County Officials: Forfeiture Laws Don’t Violate Rights
Law enforcement is not violating people’s constitutional rights by
seizing cash, cars or other property from those alleged to be drug
dealers, Canadian County Sheriff Randall R. Edwards told a mostly
conservative group Monday.
Canadian County, OK — An Oklahoma sheriff
issued a string of misleading statements on Monday while criticizing a
bill that would reign in the state’s abuse of civil asset forfeiture.
Canadian County Sheriff Randall R. Edwards suggested that there is no
violation of constitutional rights when authorities seize cash and
property over alleged drug offenses, even when the person is not
convicted of a crime.
Edwards bluntly stated, “We’re not violating your Fourth Amendment rights” by seizing cash and property from alleged drug dealers, even when they are never convicted of a crime.
On July 29, 2015, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved SDR 891.3 million (about US$1.24 billion or 75 percent of quota) for Iraq under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI).
The purpose of this financial assistance is to help Iraq address present and urgent balance of payment and budget needs in 2015 related to the ISIS insurgency and a decline in oil prices. The IMF financing will support the authorities’ current economic program, which includes fiscal adjustment measures and structural reforms.
Following the Executive Board’s discussion of Iraq, Mr. Mitsuhiro Furusawa, IMF Deputy Managing Director and Acting Chair of the Board, issued the following statement:
“The twin shocks faced by Iraq from the ISIS insurgency and the drop in global oil prices have severely widened the government deficit and caused a decline in international reserves. The authorities’ policies to deal with the shocks, including sizable fiscal adjustment and maintenance of the exchange rate peg, go in the right direction.
“Access under the IMF’s Rapid Financing Instrument will help address Iraq’s urgent balance of payments and budget needs. However, large fiscal and external financing gaps remain.
“The large financing gap calls for the rigorous implementation of the authorities’ policies, but also additional fiscal adjustment measures and identification of domestic and internal financing. In this context, it will be important to implement the new electricity tariff schedule as soon as possible, or adopt compensatory measures.
“Looking ahead, the authorities should lay the ground for medium-term structural reforms that would better support macroeconomic policy management and boost the economy’s resilience to shocks.” (Source: IMF)
An index of the major developing-nation currencies fell to an all-time low this week, extending its drop over the past year to 19 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1999. The Russian ruble, Colombia's peso and the Brazilian real have fallen more than 30 percent over the past year for some of the worst global selloffs.
China's economic slowdown is pushing down commodity prices, weighing on raw-material exporters from Brazil to Mexico and South Africa. Adding to the pain is the expectation that the Federal Reserve will soon embark on the first interest rate increase since 2006, threatening to lure capital away from developing nations.
``This combination of a soft landing in China and a Fed that will normalize rates soon poses significant risks to emerging markets, especially their currencies,'' Stephen Jen, a former International Monetary Fund economist who is now managing partner at SLJ Macro Partners in London, wrote in a July 23 note. Jen said he expects ``a violent sell-off in some emerging-market currencies in the second half this year.''
While currency depreciation tends to spur growth by making exports cheaper, so far this is not happening because global trade has stalled, according to Citigroup Inc. and UBS Group AG. The International Monetary Fund forecasts emerging markets will grow 4.2 percent this year, the slowest since 2009.
Source-Ye Xie
China’s Stock Sale Ban Draws Scorn From Templeton, Wells Fargo
Templeton Emerging Markets Group calls it an act of “desperation.” UBS Wealth Management labels it “extreme.” And Wells Fargo Funds Management says it just “postpones the inevitable.”
China’s decision to ban major stockholders from selling stakes in listed companies has drawn skepticism from foreign investors. The money managers, with combined assets of almost $4 trillion, say the latest step to stem the country’s equity rout is just another measure to meddle in the market and won’t be enough to restore investors’ confidence.
“It suggests desperation,” Mark Mobius, chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, said by phone. “It actually creates more fear because it shows that they’ve lost control.”
The China Securities Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that investors with holdings exceeding 5 percent as well as corporate executives and directors are prohibited from selling stakes for six months. The rule is intended to stabilize capital markets amid an “unreasonable plunge” in share prices, the CSRC said.
While China has already ordered government-owned institutions to maintain or increase stock holdings, the CSRC directive expands the sales ban to non-state companies and potentially foreign investors who own major stakes in mainland businesses.
ETF Plunges
Deutsche Bank will have to wait if it plans to sell its 20 percent stake in Beijing-based Huaxia Bank Co., a move that would help shore up the lender’s finances, according to Piers Brown, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. Eduard Stipic, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, declined to comment on Wednesday.
In a sign that foreign investors expect more losses, the biggest U.S. exchange-traded fund tracking mainland stocks tumbled a record 11 percent in New York. Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF has declined 23 percent over the past week. The Shanghai Composite jumped 5.8 percent at the close on Thursday, capping its biggest gain since 2009 as the government battled to restore investor confidence.
A 32 percent slump in the benchmark gauge has helped wipe out $3.6 trillion of market value in Chinese stocks since June 12 and prompted regulators to introduce support measures almost every night for more than a week. Other steps have included a suspension of initial public offerings and restrictions on bearish bets via stock-index futures. Policy makers have also made loans available to securities firms to buy shares.
‘Undermining Credibility’
In perhaps the most dramatic effort to stop the selloff, local exchanges have allowed more than 1,300 companies to halt trading in their shares.
“The measure can be effective in the short term because you are not going to allow people to trade,” said Jorge Mariscal, the emerging-markets chief investment officer at UBS Wealth Management, which oversees $1 trillion in invested assets. “But they are undermining the credibility on the soundness of the regulatory framework going forward. Things are a little extreme and counter-productive.”
As China’s record-breaking equity boom goes bust, President Xi Jinping is intervening in an attempt to prevent the rout from eroding confidence in his leadership. The moves have cast doubt on the Communist Party’s pledge less than two years ago to give market forces a bigger role in the economy, which is part of its largest reform drive since the 1990s.
Market Intervention
“When Xi Jinping stressed the ‘decisive role of market forces,’ I don’t think this is what he had in mind,” Jim Chanos, the founder of hedge fund Kynikos Associates who predicted the collapse of Enron Corp. in 2001, said by e-mail.
China isn’t the only market with a history of state intervention. During the 1998 Asian financial crisis, Hong Kong bought shares worth $15 billion to prop up the market. In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned short selling on some shares during the global financial crisis in 2008.
While the authorities should “pull out stops” as much as they can during a crisis, China’s actions may backfire by scaring away investors, said Burton Malkiel, author of the investment classic “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” and an economics professor at Princeton University.
“I am not sure this is going to work,” Malkiel said by phone. “When the government does this, it might be a sign that ‘Oh my God, the government is panicked and we ought to get out even sooner.’’
Exchange Link
Under current mainland rules, a single foreign investor can own as much as 10 percent of a company’s issued shares. China has allocated investment quotas of about $138 billion through its so-called QFII and RQFII programs for foreign money managers, which include BlackRock Inc. and HSBC Global Asset Management.
International funds have gained unprecedented access to the mainland market through an exchange link with Hong Kong. Foreigners have sold a net 33.4 billion yuan ($5.4 billion) of Shanghai shares through the link over the last three days.
‘‘The extent to which they can apply this to foreign ownership interest remains to be seen,’’ said Brian Jacobsen, who helps oversee $250 billion as the chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management. ‘‘They are grasping at straws to find a way to stop the selling pressure.’’
The release of a report on renminbi internationalization comes as members of the IMF are on a visit to China
By
Lingling Wei
BEIJING—China’s central bank is preparing to take new steps to
lift the global profile of the yuan as the International Monetary Fund
reviews whether to grant it elite status as a reserve currency.
In
a report issued late last week, the People’s Bank of China detailed
moves it will take to encourage the IMF to take that step, putting the
currency on a par with the dollar, euro, yen and pound sterling. Reserve
status could potentially encourage other central banks to increase
their holdings of the currency.
To win approval from the IMF,
Beijing must make the case that the yuan can easily be used in
international markets. Potential steps listed in the report include
opening the door wider for foreign central banks and other institutional
investors to invest in China’s bond market.
Although
it didn’t specify a timetable, the People’s Bank of China also will
give foreign entities greater freedom to sell yuan-denominated debt in
China, and offer domestic companies more scope to issue such bonds
overseas. Further, it will ease limits on Chinese individuals and companies investing in foreign assets.
The
report on internationalization of the yuan—also known as the renminbi,
or people’s currency—comes as a team from the IMF visits China this week
to help assess whether to declare the yuan an official reserve
currency. On Monday and Tuesday, the IMF team was scheduled to hold
technical discussions in Shanghai with officials at the Chinese central
bank and China Foreign Exchange Trading System, which oversees currency
trading in China, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Beijing’s push comes as it seeks to wield more influence over the
global economy. Chinese officials hope that over time, reserve-currency
status would increase demand for the yuan among central banks as Beijing
challenges the U.S.’s political and economic dominance around the
world.
“The SDR entry would give China a greater say in the
international monetary system,” a Chinese central-bank official said on
Monday. “No question. We’re making real efforts to make it happen.”
Efforts
to win reserve-country status could also help accelerate the
liberalization of China’s heavily regulated financial markets. PBOC Gov.
Zhou Xiaochuan has said China will free up interest rates and the flow of capital across the border by the end of the year.
Gaining
reserve-currency status for the yuan isn’t likely to affect how
countries manage their foreign-exchange holdings right away, but “it
potentially paves the way towards renminbi internationalization by
encouraging institutional investors to catch up in this underinvested
currency,” said Helen Qiao, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
In its report, China’s central bank estimated that at the
end of April, foreign central banks held approximately 666.7 billion
yuan ($107.41 billion) in their foreign-exchange reserves. It was the
first time the PBOC has disclosed such data.
The central bank
didn’t detail how many yuan individual countries are holding, but the
totals are rising. Over the past year, countries including the U.K. and
Australia have begun adding the currency to their official reserves,
though the yuan still represents only a sliver of the total.
According
to IMF data, the world’s central banks had allocated more than $6
trillion of foreign-exchange reserves at the end of last year. More than
60% was in U.S. dollars, followed by 23% in euros, 4% in the yen and
3.9% in the pound sterling. China’s estimates rank the amount of yuan
assets in global central-bank reserves right behind those of Canadian
and Australian dollars.
Senior IMF officials, including managing director Christine Lagarde,
have indicated that the organization shares Beijing’s interest in
giving the yuan reserve-currency status. The issue, officials have
indicated, is when the currency will be added.
To be awarded
reserve-currency status, the yuan must be “freely usable,” a term the
agency has wide freedom to interpret. China’s efforts in recent years to
foster greater international use of the yuan could help it to satisfy
the IMF.Nearly 25% of China’s trade was conducted in yuan last year,
official data show, up from 0.02% in 2009.
Beijing’s
growing economic clout has added to tensions between China and the U.S.
The White House suffered a diplomatic bruising earlier this year, when
many U.S. allies rejected lobbying by the administration against a new
Beijing -led infrastructure bank. They instead became founding members
of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB, which has been
seen as a potential rival to the U.S.-led World Bank.
“It’s
critical that the U.S. avoid another AIIB-like moment where it opposes a
new Chinese initiative that is widely embraced by others and leaves the
U.S. defeated and isolated,” said Scott Kennedy, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
In recent months, China has accelerated the overhaul by putting in place a long-awaited deposit insurance system and moving closer to freeing up interest rates,
a step seen as critical to further changes. In addition, it has given
foreign investors greater access to Chinese securities and made it
easier for Chinese to invest abroad. Beijing is putting the final
touches on a trial program to give Chinese residents and companies
expanded, direct access to stocks, bonds and real estate in foreign
markets.
“China is not far from realizing its goal of
capital-account liberalization,” the PBOC said in its report, referring
to free cross-border flows of funds for financial transactions.
in the process of issuing sovereign government bonds in the global financial market.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance received
by Shafaq News, the delegation includes Minister of Finance, Hoshyar
Zebari , Minister of Oil ,Adel Abdul Mahdi , Minister of Planning ,
Salman al-Jumaili , Governor of the Central Bank , Ali al-Alaq , advisor
to the Prime Minister for Economic Affairs , Mathehar Mohammed Saleh
and senior advisers and experts of ministries and the central bank.
The statement added that the delegation began meetings with
representatives of international banks, "Citibank" , "JP Morgan" and
"Deutsche Bank" to review the financial , economic, political and
security report on Iraq, as well as the international law office of
Iraq.
The statement said that the delegation is scheduled to meet with the
census and credit International Modine and Fitch Companies in order to
determine the credit rating of Iraq in the international capital market.
The budget law for 2015, passed by the Iraqi parliament has
authorized the government to issue sovereign government bonds by seven
trillion dinars to cover the fiscal deficit in the budget.
Shafaq News / An official letter issued by the Ministry of Finance in Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) revealed on Sunday, that the ministry has a debt to the citizens of more than three trillion dinars in the form of loans and advances delivered to them during the last period.
The letter, seen by Shafaq News noted that the debt includes loans and advances received by the citizens from the real estate, agriculture, industry, housing banks, explaining that it reached at the end of March to 3 trillion , 992 billion , 356 million , 869 thousand and 350 dinars , handed over to 230 thousand and 281 people.
He added that the amounts that citizens gave it back to the same date to the government was amounted to 957 billion, 779 million , 12 thousand and 289 dinars, indicating that the remaining funds among the citizens are 3 trillion , 34 billion , 577 million , 857 thousand and 61 dinars.
KRG suffers from a crisis of liquidity since the Iraqi government deducted its share of the Iraqi general budget in the era of former Prime Minister , Nuri al-Maliki since February 2014 because of differences with Erbil on the issue of exporting oil without federal government’s approval.
Like Iraq, the Iraqi Dinar has been under siege ....under siege by Scoundrels who have engaged in a "Get Rich Quick" scheme to mislead great people and defraud investors in the Iraq Dinar. D-Day for one such Scoundrel was 3 June, 15 when the FBI took down the Sterling Currency Group and their co-conspirator Guru Promoters leaving thousands of victims in their wake.
The 48 page Amended Federal Complaint against the Sterling Scoundrels is not an indictment of the Iraq Currency.
The D-Day Aftermath is a call to action for a Dinarian gameplan. A precursor to any successful gameplan is intelligence from reliable sources and no one is better suited to contribute than Mr. Omar Humadi, Senior Advisor Ambassador Mohammed Alhakim and the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in New York.
Prior to his appointment as Senior Advisor, and drawing upon his expertise in US politics, Mr. Humadi has assisted the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, D.C. where he has played a leading role in defining bilateral relations with one of Iraq's most important allies. He has made numerous trips to Iraq in conjunction with this work and his family lives in Baghdad
Mr. Humadi was first introduced to the Dinarian community by us on the evening of August 7, 2013, and the information revealed at that time (while disputed by many "Guru Loyalists") was on-point then and proven true today.
You are invited to join us for a frank discussion on a serious subject.
MONDAY | JUNE 15th | 7:00 PM EST Phone. 712-775-7035 | Code. 908702# | Mute/Un-mute. *6 | Bring questions for Q&A
If you suffer from Arithmophobia (fear of numbers) you might want to stop reading now.
The Zimbabwean central bank is offering to convert Zimbabwean dollars into the foreign currency which in practice has been the only way of buying anything in the country for years.
Customers can exchange 250,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars for 1 US dollar, according to the Guardian.
To put that in context, if you earned a Zimbabwean dollar for every
second of your life, you would have 1 US cent by the time you reached
the age of 79,275 (yes that’s seventynine thousand two hundred and
seventyfive).
However, if your money is in the bank already, or was printed after
2009 when foreign currency became officially accepted in the country,
the exchange rate is not quite so good and you will need
35,000,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars to get one US dollar.
As a special offer, however, if your account has less than 175
quadrillion (175,000,000,000,000,000) in it, you can get $5 straight up.
You need to change your money before September or it is liable to become worthless.
The highest note Zimbabwe ever issued was the 100 trillion, now popular as a tourist souvenir but worth only 40 US cents.
From next Monday Zimbabweans with have their mental arithmetic simplified for them with the news some zeros are coming off the currency.
Quite a lot of zeros. No less than 16, as the federal reserve attempts to end funny money by offering one new Zimbabwe dollar in exchange for 35 quadrillion old ones.
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However the real hyperinflation rate is in fact worse. The money being replaced was only issued in 2008, when the exchange rate was one for 10 billion. The real hyperinflation rate has 25 zeroes attached.
This is now hyperinflation an elderly German would recognise, with all its attendant risks.
Since 2009 the dollar and other foreign currencies have
been vital for Zimbabwe to remain afloat as confidence in the local
currency and government’s economic policy of continually printing money
has collapsed.
From being a nation of multi-billionaires Zimbabweans will
be much poorer from next week; but then most people knew that already.
