January 2024 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

A Jan. 6 Reckoning Matters Even if Outrage Has Waned
by Gunnar Larson 07 Jan '24

07 Jan '24

A Jan. 6 Reckoning Matters Even if Outrage Has Waned https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-06/on-jan-6-anniversary-… This weekend marks three years since the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, and as Americans reflect on the shocking images and lies perpetrated from that day, there’s also an alarming amount of revisionist history happening, particularly among voters on the right. Many in the Republican Party, whose leaders made urgent calls to then-President Donald Trump to call off the mob, now seem engaged in a concerted effort to minimize what occurred.

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US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army
by Gunnar Larson 07 Jan '24

07 Jan '24

US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-06/us-intelligence-shows-fl… US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.

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Blowout on 737 Max Seen as Likely Caused by Manufacturing Issue
by Gunnar Larson 07 Jan '24

07 Jan '24

Blowout on 737 Max Seen as Likely Caused by Manufacturing Issue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-06/737-max-frame-blowout-se… The fuselage section that ripped away from a Boeing Co. 737 Max jet midflight on Friday reflects a design feature in use for many years, suggesting investigators are likely to zero in on quality issues rather than a design flaw.

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Tepper’s $2 Billion Hedge Fund Payday Marred by NFL Meltdown
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Tepper’s $2 Billion Hedge Fund Payday Marred by NFL Meltdown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-05/carolina-panthers-owner-… David Tepper went all-in on two trades last year.

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Ackman Plans to Check MIT’s Kornbluth, Staff for Plagiarism
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Ackman Plans to Check MIT’s Kornbluth, Staff for Plagiarism https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-05/ackman-wants-plagiarism-… Bill Ackman ramped up his campaign against Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, saying he will begin checks on the work of all of the school’s current faculty members for plagiarism.

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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump Colorado Ballot Appeal
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump Colorado Ballot Appeal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-05/supreme-court-agrees-to-… The US Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Colorado can bar Donald Trump from the presidential ballot, taking up a landmark constitutional and political clash stemming from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

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Huawei Teardown Shows 5nm Chip Made in Taiwan, Not China
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Huawei Teardown Shows 5nm Chip Made in Taiwan, Not China https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-05/huawei-qingyun-l540-lapt… Huawei Technologies Co.’s newest laptop runs on a chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a teardown of the device showed, quashing talk of another Chinese technological breakthrough.

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Bill Dudley, Former Kingpin of Darkness at the New York Fed, Now Urges Transparency at the Fed
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/01/bill-dudley-former-kingpin-of-darkne… Bill Dudley, Former Kingpin of Darkness at the New York Fed, Now Urges Transparency at the Fed By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 4, 2024 ~ William C. (Bill) Dudley, Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York William (Bill) Dudley served as President of the New York Fed from 2009 to 2018. (He was previously an executive at Goldman Sachs.) During Dudley’s tenure at the New York Fed, it secretly oversaw the largest and darkest bailout of Wall Street mega banks in global banking history. A Bloomberg News reporter, the late Mark Pittman, battled in court for years to get the details of those bailouts released to the public. Today, the former kingpin of darkness at the New York Fed, Bill Dudley, had the audacity to pen an opinion column for Bloomberg News, urging – wait for it – more transparency at the Fed. The ironic title of Dudley’s column is (paywall): “If Only We Knew the Problems Facing America’s Banks.” (We do. See Federal Agency Study Contradicts Fed Chair: Finds Banking System Is Ripe for Another Crisis and Remains “Fragile and Uncertain.”) The hubris of Dudley’s reign at the New York Fed is perhaps only second to Robert Kaplan’s reign at the Dallas Fed. (Kaplan also came from Goldman Sachs.) Let’s start with Carmen Segarra, a lawyer and former bank examiner at the New York Fed, one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks – but the only one with two trading floors and a money spigot to Wall Street. Segarra charged in a lawsuit filed in October 2013 that she was told to change her negative examination of Goldman Sachs by colleagues, who also obstructed and interfered with her investigation. According to her lawsuit, when she refused to alter her findings, she was terminated in retaliation and escorted from the New York Fed premises. After having her case tossed by a federal Judge whose lawyer husband was representing Goldman Sachs, Segarra turned over her 46 hours of secret tape recordings on the matter to ProPublica’s Jake Bernstein and public radio’s This American Life, creating a media frenzy. In early 2012, as JPMorgan Chase was making risky bets with derivatives in London, using deposits from its federally-insured bank in the U.S., its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, was sitting on the Board of Directors at the New York Fed. As Dimon’s bank was being investigated by the New York Fed, Jamie Dimon continued to sit on its Board, serving out his two terms which ended in late 2012. The derivatives debacle became infamously known as the London Whale trades where JPMorgan admitted to losing $6.2 billion of its bank depositors’ money. But it wasn’t the New York Fed that released a transparent report on the London Whale and the diabolical risk-taking with federally-insured deposits, it was the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A report in October of 2014 from the Federal Reserve’s Inspector General indicated that the New York Fed was advised of potential trouble in the Chief Investment Office at JPMorgan Chase on multiple occasions but failed to conduct a comprehensive examination that might have alerted it at an early stage to the wild gambles JPMorgan was making in derivatives with depositors’ money, leading to the London Whale scandal and $6.2 billion in losses. While the New York Fed was “supervising” JPMorgan, Bill Dudley was serving as the President of the New York Fed and his wife, Ann Darby, a former Vice President at JPMorgan, was receiving approximately $190,000 per year in deferred compensation from JPMorgan – an amount she was slated to receive until 2021 according to financial disclosure forms. According to the New York Fed’s web site, its “employees are subject to the same conflict of interest statute that applies to federal government employees (18 U.S.C. Section 208).” Under that statute, a spouse’s conflicts become the conflicts of the employee. As far as we can recall, Dudley is the only Fed Bank President to have been put through a public shaming before a U.S. Senate Banking Subcommittee. In November 2014, the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection called Dudley to testify following the Segarra revelations. During the hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren drilled down to just how Dudley saw his role as a regulator. In a revealing exchange, Dudley made it clear that he didn’t interpret his role as a cop on the beat, calling his job “more of a fire warden” to make sure the banking institutions are run well so that they’re not going to catch on fire and burn down. Warren shot back: “But you don’t think you should be doing any investigation; you should wait and see if it jumps in front of you.” Warren also brought out the fact that once the New York Fed learned that Goldman Sachs had fashioned a deal for the Spanish bank, Banco Santander, which a New York Fed employee called “legal but shady,” to dress up its capital, the New York Fed failed to bring the activity to the attention of European banking regulators. Citigroup, supervised by the New York Fed, burned down to a 99-cent stock while Dudley was President at the New York Fed. It would later be revealed via a Government Accountability Office audit that Citigroup had secretly received $2.5 trillion in cumulative emergency loans from the New York Fed from December 2007 to at least July of 2010 to resuscitate its sinking carcass. Dudley’s appearance at the Senate hearing was followed by testimony from David O. Beim, Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School. Professor Beim was the author of a 2009 report, commissioned by the New York Fed, that was highly critical of how deferential the regulator was to the banks it was charged with supervising. The report made multiple recommendations for changing the culture. The existence of the report was revealed in the ProPublica story on the Segarra tapes. At the Senate hearing, Dudley admitted that he had never spoken with Professor Beim in the five years since the report was given to him but said many recommendations had been implemented. Related Articles: Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third If Wall Street’s Mega Banks Are Safe and Sound as the Fed Says, Why Do They Need a Half Trillion Dollar Bailout Facility at the New York Fed? Mission Creep or Creepy Mission: The New York Fed’s Trading Desk Has Ballooned to $6.59 Trillion Today from $576 Billion in 2008 The New York Fed Is Exercising Powers Never Bestowed on It by any Law New York Fed Has Allowed Dangerous Wall Street Banks to Have Lower Loan Loss Reserves than at time of 2008 Crash The Man Who Advises the New York Fed Says It and Other Central Banks Are “Fueling a Ponzi Market” Bernie Sanders Hasn’t Quite Captured What Wall Street Does: It’s Actually a Fraud-Monetization System with a Money-Printing Unit Called the New York Fed Here’s Why the New York Fed Doesn’t Want You to See a Photo of Its Wall Street-Esque Trading Floor New York Fed Plans to Throw $2.93 Trillion at Wall Street’s Trading Houses Over Next Month as New York Times Remains Silent Is the New York Fed Too Deeply Conflicted to Regulate Wall Street? New Documents Show How Power Moved to Wall Street, Via the New York Fed Intelligence Gathering Plays Key Role at New York Fed’s Trading Desk FacebookTwitterWhatsAppLinkedInEmail

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Alaska Air Grounds Boeing 737 Max-9 Fleet After Fuselage Blowout
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

Alaska Air Grounds Boeing 737 Max-9 Fleet After Fuselage Blowout https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-06/alaska-airlines-flight-m… Alaska Airlines will ground its entire fleet of Boeing Co. 737 Max-9 aircraft after a fuselage section in the rear part of the brand-new jet blew out shortly after takeoff.

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FBI: God Bless the USA
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jan '24

06 Jan '24

FBI God Bless the USA: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1vqvjEs9f5/?igsh=MWFieXNyNmw2YTF4OQ== Gunnar

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