FinCEN leaks Blitz

: money, September 22 2020 ▶

Do you remember how in April 2016 ~215K offshore accounts leaked in Internet ... and nothing happened? Yeah, nothing - no imprisoned people, no investigations, no penalties. I am talking about the normal things that will happen to you, almost immediately, if you cheat with $1.3 billion. Well, you can mark my words now - nothing will happen again, as we are heading for the biggest leak to date. And this time we are talking about $2 trillion.
The good guys from the BuzzFeedNews.com received an incredible trove of documents and analyzed it for us. I am writing this, hoping it is not all "fake news". Here are the main articles, and I think there will be more in the upcoming days:
Dirty money pours into the world's most powerful banks
We Got Our Hands On Thousands Of Secret Documents. Let's Break Them Down.
Billions in dirty money rolled through Deutsche Bank.

The BuzzFeed's articles are pretty big, I do not expect many people will read them thoroughly, but I did. As the title shows, you will get the main points and my thoughts on what we have so far. Future updates may follow. Let's go!

FinCEN is an agency, within the US Treasury Department. Its main task is to fight money laundering. When banks operate, they are obliged to file "suspicious activity reports" (SARs). This does not take away the responsibility of the banks to shut down such activities. Banks have their own systems and statistical methods to identify financial crimes, and, as you can imagine, unless tampered with, they are very effective. Money laundry is a big problem. When the dirty money hit the normal economy, all things, metrics and principles become twisted. Suddenly the house prices rise with 15% YOY and things become more and more unreachable for the average Joe.
So FinCEN receives the reports, but claims it has no capacity (lack of employees, political pressure) to analyze them all. BuzzFeed received 2100 SARs with information dating back to 1999, but primarily 2011-2017. They gathered a bunch of journalists, tried some automatic analysis, realized it's not going to work, as the SARs are just random mess of data, and then sat down, pulled out the data and structured it by hand.

The documents are secret - the procedure is part of some gov-to-bank agreement and neither banks, nor the authorities admit they have such. Nobody wants to lose customers, of course! Government also presses the investigators to stand down. Hurting major players may hurt the economy...and the cycle closes.
Ok, hold on a second! If in 2000 SARs you see $2 SUSPICIOUS TRILLION, what will come out if you go through all 2mil SARs? Who are the bad boys? Below are just the major players:
And the largest SARs - again a small snippet:
Who transferred money? Mafia (mostly russian), terrorist, drug dealers, fraudsters - basically everyone who had enough dirty money to be able to sustain the heavy bank fees and possible bribes. Aren't the CEOs afraid this will get them to jail? No, there was not a single big fish on the hook. Not even charges. Banks even calculated what amount they will pay in a possible lawsuit "agreement" beforehand. They just played "stupid", because they knew they will get away with it. And the penalties are nothing, compared to the gains.For the people with really short memory - JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup (SARs from Citibank) basically caused THE BIG market crash in 2008 and was bailed-out with $25B each(!); Bank of America Corp (SARs from Bank of America) got $15B; Deutsche Bank got $12B in 2008, $2B in 2011 from ECB and a couple of billion from the German taxpayer every year since.

BuzzFeed journalists focus on Deutsche Bank, because of the insane cash flow from their russian offices and the interesting facts around their CEO - Christian Sewing (2018-to-date), who was head of the bank's audit division during the events. He had such an amazing career development, it is just worth googling alone - will not spoil it for you.
Some other interesting topics:
- The collection does not include any SARs about Trump's finances. I am pretty sure journalists put a lot of extra effort on digging something, but they got "only" a former Trump's campaigner and a Pacific casino, run by his former employee.
- Russian laundromat - UK-based company lends money to another, guaranteed by Russian or Moldovan companies, then it gets sued in Moldova, then the russian companies "have to transfer" money to the UK-based bank
- $10 billion mirror trading scheme - buy shares in Russia and sell the stock to one of the European shell companies you own (via Deutschebank)
- DBank hires Deloitte auditors - "independent check" shows "all green" in Moscow's office (guess who was Managing the Risk in DB at that time)

- Currently all banks deny any allegations and claim their anti-fraud procedures are top-notch. Deutschebank's official said this information is nothing new, it is already shared with the authorities and DB has paid all "agreements".
- In 2012, HSBC was fined $2B for making shady business with countries like Sudan and Myanmar (apparently banned in US). SARs show that almost nothing changed afterwards. I guess that nowadays "minus $2B" is almost nothing for a big bank.

All things considered, I believe we are having just a glimpse at the tip of the iceberg. No prosecution will follow. No CEOs will go to jail. The story will be slowly buried and forgotten. I remember the time when the movie villain demanded "3 million dollars!" or he destroys the world...boy things changed!

Electric cars are expensive because of the new tech, batteries, and other lies

: tech, September 14 2020 ▶

If you are not living under a rock, you already know, that all big car brands are now switching to electric vehicles. Although too late, it is generally a good thing, but the way it is presented to the public, is rather disgusting. All new electric cars share 3 distinct issues. First and foremost they are EXTREMELY expensive (something this articles is stressing on). Second, everybody is lying about the range of their cars. Third - charging time and lack of infrastructure portray the them even less attractive.
No, I am absolutely "FOR" the electric cars. Internal combustion engine is an engineering nonsense, pushed by the petrol moguls in the late 19th century. It is dirty, inefficient, expensive, fragile and difficult to maintain, but now we are getting the same cheesy-money-grab, they got away 100 years ago.
And we reach "the price" topic. So all EVs, despite manufacturer's claims, that all efforts go to environmental protection, are waaaaaaay more expensive, than their ICE counterparts. I am sorry, big CEOs - even the dumbest people realize this hypocrisy and despise you and your brands for this. If you really care about the environment, slash the price in half (working "only" at ~20% profit). No? Why? Ohh, the other cars will become unsellable and obsolete, yeah, that's right!
The usual excuse is:

Waaait a minute, dear Mr.Salesman! What you see on the picture above, is called "Detroit Electric Modell C" and was built between 1907 and 1939 from the "Anderson Carriage Company" (yes, "carriage", like "horse pulling a big wooden box") in Port Huron and later, Detroit. It looks extremely luxurious, especially from the inside. The car was advertised with a maximum range of 130km/charge, but in test conditions it managed to reach 340km/charge. Top speed 32km/h - which, for the time, is just right.
Yes people! You are reading correctly! This 100-year-old tin can, with the drag coefficient of a house, zero electronics, lack of any advanced gearbox or suspension, modern lubricants and whatever they put nowadays, outperforms most of the brand-new EVs?! How is this possible? Probably because of the electric motor? Oh wait, it is the same! In its core, the electric motors did not change much for the past 100 years, so somebody blaming it for the cost is flat-out insolent. So which "new, expensive technology" we are talking about? Is it the Android tablet in the middle of the vehicle? Or the $50 sensors? Yes, batteries may (still) be expensive, but the cost of an electric motor is a fraction of the cost for an internal combustion engine, so, to a certain degree, it should balance it.
The price of the "Detroit Electric Modell C" car varied between $2500 and $3000 for the highest trim. They produced around 13 000 DE cars, so it did not lack popularity. Adjusted with the inflation it is $75K, and you may say it is comparable to its contemporaries ... well not really. Back then this was THE peak of the technology, as now, excluding the software, there is nothing revolutionary in any EV. Cheapest "Tesla Model S" starts at 80K. The modern equivalent of the Detroit Electric would be closer to a Porshe Taycan EV (reasonably spec-ed ~150K).
Let's get back to the main perpetrator - the batteries (Li-ion ca.1991). How often have you read about "new revolutionary type of battery" and you secretly hope that "yes, this is it!"? And they all disappear. No trace, no further development, despite all promising initial results. Are you telling me, that all these projects fail due to unforeseen tech limitations? Or there is not enough funding/interest? Batteries, that are dirt-cheap. Batteries, that charge in minutes. Batteries, that are stable and last forever. So all of their researchers are stupid or slow? Think again!
I do not even want to start the topic with the government tax benefits and purchase incentives for the EVs - money, that come straight from the tax payer and goes straight in the car manufacturer's pocket. If these incentives are cut, the prices will just fall down with the same amount. Now they are taken for granted as a pure profit.
To wrap it up: nothing, but corporate greed, is stalling the inevitable success of the EVs and there is no reason to justify the current insane prices!

Jimi, ...the wind began to howl

: music, September 14 2020 ▶

Seriously, when you see a Huey helicopters, flying in the mountain jungle, there are just a couple of songs, you immediately start whistling, while getting the musical chills ("psychophysiological response to rewarding auditory and/or visual stimuli"). For me it is "All along the watchtower" first, "Fortunate son" second. And saying "All along the watchtower", I mean Jimi Hendrix's Tower. The original belongs to Bob Dylan from 1967. Hendrix made it better just one year later, also according to Dylan, who, on several occasions, complimented the cover-work of his colleague. Nobody really knows what the story is about, some analyst even say the lyrics are composed backwards, starting with the princess on top of the tower, watching the two riders closing in...
In my vision about the song, adjusted to our modern century, it might be the lonely man, hiding behind a cheerful smile (joker), scared and fed-up with everything. He is talking to his best friend (thief), who was successful in life, but is paying the prise of his ruthlessness.

Sharing his desperation about the future, so simple and straight. Just a few words draw the emotional abyss in his heart. Joker lacks huge life experience, always a man of integrity, but constantly disappointed how other abuse his kindness. His friend went through a lot more and probably has seen both sides of the medal, reminds him, they are larger than life: Or maybe Joker and Thief are the callsigns of two marines, standing guard and killing time with some life stories...waiting to get back home...if they get back home. The Iraqi desert blows dust over the camp, while the sun sets in the distance. The third verse completely switches the perspective, and honestly, I have zero clue what might it mean. Maybe a woman, waiting for Joker to come home, but the riders are bringing the bad news.
Yes, Dylan wrote the song after a motorcycle crash, probably expressing his own feelings and some private drama is lurking behind. As for me, it is entirely the voice and the soul of Jimi Hendrix.