Echoing a sentiment that was one of the defining points of his hour-long speech to the world’s financial and political elite at Davos, billionaire hedge funder (and supporter of far-left causes from Eastern Europe to the US) George Soros is taking his rhetoric a step further and calling for supranational governments to intervene and regulate Facebook, Google and other large social media websites.
America’s favorite investor loves monopoly, not free markets…
After the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, three officials from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission visited Warren Buffett at his office in Omaha, Nebraska. They wanted to ask America’s most successful investor about his 24 million shares in the credit-rating agency Moody’s. The commission would later identify Moody’s and other rating agencies as “key enablers of the financial meltdown,” for granting super-safe triple-A ratings to securities that were backed by junk mortgages. Trillions of dollars’ worth of rotten financial instruments—the fuel of the crisis—“could not have been marketed and sold without [the rating agencies’] seal of approval,” the commission concluded.
Brazil’s Army is taking control of public security in the state of Rio de Janeiro as a wave of violence rattles the population and dominates media coverage ahead of this year’s presidential election.
A 4.7-magnitude earthquake has shaken buildings in parts of Britain, with people from Cornwall to Blackpool reporting strong tremors. The quake struck just after 2.30pm local time and its epicenter was reportedly near Swansea.
People wrote on Twitter that they felt their homes shake when the quake hit. At first, many weren’t sure if they had experienced an earthquake. EMSC wrote on Twitter: “No damage is reported and if any should remain very limited. No tsunami neither.”
Scientists have found a “highly unusual” particle enriched with uranium in the skies over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The source of the substance, which is typically used in nuclear fuel and bombs, is still unclear.
The mysterious substance “containing a very small amount of enriched uranium” was found at an altitude of 7km (4.3 miles) above Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, according to a report issued by the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity.
n a decision that many had anticipated, the SEC Thursday night officially rejected a proposal from a Chinese investment group to purchase the Chicago Stock Exchange – which handles a tiny 1% of daily order volume – in an acquisition that would have created a conduit for a Chinese entity to exert more control over IPOs of China-based companies in the US, where markets are significantly more open to international investors than in China. Hundreds of small companies are waiting to list in China, where they’re being held up by red tape.
According to a group of seismologists who are monitoring the potentially catastrophic supervolcano, Yellowstone is “under strain.” This new report has reignited fears that the caldera could erupt at any moment.
A massive four-lane-wide sinkhole swallowed at least six cars in Rome on Wednesday, forcing 20 families to flee their homes. A dramatic video captured the extent of the damage.
Scientists are about to explore a part of the world that’s been hidden for 120,000 years.
A team of researchers, led by the British Antarctic Survey, is heading to Antarctica this week to investigate a mysterious marine ecosystem that’s been hidden underneath an Antarctic ice shelf for tens of thousands of years.
Police and other emergency services in Florida are responding to reports of an active shooter at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. There are reports of multiple victims.
They already have. Several times. Yellowstone National Park is the most publicized beast. There’s another under Naples, Italy.
But one positioned in the ocean off southern Japan is only now being understood by science.
A research paper published in Nature Scientific Reports states a lava dome is expanding within the Kikai Caldera. This is just 31 miles south of Kyushu — Japan’s most southerly main island.
More details have emerged regarding the role of Kona I as a supplier for Visa’s biometric payment cards pilot project. The company will provide battery-free card components with energy harvesting technology for cards which capture, store, and validate the cardholder’s fingerprint, the Korea Herald reports.
Scrutinizing soil samples, US researchers have discovered a new class of antibiotics capable of killing drug-resistant, disease-causing bacteria.
This brand-new antibiotic class, called malacidins (short for metagenomic acidic lipopeptide antibiotic-cidins) has been isolated from bacteria that live in soil.
For years, market watchers and Fed skeptics had warned that the record low volatility “blanket” that has fallen like a pall over the comatose market was the result of Fed actions, both direct or indirect. And while they mostly spoke metaphorically (although back in 2012 we observed a distinct shift in the VIX futs when the current head of the Fed’s trading desk, Simon Potter, replaced Brian Sack), we now have explicit confirmation that the Fed’s “short vol” position appears to be rather literal.
Officials at the University of Houston are asking people to avoid the Athletics/Alumni center, baseball field and stadium complex after person with a weapon reported on campus.
The description of the individual is a black male wearing a grey shirt with black sleeves and black pants—No Description of the weapon was given.
We first exposed the “conspiracy fact” that VIX manipulation runs the entire market back in 2015 as the ubiquitous VIX-crushing algo-runs coincided with a non-stop shorting of VIX futures by a seemingly bottomless-pocketed player in the market… which happened to coincide with the arrival of Simon Potter as the head of The New York Fed’s trading desk…
After a 14-month-long investigation, Israeli police have reportedly recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on charges of bribery and breach of trust.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a recent report by NBC News was misleading. The channel claimed Russia “successfully penetrated” the voting systems of several states.
“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking,” DHS cybersecurity chief Jeanette Manfra said on Monday.
A candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates was dragged out of a hearing after listing the donations received by state lawmakers from fossil fuel companies. She was testifying on a bill on oil and gas drilling rules.
Lissa Lucas was criticizing a proposed bill, HB 4268, which would allow oil and gas companies to drill on private land with the consent of just 75 percent of the landowners. Energy companies are currently required to have 100 percent approval from landowners before they can extract gas and minerals from land.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a vulnerability in the Telegram desktop app which allows the social messaging app to be exploited for mining cryptocurrencies.