Special Cinco de Mayo edición!
“They don't want to do a gold audit for a reason.”
Figured I’d put this out today, because there’s plenty of fun stuff I’ve put to paper (so to speak) over the last few days. Sláinte!
This is from Andrew Napolitano, who’s not a left-wing judicial activist:
“We are witnessing an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers and the concept of federalism by a White House impatient with the constitutional process and largely indifferent to the role and function of the judiciary.
The role of the judiciary is to be anti-democratic — to protect lives, liberties and properties from the other two branches.
If the feds succeed in intimidating judges and bending them to the presidential will, our liberties will have no protection.”
“A legacy of misconduct”
UBS Will Pay $511 Million to End Credit Suisse Tax Probe in U.S.
So was it the shareholders of UBS, or Credit Suisse, who did the tax evasion?
Again, a slap on the wrist, and no criminal prosecution of the individuals involved. Too big to jail.
UBS Group AG agreed to pay $511 million to settle a US investigation into how Credit Suisse Group, the Swiss bank it bought, helped rich Americans evade taxes even after pledging to stop the practice a decade ago.
A Credit Suisse unit pleaded guilty to conspiring to help its customers file false US tax returns and agreed to pay $372 million, UBS said in a statement Monday. The unit will pay an additional $139 million penalty as part of a related settlement.
The resolution ends a legacy of misconduct(!) by Credit Suisse, which used Swiss bank secrecy laws to help Americans hide money from the Internal Revenue Service for decades. But the bank failed to fully comply with a 2014 deal to uncover and disclose US accounts, and several criminal cases showed its clients continued to cheat the IRS.
“The S&P 500 notched its ninth straight days of gains this week, its longest winning streak since November 2004.”
Ended today.
Gee, I hope taxpayers don’t stop funding NPR. We might lose content like this:
This book was published in 1968.
I suppose the U.S. dollar Rickenbacker wrote about did die in 1971, but the current doomsayers may still be premature.
"I'm bullish on America. Never made any money betting on the end of the world."
John Johnston
“We have been in a state of incredible imbalance. Huge, crazy plutocracy.”
This excerpt below could’ve come from my interview with Maggie Lake:
“Quoting Scott Bessent, 10% of the population own 88% of the stocks. I'll say it again. 10% of the population own 88% of the stocks. So there's always specious statistics that people throw around and everything like that, but this one kind of rings true to me. The other 12% is owned by the next 40% of the population. Half the population - that's half, 150 million people in America - don't have anything. They don't have 200 bucks. They have debt. They rent their homes. They owe money on their cars, trillions in student loans. That part of America is negative.”
Good piece by Tim Price, who I’ll be talking to this week: Preparing for the Turning Point
Wildfires dent Berkshire's profit; cash soars to $347.7 billion This is how big that number is: it’s 88 days worth of Fed QE.
August 10, 2018: Steve Bannon on How 2008 Planted the Seed for the Trump Presidency There is very little that I disagree with in this interview.
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