ECB is ready to expand its asset-purchase program if needed...

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