HSBC's record $1.9bn fine preferable to prosecution, US authorities insist | Business US authorities defended their decision not to prosecute HSBC for accepting the tainted money of rogue states and drug lords on Tuesday, insisting that a $1.9bn fine for a litany of offences was preferable to the "collateral consequences" of taking the bank to court. Announcing the record fine at a press conference in New York, assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said that despite HSBC"s "blatant failure" to implement anti-money laundering controls and its wilful flouting of US sanctions, the consequences of a criminal prosecution would have been dire. Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking licence in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilised. The bank processed cash for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, regarded as the most powerful and deadly drug gang in the world, among others.
I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on | Heather Linebaugh Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" And: "How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" Or even more pointedly: "How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?" Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand. I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road.
HSBC Fine for Money Laundering is Largest Bank Penalty in U.S. History HSBC Fine Let Bank Avoid These Charges By accepting the settlement, HSBC avoided criminal charges. The bank agreed to deferred prosecution with the Manhattan district attorney's office and the Justice Department. According to The New York Times, officials briefed on the matter said the deferred prosecution agreement requires HSBC to forfeit more than $1.2 billion and to pay about $700 million in fines. According to The Times, the settlement represents a major victory for the government but raises questions about whether some financial institutions are "too big to indict." A money-laundering indictment or a guilty plea to money-laundering charges, The Times said, would "essentially be a death sentence" for HSBC. Although HSBC was repeatedly warned by U.S. officials about its relationship with Mexico, from 2000 to 2009, the bank considered Mexico to be a "low risk" for money laundering, a U.S. HSBC to Adopt Stricter Standards In January, HSBC hired Stuart A. Related Articles and News
NSA surveillance and third-party trackers: How cookies help government spies. Photo by Lili Warren/AFP/Getty Images Snooping on the Internet is tricky. The network is diffuse, global, and packed with potential targets. There’s no central system for identifying or locating individuals, so it’s hard to keep track of who is online and what they’re up to. What’s a spy agency to do? One option is to plant a unique tag on every computer and smartphone, stamp every Internet message with the sender’s tag, and then capture the tagged traffic. Luckily (for the spies) there’s an easier way: free ride on the private sector, which does its own pervasive tagging and monitoring. That’s precisely what the National Security Agency has been up to, as confirmed most recently by a front-page story in Wednesday’s Washington Post.Other countries’ spy agencies are probably doing the same thing. Companies track users for many reasons, such as to remember a login, to target ads, or to learn how users navigate. Which companies are keeping tabs on you? But technical security is not enough.
Banks behaving badly: HSBC settles in money laundering probe The $1.92 billion deferred prosecution entered into by HSBC with US regulators is one of the most significant financial penalties imposed on a global bank. On Tuesday in a Federal Court in Brooklyn, HSBC agreed to a legally binding settlement in which it accepted responsibility for systematic sanctions violations and the facilitation of money laundering on an industrial scale. It was also held accountable for threatening national security by providing financing facilities to a Saudi Arabian bank with links to terrorist groups. “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries, and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries,” noted the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, Lanny Breuer. The expansion of the measure reflects both its strengths and limitations.
The NSA might know everything but it is not all powerful Given how similar they sound and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the other, confusing omniscience (having total knowledge) with omnipotence (having total power) is easy enough. It’s a reasonable supposition that, before the Snowden revelations hit, America’s spymasters had made just that mistake. If the drip-drip-drip of Snowden’s mother of all leaks — which began in May and clearly won’t stop for months to come — has taught us anything, however, it should be this: omniscience is not omnipotence. At least on the global political scene today, they may bear remarkably little relation to each other. Let’s begin by positing this: There’s never been anything quite like it. It’s visibly changed attitudes around the world toward the U.S. — strikingly for the worse, even if this hasn’t fully sunk in here yet. So where to start, almost half a year into an unfolding crisis of surveillance that shows no signs of ending? Omniscience Omnipotence A First-Place Line-Up and a Last-Place Finish
Obama decided that political capital better spent elsewhere than on battle over Rice The decision was hers, senior administration officials said. But Obama, who pledged to defend her vigorously just five weeks ago, did not try to talk one of his most-favored candidates out of it. His decision to accept her withdrawal served as an acknowledgment that even a president fresh from reelection has only a limited amount of political latitude in a still-sharply partisan Washington. Obama has only a few weeks to negotiate a year-end deal with congressional Republicans to avert the “fiscal cliff.” A prolonged fight over Rice’s nomination would have interrupted those plans — perhaps for only a few weeks, but perhaps for far longer given the bad blood such fights have stirred up in the past. As partisan criticism grew in recent weeks, Senate Democrats told White House officials that, while Rice’s nomination would probably succeed in the end, it would come at a steep political cost to the rest of his agenda. Republican Sens. Karen Tumulty and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer Macro Morning: Focus on the cliff Ben Bernanke would have looked at the US PPI data last night and been convinced he is doing the right thing. During November producer prices fell 0.8% from -0.2% last and -0.5% expected with the year on year rate now sitting at just 1.5%. Of course the Fed Chairman is expressly targeting unemployment now and will keep rates low until the rate falls to 6.5% but for mine the real target of his unconventional monetary policy is deflation. Bernanke is a depression scholar and knows what has occurred in Japan for the past 20 years and he knows that weak aggregate demand equals weak pricing power which ultimately can or does lead to deflation. Perhaps the markets know this too because the QE4 strength continued to fade overnight with US markets in the red from early trade following on from European stock markets which were weak from the get go as they caught up to the US reversal the previous day. There is a risk that US equity markets underperform over the final weeks of 2012.
How Partisan Bickering Sabotaged America's Middle East Policy - David Rohde Fights in Washington have taken priority over stabilizing the region and securing the United States. The furious partisan debate that erupted this week after a New York Times investigation questioned the central tenet of the Republican assault on the White House regarding Benghazi was a fitting end to 2013. The lengthy article revealed that the State Department and CIA’s intense focus on al Qaeda caused officials to miss the threat posed by local militias. David Kirkpatrick’s reporting showed that Libya’s rebels appreciated the U.S. support in helping oust Muammar al-Qaddafi, but were strongly influenced by decades of anger at Washington’s support for dictators in the region. Militants gained strength from Syria to the Sahel over the course of 2013. Neither the American left nor the right has offered a serious strategy for how to respond to the emergence of new types of militant groups across the Middle East. Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) The stakes in Egypt are enormous.
Megabank wants your super Industry titan and NAB chairman, Michael Chaney, was on the hustings yesterday repeating the now obligatory call for productivity growth. But he followed up with this: …Mr Chaney also called for tax breaks for savers to encourage them to take out deposits.He also repeated calls for the government to open up Australia’s $1.3 trillion superannuation sector as a source of funds for the banks.“Resolving this funding issue would help us avoid constraints on Australia’s economic growth,” he said. It is interesting to speculate about this contention. Would opening “up Australia’s $1.3 trillion superannuation sector” to banks help us avoid growth constraints? If the banks were to set about shifting their orientation from mortgages to business loans then Chaney’s suggestion would work. But, if Mr Chaney is simply suggesting that we channel Megabank more savings for it to continue its habit of lending to households for swapping existing houses then it will not work in the long run.
Construction jobs rebound as mining retrenches By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released employment data for the November quarter, which has revealed some interesting and, quite frankly, counter-intuitive results. First, the below chart shows the non-seasonally adjusted change in employment by industry: As you can see, the construction industry has led jobs growth, adding 51,700 jobs over the quarter and more than reversing the loss of -34,200 jobs in the previous quarter. It’s a different result over the year, however, with the construction industry shedding -21,400 jobs over the year and mining adding 20,500 jobs: The public service is now the biggest loser over the year, shedding -39,300 jobs despite lifting employment by 9,900 in the latest quarter. Strangely, the rebound in construction industry jobs was driven by Victoria (+33,800), where new home sales have literally crashed and dwelling approvals are now coming off the boil.
Ben, please give me more $$ AMFAutorité des Marchés Financiers. C'est l'autorité française de régulation des marchés financiers. Son équivalent pourrait être la SEC américaine.Equivalent de la SEC (Security Exchange Commission) américaine. N’a pas plus d’Autorité que sa consœur n’est gage de Sécurité (cf. Madoff) Appel de MargeDemande de reconstitution du compte de marge.Le pognon que tu dois envoyer quand tu es collé sur ta position. Arbitrage Stratégie de trading profitant d'incohérences momentanées entre les prix de plusieurs actifs ou contrats. Back-TestingTest de la validité d'un modèle ayant pour appui des données historiques.Excuse universelle: Je ne comprends pas, le fonds a perdu 5% et pourtant, quand on fait le back testing, il aurait dû en gagner 2% ! Bâle IIProcédures rénovées de calcul des capitaux propres que se doivent de posséder les banques. BaseDifférence entre le prix spot (à l'instant T) et le prix futur (T+1).Différence entre le prix spot et le prix futur. CDOCollateralized Debt Obligation.