“It’s A Huge Story”: China Launching “Petroyuan” In Two Months

Originally published by ZeroHedge | 10.24.17

As a reminder, nothing lasts forever…

The World Bank’s former chief economist wants to replace the US dollar with a single global super-currency, saying it will create a more stable global financial system.

 “The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises,” Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank.

“The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency.”

The writing is on the wall for dollar hegemony. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said almost two months ago during the BRICs summit in Xiamen,

 “Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”

As Pepe Escobar recently noted, ‘to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies’ is the politest way of stating what the BRICS have been discussing for years now; how to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar.

Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold.

This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan.

Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

The new triad of oil, yuan and gold is actually a win-win-win. No problem at all if energy providers prefer to be paid in physical gold instead of yuan. The key message is the US dollar being bypassed.

China’s plans for oil futures trading go back more than two decades, with the government introducing a domestic crude contract in 1993 and stopping a year later amid an overhaul of its energy industry.

But in 2013, we first hinted at the birth of the petroyuan was looming…

 In doing so China is effectively lobbing the first shot across the bow of the Petrodollar system, and more importantly, the key support of the USD in the international arena… setting the scene for the petroyuan.

And now, we are within two months of it becoming a reality as China prepares to roll out a yuan-denominated oil contract within the next two months…

 “Approval of the trading rules by the securities regulator marks the clearance of a major hurdle toward launch of the contract,” Li Zhoulei, an analyst with Everbright Futures, said by phone.

“The latest rules raised entry threshold for investors from the draft rules, which shows the government wants to avoid volatility when it first starts trading.”

Which, according to Adam Levinson, of hedge fund manager Graticule Asset Management Asia, will be a “wake up call” for investors who haven’t paid attention to the plans.

A Yuan-denominated oil contract will be a “huge story” in the fourth quarter.

“The contract is a hedging tool for Chinese oil companies. We’re convinced Chinese oil companies will be anchor investors in the Aramco IPO.”

All of which fits with recent comments and actions from Russian and Venezuelan officials…

 “Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a multi-hour address to a new legislative “superbody.” He reportedly did not provide details of this new proposal.

Maduro hinted further that the South American country would look to using the yuan instead, among other currencies.

 “If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro also said.

Additionally, Levison warns Washington that besides serving as a hedging tool for Chinese companies, the contract will aid a broader Chinese government agenda of increasing the use of the yuan in trade settlement… and thus the acceleration of de-dollarization and the rise of the Petro-Yuan.

 “I don’t think there’s any doubt we’re going to see use of the renminbi in reserves go up substantially”

Levinson was even more sanguine about China’s growing credit exposure.

While Chinese debt-to-GDP continues to rise, we note that Chinese sovereign credit risk has collapsed to 9 year lows…

Which as Levinson notes, “All the issues in China are occurring without fully understanding the asset side of the balance sheet.” He is not concerned about China credit issues in the near-term, defining the near term as the next two years, as “the capacity of the sovereign to deal with an issue, should it occur, is pretty significant and therefore important.”

Which appears to the market’s perspective as China is now the least risky relative to US in four years…

Finally, while he is less concerned about China’s credit, Levinson warns that the lack of volatility as stocks and bonds rally is the “scariest part” of global markets…

 “If I am concerned about anything it’s where the level of implied volatility trades,” Levinson said in an interview in Singapore on Tuesday.

“It is extremely low. If there is something to be concerned about in global markets, it’s the endogenous level of where implied volatility is trading.”

Small market declines could escalate quickly, Levinson said.

“You don’t know when an event or an issue is going to present itself,” he said.

“But when it does, the nature of the volatility construct in markets today is such that if you have a modest correction it will turn into a much more severe one in a short period of time, because of the entrenched structural short-selling of volatility.”

Any increase in market turbulence could trigger dramatic selling and the biggest of those events could be a broader adoption of China’s PetroYuan contract… as Levinson says “will be a huge story” in Q4.

With housing prices hitting record highs around the country, a new report from TransUnion suggests that around 10 million homeowners are expected to take out home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) over the next four years.

CNBC reports:

That would be more than double the amount of originations between 2012 and 2016. This comes as the amount of available home equity has jumped to more than $13 trillion today from $6.3 trillion in 2011, the bottom of the last housing crash.

HELOCs, which are often loans after the primary mortgage, usually rise and fall along with home equity, but that didn’t happen following the recession. There was a significant pullback in lending, as banks considered the loans too risky and too difficult to originate, given the stricter underwriting guidelines that were implemented.

Because leveraging a highly appreciated asset in a rising-rate environment with household debt already at record highs has never led to disaster…

Experts, of course, assume the HELOCs are going to be used to ‘repair and renovate’ homes – instead of upgrading and maintaining the gluttonous lifestyles of millions of homeowners – just like last time.

“Recent strengthening of the U.S. economy, tight housing inventories, and healthy home equity gains are all working to boost home improvement activity,” Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, wrote in a recent survey.

“Over the coming year, owners are projected to spend in excess of $330 billion on home upgrades and replacements, as well as routine maintenance,” Herbert said.

Sure Chris.

It won’t all be drunken pirate borrowing, I’m sure. HELOCs are a great way to consolidate high interest debt from credit cards and auto loans – however homeowners should keep in mind that the penalty for defaulting on a HELOC is losing one’s home.

An undercover FBI informant blocked from testifying in front of Congress by Obama AG Loretta Lynch in the Russia-Uranium scandal has been advised that an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which threatens criminal prosecution is not legal and therefore invalid.

As detailed by The Hill last week, the informant was a mole deeply embedded in the Russian nuclear industry gathered extensive evidence that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – a scheme of bribes and kickbacks to the company which would ostensibly transport the U.S. uranium sold in the ’20 percent’ deal.

In short; the FBI knew about a Russian racketeering scheme in the U.S. uranium sector before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal which would allow Russia to mine 20 percent of American uranium and sell it back to us at an enormous profit.

“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials. –The Hill

Both the House and the Senate have opened probes into the Uranium One scandal.

The FBI informant is represented by Attorney Victoria Toensing – a former Reagan Justice Department official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Toensing says her client was made to sign an illegal – and therefore invalid NDA, and he should be free to share evidence gathered proving that Russian nuclear officials were involved in a racketeering scheme in 2009, before the Uranium One deal was approved.

Toensing told Fox’s Lou Dobbs she’s never heard of a criminal penalty for violating an NDA, stating “If it does and it is unconstitutional and it’s invalid, if it prohibits my client from giving information to the legislature, the executive cannot say to people, ‘Hey, you can’t give information to another body of the government.”

Toensing said that her client’s direct knowledge of the pay-for-play scheme involving the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One is significant.

“He can tell what all the Russians were talking about during the time that all these bribery payments were made,” Toensing said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

As far as actually invalidating the NDA, Fox Business reports that The House Oversight Committee is investigating the Obama-era Uranium One deal, and Reps Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are calling for the Justice Department to remove the NDA that prevents the former FBI informant from testifying.“We are glad Ron DeSantis is doing it because he is a former federal prosecutor, and he is a go-getter on this and I think he’ll do a great job,” Toensing said.

Watch here: 

Obama DOJ threatened FBI informant if he spoke to congress regarding his knowledge of the Uranium One deal. https://t.co/dhzdJdLFpY pic.twitter.com/SQBvKpej0t

— Nick Short ?? (@PoliticalShort) October 19, 2017

Bond King Jeff Gundlach dropped a bombshell at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit when he told an audience member “I’m not a big fan of bonds right now,” adding “and I haven’t really been for the past four years, even though I manage them, and institutions have to own them for various reasons.”

Gundlach manages a $116 billion bond portfolio out of his Los Angeles-based firm, DoubleLine Capital – of which he casually joked “I’m stuck in it,” adding that he views his job “to get them [clients] to the other side of the valley” – referring to upcominginterest rate hikes. “I’ll feel like I’ve done a service by getting people through,” he said. “That’s why I’m still at the game. I want to see how the movie ends.”

Vannity Fair‘ s William D. Cohan writes:

To illustrate his point about the risk in owning bonds these days, Gundlach shared a chart that showed how investors in European “junk” bonds are willing to accept the same no-default return as they are for U.S. Treasury bonds. In other words, the yield on European “junk” bonds is about the same—between 2 percent and 3 percent—as the yield on U.S. Treasuries, even though the risk profile of the two could not be more different. He correctly pointed out that this phenomenon has been caused by “manipulated behavior”—his code for the European Central Bank’s version of the so-called “quantitative easing” program that Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, initiated in 2008 and that Mario Draghi, the head of the E.C.B., has taken to heart.

After explaining that European interest rates should be much higher, Gundlach pointed out that once Draghi realizes this, the order of the financial system will be turned upside down and it won’t be a good thing. 

“It will mean the liquidity that has been pumping up the markets will be drying up in 2018 . . . Things go down. We’ve been in an artificially inflated market for stocks and bonds largely around the world.”

Gundlach thinks “the day of reckoning is probably five or six years away, I think, and it has to do with these things I talked about with the entitlements” 

Vannity Fair also notes that fixed-income guru James Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer cited two recent examples of bond insanity in his Sept. 22 issue.

Grant noted that a senior unsecured bond, due in 2022, issued by Carrefour S.A., the world’s second-largest food retailer after Walmart, yields just 50 basis points, or half of 1 percent annually. Period. While it is true that Carrefour has a modest debt-to-cash-flow ratio of a little more than two times, the yield on the bond suggests the company is virtually risk-free, which is almost certainly not the case. Grant also mentioned a senior unsecured bond, due in 2018, of Toys “R” Us, the toy retailer that recently filed for bankruptcy. The bond, he noted, “spent the summer vacation lounging in the vicinity of 95 cents on the dollar” before “[e]arly Septem­ber rumors of a debt restructuring inter­rupted that idyll.” The bond now trades at 26 cents on the dollar. “Like the flu, mispricing is communicable,” Grant wrote.

Watch the entire interview below: 

Bond King Jeff Gundlach dropped a bombshell at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit when he told an audience member “I’m not a big fan of bonds right now,” adding “and I haven’t really been for the past four years, even though I manage them, and institutions have to own them for various reasons.”

Gundlach manages a $116 billion bond portfolio out of his Los Angeles-based firm, DoubleLine Capital – of which he casually joked “I’m stuck in it,” adding that he views his job “to get them [clients] to the other side of the valley” – referring to upcominginterest rate hikes. “I’ll feel like I’ve done a service by getting people through,” he said. “That’s why I’m still at the game. I want to see how the movie ends.”

Vannity Fair‘ s William D. Cohan writes:

To illustrate his point about the risk in owning bonds these days, Gundlach shared a chart that showed how investors in European “junk” bonds are willing to accept the same no-default return as they are for U.S. Treasury bonds. In other words, the yield on European “junk” bonds is about the same—between 2 percent and 3 percent—as the yield on U.S. Treasuries, even though the risk profile of the two could not be more different. He correctly pointed out that this phenomenon has been caused by “manipulated behavior”—his code for the European Central Bank’s version of the so-called “quantitative easing” program that Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, initiated in 2008 and that Mario Draghi, the head of the E.C.B., has taken to heart.

After explaining that European interest rates should be much higher, Gundlach pointed out that once Draghi realizes this, the order of the financial system will be turned upside down and it won’t be a good thing. 

“It will mean the liquidity that has been pumping up the markets will be drying up in 2018 . . . Things go down. We’ve been in an artificially inflated market for stocks and bonds largely around the world.”

Gundlach thinks “the day of reckoning is probably five or six years away, I think, and it has to do with these things I talked about with the entitlements” 

Vannity Fair also notes that fixed-income guru James Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer cited two recent examples of bond insanity in his Sept. 22 issue.

Grant noted that a senior unsecured bond, due in 2022, issued by Carrefour S.A., the world’s second-largest food retailer after Walmart, yields just 50 basis points, or half of 1 percent annually. Period. While it is true that Carrefour has a modest debt-to-cash-flow ratio of a little more than two times, the yield on the bond suggests the company is virtually risk-free, which is almost certainly not the case. Grant also mentioned a senior unsecured bond, due in 2018, of Toys “R” Us, the toy retailer that recently filed for bankruptcy. The bond, he noted, “spent the summer vacation lounging in the vicinity of 95 cents on the dollar” before “[e]arly Septem­ber rumors of a debt restructuring inter­rupted that idyll.” The bond now trades at 26 cents on the dollar. “Like the flu, mispricing is communicable,” Grant wrote.

Watch the entire interview below: 

As the NFL suffers from empty stadiums and plummeting ratings thanks to players protesting [insert cause here] by kneeling during the National Anthem, top football advertiser Papa John’s Pizza – which once branded itself as the “Official Pizza of the NFL” tells Fox Business News that sales are down amid the controversy.

Weeks ago, Papa John’s removed the NFL logo and indications of NFL sponsorship from their website with no explanation.

The company issued a statement several weeks ago: “In America, we should respect those who have served AND stand up to injustice,” Papa John’s said. “We need to work together to be better.”

Since Hillary Clinton et al are apparently bulletproof despite very obvious incriminating evidence of a pay-for-play scheme with Russia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is focusing on less untouchable criminals – unleashing a “Crime Task Force” with a mandate to eradicate the street gang known as MS-13.

Washington Times reports:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that he’s designated the MS-13 street gang as a priority for the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces — enabling authorities to target the gang with a broader array of federal resources.

“Now they will go after MS-13 with a renewed vigor and a sharpened focus,” Mr. Sessions said Monday as he addressed the International Association of Chiefs of police conference in Philadelphia. “Just like we took Al Capone off the streets with our tax laws, we will use whatever laws we have to get MS-13 off of our streets.”

The priority designation will instruct federal agencies such as the IRS, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to target the El Salvador-based gang not just with drug laws but also tax, racketeering and firearms laws.

In a revealing 2014 interview, White House Chief of Staff, General Kelly, told PRISM magazine that the ‘most concerning’ threat facing the United States comes from international criminal networks trafficking in drugs and sex workers:

These are international criminal networks – everything gets in. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of illicit narcotics. Relatively small amounts are taken out of the flow by our border controls. Tens of  thousands of sex workers, in many cases adolescents, come into the United States every year through these networks to serve the sex industry. I spoke at a human rights conference at the University of South Florida, in Tampa. The audience was shocked when I talked about sex workers. –Gen John Kelly

Trump’s signed an Executive Order in February aimed at international cartels dealing in both drugs and human trafficking – and MS-13 has been singled out as a primary threat.

The weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama Admin. allowed bad MS 13 gangs to form in cities across U.S. We are removing them fast!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2017

These groups are drivers of crime, corruption, violence, and misery. In particular, the trafficking by cartels of controlled substances has triggered a resurgence in deadly drug abuse and a corresponding rise in violent crime related to drugs. Likewise, the trafficking and smuggling of human beings by transnational criminal groups risks creating a humanitarian crisis.

1,378 gang members were arrested by ICE over the last six weeks in an operation which ran from March 26 to May 6, sweeping up suspected gang members. It was the largest anti-gang effort conducted by Homeland Security to date – with priority arrests of those involved in “transnational criminal activity, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder and racketeering.”

Fox News reports:

“Gangs threaten the safety of our communities, not just in major metropolitan areas, but in our suburbs and rural areas, too,” ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan said Thursday. “Gang-related violence and criminal activity present an ongoing challenge for law enforcement everywhere.”

According to ICE, of the 1,378 total arrested, 933 were U.S. citizens, and 1,095 were confirmed as gang members or affiliates. Also, 104 of those arrested were affiliated with the dreaded MS-13 gang, eight of whom illegally crossed the border as unaccompanied minors.

“Our efforts to dismantle gangs are much more effective in areas where partnership with local law enforcement is strongest,” Homan said.

Great news – but it would be nice to see justice served a bit higher up the ladder.

In addition to AG Jeff Sessions targeting MS-13, Trump vowed to ‘destroy the vile criminal cartel’ in a July speech to law enforcement professionals. “[MS-13 has] transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields,” Trump said. “They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a society the spilling of innocent, young, wonderful vibrant people”

For a brief look into the gang, Tucker Carlson recently traveled to El Salvador for his week-long series “Hunting MS-13,” which includes an interview with a cartel assassin:

To that end, Gen. Kelly also shared his thoughts on cartels in 2014 with PRISMmagazine:

These are international criminal networks – everything gets in. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of illicit narcotics. Relatively small amounts are taken out of the flow by our border controls.

“Could someone come in with a weapon of mass destruction, biological weapon travel on this network?” Of course! Last year [2013], this network carried 68,000 children into the United States. We are dealing with a very efficient network, which worries me.

At the end of May, El Salvador freaked out when Trump deported thousands of MS-13 gang members.

This year the U.S. government has deported 398 gang members to this country, compared with 534 in all of 2016, according to Salvadoran government statistics. This sharp increase in the rate of gang deportations — and the prospect of more gang roundups in the United States — has prompted Salvadoran authorities to hold emergency meetings and propose new legislation to monitor suspected criminals who are being sent home.

Trump has railed against MS-13

Throughout the 2016 election, Trump mentioned MS-13 in several tweets and speeches – citing the notably violent gang as a prime example of the types of violence illegal immigration, and rightly so. MS-13 is possibly the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. Originating in refugee-rich neighborhoods in Los Angeles in the 80’s, the gang’s territory now extends all the way from El Salvador to Canada – engaging primarily in human trafficking and drug smuggling.

In Central America, MS-13’s presence has contributed heavily to making the “Northern Triangle” of Guatamala, El Salvador, and Honduras – the most violent place in the world not at war. (more)

Tony Podesta and his firm, the Podesta Group, are now under federal investigation by FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with the Russia investigation, three sources told NBC News.

The Podesta Group was subpoenaed in late August along with four other public relations firms who worked with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort during a 2012-2014 lobbying effort for a pro-Ukraine think tank – the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU) – tied to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych fled from Ukraine to Russia after he was unseated in a 2014 coup.

Two of the subpoenaed firms include Paul Manafort’s Mercury, LLC and the Podesta Group, founded by John and Tony Podesta and operated by the latter.

Manafort’s firm earned $17 million between 2012 – 2014 consulting for Yanukovych’s centrist, pro-Russia ‘Party of Regions.’ During the same period, Manafort oversaw a lobbying campaign for the pro-Russia “Centre for a Modern Ukraine,” a Brussels based think tank linked to Yanukovych which was pushing for Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.

The Podesta group, operating under Manafort, earned over $1.2 million as part of that effort.

In a statement to NBC, a spokesman for the Podesta Group said the firm “is cooperating fully with the Special Counsel’s office and has taken every possible step to provide documentation that confirms timely compliance. In all of our client engagements, the Podesta Group conducts due diligence and consults with appropriate legal experts to ensure compliance with disclosure regulations at all times — and we did so in this case.”

White House Special Access

Visitor logs reveal that Tony Podesta visited the White House at least 114 times during the Obama administration according to White House visitor logs, and was said to have had ‘special access‘ to the administration through his brother, John Podesta, while lobbying for various pro-Kremlin interests.

During a 2015 interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, former president Obama admitted that his administration ‘brokered a deal‘ for the 2014 coup in Ukraine – all while John Podesta was a West Wing advisor and Tony Podesta lobbied for an organization which opposed the coup.

Podesta Group and Russia

While Robert Mueller’s investigation is ostensibly focused on the Trump campaign – conducting a surprise raid on Paul Manafort’s home in July, it will be interesting to see if the Special Counsel chooses to delve into the bevy of documented ties between the the Podesta brothers and Russia.

For example, Russia’s Kremlin-owned Sberbank paid the Podesta group $170,000 over a 6 month period to lobby against 2014 economic sanctions by the Obama administration:

Podesta’s efforts were a key part of under-the-radar lobbying during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign led mainly by veteran Democratic strategists to remove sanctions against Sberbank and VTB Capital, Russia’s second largest bank.

The two Russian banks spent more than $700,000 in 2016 on Washington lobbyists as they sought to end the U.S. sanctions, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms and documents filed with the Department of Justice.

The Podesta Group charged Sberbank $20,000 per month, plus expenses, on a contract from March through September 2016. –Daily Caller

In March of this year it was revealed that the Podesta group forgot to register as a “Foreign Agent” for their work with Sberbank.

Uranium One and Joule Unlimited

The Podesta group also earned $180,000 lobbying for Russian-owned mining company Uranium One during the same period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from UrAsia / U1 interests.

Last week, two bombshell reports published by The Hill revealed that the FBI – headed by Robert Mueller at the time – discovered that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow” – a deal which would grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America’s uranium supply, as detailed by author Peter Schweitzer’s book Clinton Cash and the New York Times in 2015.

After Russia took control of the Uranium, the Podesta Group received $180,000 to lobby for Uranium One during the same period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from U1 interests, and after Russia took majority ownership in the “20 percent” deal (source – you have to add up the years).

the Podesta Group received $180,000 to lobby for Uranium One during the same period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from U1 interests, and after Russia took majority ownership in the “20 percent” deal (source – you have to add up the years).

Joule

While NBC reports that Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and presumed Secretary of State John Podesta is not currently affiliated with the Podesta group and not part of Mueller’s investigation, it should be noted that he sat on the board of Massachusetts energy company called Joule Unlimited, along with senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan – who was appointed by Vladimir Putin to the Russian economic council. 

Two months after Podesta joined the board, Joule managed to raise $35 million from Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund Rusnano.

Not only did John Podesta fail to properly disclose this relationship before joining the Clinton Campaign, he transferred 75,000 shares of Joule to his daughter through a shell company using her address.

In an interview with Fox Business News’ Maria Bartaromo, Podesta denied that he failed to disclose his ties, emphatically stating “Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” adding “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!” in reference to Massachusetts based Joule Unlimited – with its two Russian dignitaries on the board board and a $35 million loan from a Russian investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin.

A New Jersey corrections officer has been charged with receiving images of child sexual abuse, after posting an ad on Craigslist looking for women and moms “that are into Cheese Pizza,” a reference to child pornography – U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick announced Thursday.

Stephen Salamak, 37, was arrested by ICE and Homeland Security agents after an investigation revealed Salamak used several email accounts to seek and obtain child pornography.

In May, an undercover agent responded to Salamak’s Craigslist ad, seeking “Woman/Moms that are into Cheese Pizza.” The complaint said that Salamak and the undercover exchanged several emails, with Salamak asking for photos of an 8-year old child.

In July, officers searched Salamak’s email account, only to discover that he had been communicating with multiple people about child pornography and pedophilia.

A search of Salamak’s home was conducted last Thursday after a warrant was obtained, when the corrections officer admitted that “Cheese Pizza” was a reference to child pornography, and that he knowingly engaged in emails with various individuals regarding child porn and pedophilia.

Reminder that the signs are everywhere…

Wow, new DHS / ICE Human Trafficking vid opens with a #Pizzagate ref: "The signs are there, sometimes you just have to take a second look" pic.twitter.com/DgatsUnWzq

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) February 5, 2017

In the quarter leading up to a Nov 1 congressional testimony on Russian election interference, tech giants Google ($GOOG), Facebook ($FB), and Twitter ($TWTR) have been dropping millions on lobbyists while under increased regulatory scrutiny from Washington, according to government documents.

CNBC reports:

The disclosures, required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act, revealed Google spent $4.17 million lobbying Congress this most recent quarter. Facebook spent $2.85 million, while Twitter spent $120,000. The figures were first reported by Bloomberg News.

Last quarter Google spent $5.93 million lobbying lawmakers, while Facebook and Twitter spent $2.38 million and $120,000 respectively.

The Silicon Valley behemoths are sending lawyers to U.S. congressional committees Nov 1 to testify on Russian political ads bought during the 2016 election.

On October 19, three senators — Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Mark Warner, D-Va., and John McCain, R-Ariz. — co-sponsored the bi-partisan “Honest Ads Act,” which would require heavy disclaimers and disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for online political ads. Platforms with 50 million or more unique monthly users would have to keep a public database of political ads, and the companies would have to make “reasonable” efforts to prevent foreign nations from interfering with U.S. elections through ads, according to CNBC.

Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and Apple also spent close to $10 million lobbying Congress last quarter.