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Market Realities On, Merger Reviews Off Table In Ad Tech Trial
by Gunnar Larson 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Market Realities On, Merger Reviews Off Table In Ad Tech Trial <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876503?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> By Bryan Koenig A Virginia federal judge put slight limits Wednesday on the evidence the U.S. Justice Department and Google LLC can present in next week's advertising technology monopolization suit, allowing Google to push its own views of the market but limiting its ability to bring up past merger reviews. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876503?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876503?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…>

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Albertsons CEO Takes Stand On Kroger Merger, Missing Texts
by Gunnar Larson 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Albertsons CEO Takes Stand On Kroger Merger, Missing Texts <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876237?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> By Greg Lamm Federal Trade Commision attorneys on Wednesday pressed Albertsons Cos. Inc. CEO Vivek Sankaran in Oregon federal court about why he had such dire predictions about the company's future without a merger with Kroger despite previous statements about how his company had been crushing the competition. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876237?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876237?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…>

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Pension Pot Needs For 'Basic' Retirement Rose 60% In 3 Years
by Gunnar Larson 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Pension Pot Needs For 'Basic' Retirement Rose 60% In 3 Years <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876140?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Josh White Pensioners need 60% more retirement savings to meet basic costs compared to just three years ago, according to a think tank's research published Wednesday. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876140?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876140?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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Cap On Push-Payment Fraud Payouts To Plummet To £85K
by Gunnar Larson 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Cap On Push-Payment Fraud Payouts To Plummet To £85K <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876177?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Alex Davidson The payments watchdog said Wednesday that it plans to cut the cap on compulsory reimbursement by companies of authorized push payment fraud from £415,000 ($546,000) to £85,000. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876177?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1876177?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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Fwd: FOIL # 2023-095358 Appeal
by Gunnar Larson 05 Sep '24

05 Sep '24

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Tomczak, Christine (DFS) <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov> Date: Thu, Sep 5, 2024, 12:31 PM Subject: RE: FOIL # 2023-095358 Appeal To: Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> Cc: cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org> Dear Mr. Larson, Thank you for your patience. I am working on responses to your outstanding requests. Christine Tomczak *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 27, 2024 11:14 AM *To:* Tomczak, Christine (DFS) <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Cc:* cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org>; letitia.james(a)ag.ny.gov; Reader, Shaun <sreader(a)curtis.com>; Harris, Adrienne A (DFS) < Adrienne.Harris(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Subject:* Re: FOIL # 2023-095358 Appeal *ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.* Ms. Tomczak: When can we expect your response? Thank you in advance, Gunnar ✌️ On Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 4:03 AM Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> wrote: Dear Ms. Tomczak: Kindly following up with NY-DFS on approval to engage New York False Claims Act concerning the Department’s response to withhold Robinhood's BitLicense records. We would expect to proceed with the crypto RICO approach mentioned in xNY.io's whitepaper. Bank.org shared this with NY-DFS as part of our Shelf Charter (notice of intent) years ago: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aeK8X8-2KDZ8tQPN5ksaUCXcxH9tbjexsUbW1ol… . There are a few other open FOIL requests with your esteemed office, while the RICO proliferates against our enterprise. Can NY-DFS respond to xNY.io - Bank.org on this matter? Thank you, Gunnar -- Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 917-580-8053 ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Gunnar Larson* <g(a)xny.io> Date: Tue, May 7, 2024, 12:25 PM Subject: Fwd: FOIL # 2023-095358 Appeal To: Tomczak, Christine (DFS) <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov> Cc: Reader, Shaun <sreader(a)curtis.com>, <letitia.james(a)ag.ny.gov>, Harris, Adrienne A (DFS) <Adrienne.Harris(a)dfs.ny.gov>, Mazza, Stephanie (DFS) < Stephanie.Mazza(a)dfs.ny.gov> Dear Ms. Tomczak: Thank you for contacting xNY.io - Bank.org concerning our petition to access Robinhood's BitLicense records. Today we understand that New York State elects to withhold our Robinhood records request, given several factors. Ms. Tomczak, can NY-DFS kindly clarify if this decision is mutually independent to xNY.io - Bank.org seeking required approval to engage New York's False Claims Act as Robinhood touts a founding mission to democratize finance. Sending the best with regards, Gunnar -- Gunnar Larson xNY.io | Bank.org MSc - Digital Currency MBA - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-917-580-8053 New York, New York 10001 ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Tomczak, Christine (DFS)* <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov> Date: Tue, May 7, 2024, 11:16 AM Subject: FOIL # 2023-095358 Appeal To: g(a)xny.io <g(a)xny.io> Dear Mr. Larson, See attached. Christine M. Tomczak Assistant Counsel New York State Department of Financial Services 1 State Street, New York, New York 10004

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BREAKING: Hunter Biden Seeks 11th Hour 'Alford Plea' At Tax Trial's Start
by Gunnar Larson 05 Sep '24

05 Sep '24

BREAKING: Hunter Biden Seeks 11th Hour 'Alford Plea' At Tax Trial's Start <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1876804?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> By Craig Clough With jury selection set to begin Thursday in Hunter Biden's criminal tax evasion trial, counsel for the president's son told a California federal judge that his client intends to seek a so-called Alford plea, maintaining innocence but agreeing to punishment, a move that caught prosecutors off guard. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1876804?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1876804?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…>

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A Wall Street Regulator Is Understating Margin Debt by More than $4 Trillion – Because It’s Not Counting Giant Banks Making Margin Loans to Hedge Funds
by Gunnar Larson 05 Sep '24

05 Sep '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/09/a-wall-street-regulator-is-understat… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 5, 2024 ~ Most market watchers rely on the monthly margin debt figures published by Wall Street’s self-regulator, FINRA, as the reliable gauge in determining how much of securities trading on Wall Street is being done with borrowed money, known as margin debt. According to the FINRA data, as of March 31, 2024, margin debt stood at $784.136 billion. Margin Loans Data from FINRA Unfortunately, FINRA only has access to margin debt data filed by the brokerage firms it regulates (also known as brokers and dealers). Thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which allowed federally-insured banks to be gobbled up by the trading casinos on Wall Street, the vast bulk of margin debt is now being loaned out not by brokerage firms but by giant banks where the U.S. taxpayer will be on the hook for a bailout if they go belly up from bad gambles – as occurred in the crash of 2008. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) has posted a stunning graph showing that as of March 31, 2024, Global Systemically Important Banks in the U.S. (G-SIBs) had loaned out $2.348 trillion to hedge funds. Foreign Global Systemically Important Banks had loaned out another $1.628 trillion to hedge funds; and “Other Lenders” had loaned out an additional $566 billion to hedge funds. That brought the total of margin loans to just hedge funds on March 31, 2024 to a total of $4.542 trillion. (Put your cursor on the graph lines here or see the graph at the top of this page.) OFR defines “Other Lenders” as “regulated banks that are not G-SIBs and nonbank lenders.” There are eight U.S. G-SIBs: Bank of America Corporation, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citigroup Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation and Wells Fargo & Company. Each of these own large federally-insured banks in the U.S. which are backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer. The Federal Reserve – a key federal regulator of the largest bank holding companies in the U.S. – is completely lost when it comes to tabulating out-of-control margin debt in the U.S. banking system — which is creating giant speculative bubbles. The Fed’s data shows that as of March 31, 2024, margin debt totaled a mere $432.83 billion. (Run your cursor over the line here or see graph below.) The Fed says it obtained its margin data from its Z1 Statistical Release and that it covers just brokers and dealers. Margin Loan Data from the Fed Why the Fed’s margin debt at broker dealers is $351 billion less than reported by FINRA and more than $4 trillion less than reported by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, buttresses our longstanding argument that the Fed is grossly incompetent when it comes to understanding Wall Street megabanks and a captured regulator when it comes to imposing critically-needed reforms. What is noteworthy, however, on the Fed’s data chart on margin loans, is how dramatically the tally has spiked since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, versus decades of much slower growth prior to that time. The same observation can be made on the FINRA graph above. According to a March 4 report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Prime Broker operations of Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) were each servicing more than 1,000 hedge funds as of 2022. Prime Broker services include making margin loans to the hedge funds. The BIS reports also notes the following about these hedge fund clients: “As for opaqueness, the assets of a quarter of hedge funds are not fully independently valued, comprising 38% of hedge fund assets, making it more difficult for PBs [Prime Brokers] to trust the fund’s stated asset values, especially in adverse market conditions.” What could possibly go wrong?

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Insuring Innovation: Software Code May Be Protected As An Arrangement - Trade Secrets - Intellectual Property - United States
by Gunnar Larson 05 Sep '24

05 Sep '24

https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/trade-secrets/1509310/insuring-innovati… The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit once again remanded a trade secret and copyright dispute involving software for generating life insurance quotes, finding that the district court erred by failing to consider the copyrightability of the source code's arrangement. As to the trade secret claim, however, the Eleventh Circuit found that the district court did not err in finding that the defendants misappropriated the trade secrets at issue and could be held jointly and severally liable, despite varying levels of culpability. *Compulife Software, Inc. v. Newman*, Case No. 21-14074 (11th Cir. Aug. 1, 2024) (Jordan, Brasher, Abudu, JJ.) Compulife's software generates life insurance quotes using a proprietary database of insurance rates. The software produces a quote by using blocks of code, arranged in a particular manner, that correspond to different data points such as state, birth month, birthday, birth year, sex and smoking status. Compulife licenses its software to customers and offers an online version to the public. David Rutstein is a former insurance agent who is permanently barred from the profession. Rutstein misled Compulife into giving him its software by pretending that he worked with someone who had a license to use it. Rutstein then created and registered several websites in his son's name using Compulife's software in connection with the sites. One of the websites was later owned by Aaron Levy. Rutstein and Levy directed an employee, Moses Newman, to launch a scraping attack on Compulife's website to get millions of quotes, which they used for their own websites. Compulife's sales declined as a result. Compulife sued Rutstein, Rutstein's son, Levy and Newman for copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other claims. After a bench trial, the parties appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit directed the district court to make more specific findings. After a second bench trial, the district court determined that the defendants did not infringe Compulife's software by copying it and using it for their own website, but they did misappropriate Compulife's trade secrets. The defendants were held jointly and severally liable despite differing degrees of culpability. All parties appealed. Compulife argued that the district court erred in concluding that the defendants did not infringe its copyright. The Eleventh Circuit agreed in part, finding that the district court incorrectly applied the abstraction-filtration-comparison test used in software copyright infringement analyses. Compulife claimed that the arrangement of its various source code elements (*e.g.*, state, birth month, birthday, birth year and sex) was a creative and therefore protectable form of expression. The Court agreed that the arrangement was potentially protectable, similar to its holding in another case that the arrangement of yacht listings in a boat guide could be protectable. *BUC Int'l v. Int'l Yacht Council* (11th Cir. 2007). The Court remanded the copyright infringement analysis to the district court, finding that it erred in the abstraction step because it "never identified the entire arrangement of these variables in the code as a constituent component of the code." The Eleventh Circuit disagreed, however, with Compulife's assertion that the district court erred in finding that other aspects of its code were not protectable forms of expression, including the names Compulife gave its variables, its use of camel case when naming them, and its use of radio buttons for making certain selections. The Eleventh Circuit also affirmed the district court's ruling that the defendants had misappropriated Compulife's trade secrets and that they were jointly and severally liable for the misappropriation. The defendants argued that Compulife did not undertake reasonable efforts to maintain its trade secrets, but the Court was not persuaded. It pointed out that Rutstein lied to gain access to the software, and then he and his codefendants used that code to commit a scraping attack that acquired millions of insurance quotes. Those quotes were then used on the defendants' website, causing Compulife to lose revenue and subscriptions. The Court also found that Florida law clearly supports joint and several liability for damages since Florida is a comparative fault regime with an exception for intentional torts, such as trade secret misappropriation, and instances where defendants act in concert to produce a single injury, as they did here. Practice Note: Computer software can be particularly challenging for courts to analyze for copyright infringement. In this case, elements of software code that are not individually protectable may nevertheless be protectable as an arrangement. *The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.*

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BREAKING: Glenmark Will Pay $25M To End Feds' Price-Fixing Suit
by Gunnar Larson 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

BREAKING: Glenmark Will Pay $25M To End Feds' Price-Fixing Suit <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876584?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> By Travis Bland Glenmark Pharmaceuticals USA will pay $25 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by conspiring to fix the price of a generic high cholesterol drug, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876584?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1876584?nl_pk=6416fd97-1dc4-4e0…>

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After JPMorgan Threatens to Sue, the Fed Cuts Its Capital Requirement on the 5-Count Felon from a Planned 25 Percent Hike to Less than 8 Percent
by Gunnar Larson 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/09/after-jpmorgan-threatens-to-sue-the-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 4, 2024 ~ Jerome Powell, July 14, 2021It appears that Senator Elizabeth Warren was spot on in her assessment of the lack of a backbone for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when it comes to raising capital requirements on the powerful megabanks on Wall Street. At a March 7 Senate Banking Committee hearing in which Powell was appearing as a witness, Warren said this: “Despite all you said last year when the banks failed [in the spring banking crisis of 2023] about supporting Vice Chair Barr’s recommendations to strengthen rules for big banks, public reporting now says that you are driving efforts inside the Fed to weaken the capital rule. You even told the House Financial Services Committee representatives yesterday that you think it’s ‘very plausible’ that you withdraw the rule.” The capital rule that Senator Warren is referring to was proposed more than a year ago by federal banking agencies but has yet to be enacted. It is formally known as the Basel III (or Basel Endgame) rule. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has been leading the charge to stop federal bank regulators from implementing the rule. (See Jamie Dimon Hires Dodd-Frank Hatchet Man to Weigh Suing the Fed Over Proposed Capital Rules.) Warren concluded her comments to Powell at the March hearing with this: “You are the leader of the Fed and when the heat was on last year, you talked a lot about getting tougher on the banks. But now the giant banks are unhappy about that and you’ve gone weak-kneed on this. The American people need a leader at the Fed who has the courage to stand up to these banks and protect our financial system.” Dimon is aggressively fighting the rule change most likely because higher capital requirements could restrict the bank’s ability to prop up its share price with multi-billion-dollar stock buybacks each year, increase its dividend to appease its shareholders that this multi-felon bank is on the right course and lavish multi-million dollar bonuses on Dimon. Powell has now demonstrated Senator Warren’s ability to correctly read the tea leaves. Quietly, at 5 p.m. last Wednesday, before the long Labor Day weekend, the Fed released its new capital requirements for the megabanks that will become effective on October 1, 2024. We know that federal banking regulators had originally planned to increase JPMorgan Chase’s capital by 25 percent because Dimon stated that fact in his April letter to shareholders, writing that if the capital rules proposed by the FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve are implemented, they “would increase our firm’s required capital by 25%.” But instead of 25 percent, the Fed raised JPMorgan Chase’s capital requirement by just 7.89 percent from the 2023 level, taking it from a total capital requirement of 11.4 in 2023 to just 12.3 in 2024. Had the 25 percent increase been imposed, JPMorgan Chase’s capital requirement would have totaled 14.25. JPMorgan Chase is the largest U.S. bank and has for years been ranked by its regulators as – by far – the riskiest bank in the United States. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, which was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to provide federal regulators with up-to-date research on threats to financial stability, has created a “Bank Systemic Risk Monitor” that provides an overall score to show the systemic risk a particular bank represents to U.S. financial stability. The current chart is shown in the graph at the top of this article. JPMorgan Chase’s score of 857 is 23 percent higher than the next riskiest bank on the list, Citigroup, which has a systemic risk score of 697. (Citigroup is the bank that blew itself up in the financial crash of 2008 and received over $2.5 trillion in secret revolving loans from the Fed from December 2007 through July of 2010 according to the eventual audit released by the Government Accountability Office.) But of particular note, JPMorgan Chase’s score is twice that of Deutsche Bank USA (DB USA), which has a systemic risk score of 422. And yet, here is what the Fed did last Wednesday. It raised Deutsche Bank USA’s capital requirement from 13.8 in 2023 to 18.4 currently – an increase of a whopping 33 percent versus an increase of 7.89 percent for JPMorgan Chase. Jamie Dimon has been personally making the rounds in Washington in an effort to stop the implementation of the proposed capital rules. Internal government documents show that Dimon and his Chief of Staff, Judith Miller, met separately with the following Fed Governors on December 15 of last year: Fed Governor Adriana Kugler; Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson; and Fed Governor Christopher Waller. Financial Times reporters Joshua Franklin and James Politi reported that in mid March, Dimon met in a one-on-one meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and separately with President Biden’s Chief of Staff, Jeff Zients. In a July 2 letter to Powell, Senator Warren described a “culture of corruption” that has taken root at the Fed since Powell became Chair. Among numerous issues, Warren cited the following: “I am particularly concerned about reports that you have met or had private conversations with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, at least 19 times since becoming Chair of the Federal Reserve in February 2018. You have also reportedly met ten times with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, seven times with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and at least nine times with the heads of other major banks. This is an astonishing amount of your time to give to the CEOs of the nation’s largest banks and financial firms.” In addition to Warren, the watchdog group, Better Markets, has pushed back hard on the lies and fictions that the Wall Street megabanks are spreading in hopes of killing the more stringent capital rules. The YouTube video below features Better Markets’ Director of Banking Policy, Shayna Olesiuk, addressing those misleading claims.

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