Chinese Communists Plan to Take Control of Day to Day Operations of Internet News Sites

I can’t wait for our overlords to decree that online media sites, like iBankCoin, need to offer ‘fair and balanced’ slants on news topics, imposing government employees onto my board in order to fetter out all of my subversive activities. You know, providing the good people of this fat land with information and opinion that isn’t concocted by a person with an acute mental illness.

The red fucking state of China is going to do exactly that. But don’t worry. China is our friend.

China is considering taking board seats and stakes of at least 1 percent in operators of some Internet portals and mobile apps in exchange for granting news licenses, according to people familiar with the plan.

The government would issue the licenses in exchange for stock and a board seat, according to the people, who asked to not be identified because the details haven’t been made public. Government representatives could monitor and block content distributed by Internet providers, although they wouldn’t be involved in other day-to-day business decisions, according to the people.

The proposal would give authorities the ability to block news from reaching the Web and coincides with a broad government clampdown on information distributed online. The move could affect operators of major Internet portals such as Tencent Holdings Ltd. and NetEase Inc. along with mobile apps that provide current affairs and news on a daily basis.

See, this is very kind of them, permitting people to post shit online, so that other people can read it. They’re going to grant them licenses, in exchange for a piece of the action. The Italian mafia calls that extortion. I suppose, in China, it’s called the cost of doing business.

Free Hong Kong.

The Brazilian government is suing Samarco, who is owned by both BHP and VALE. As a result, shares of BHP are plummeting in Asian trade this evening, off by more than 8%. This is a massive decline for a mega cap stock.

The reason for the suit: Samarco caused a fucking dam collapse that resulted in the death of 19 people and subsequent pollution of the entire region.

The 359-page lawsuit, which is also against the two states impacted by the spill and the Federal Government, is the result of a six-month investigation led by a task force set up after the disaster, prosecutors said in a statement.

The total damages, prosecutors said, were calculated based upon the cost of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the United States — BP’s total pre-tax charge for that spill reached $US53.8 billion ($71.89 billion).

Prosecutors demanded an initial payment of 7.7 billion reals ($2.89 billion).

Vale and Australia’s BHP both said they had not received formal notice of the claim.

However, BHP said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange that it was “committed to helping Samarco to rebuild the community and restore the environment affected by the failure of the dam”.

It said that a separate lawsuit that Samarco, Vale and BHP settled with Brazil’s Government in March, in which the companies would pay an estimated 20 billion reals ($7.51 billion), was the best way to repair damage caused by the spill.

Samarco’s ‘continual negligence’
Four Corners reveals evidence of problems at the mine dating back almost a decade.
“We believe that the agreement (once approved by the court) provides the long-term remedial and compensation framework for responding to the impact of the Samarco tragedy and the appropriate platform for the parties to work together,” BHP said.

Federal and state prosecutors did not form part of that settlement, which they criticised, saying it was insufficient and lacked the legal mechanisms to ensure the companies would fulfil their obligations, making it little more than a “letter of intent”.

Nothing to see here, other than criminal negligence on a monumental scale.

Both Asian markets and U.S. futures are indelibly lower.

“Equity market sentiment seems to be rolling over globally as the wind begins to come out of the oil price rally,” said Angus Nicholson, market analyst at spreadbetter IG, in a note Wednesday.

I have to be honest with you, I expected a little more piss and vinegar. After all, Ted Cruz has capitulated and the trap has been set for Trump during this year’s GOP convention. Make no mistake, this nomination process isn’t over.

That being said, Trump gave a rather milquetoast, low energy, acceptance speech tonight. Not once did he mention that greatness of the coming wall and how the Mexicans were going to pay for it. Instead, he praised LYIN’ Ted and said he had a very bright future.

Really?

Trump is becoming a politician and has begun to pander to fuckheads in order to curry their votes.

Paint me UNIMPRESSED.

After a long, ridiculous, speech, Rafael Cruz announced that he was dropping out of the race to become President of the United Steaks of America. In light of this news, the broke and disheveled John Kasich said he’s continuing his campaign, in order to win and become the next President of the United Steaks.

This, of course, is a trap and Trump is aware of this  ruse to snatch the nomination from him.

Congrats to Cruz for listening to the will of God.

Now Glenn Beck and Mark Levin will shut the fuck up, right?

Ted Cruz is making an absurd speech now, making the case for a contested nomination for the republican party,  in spite of being hated by virtually all but a handful of people lost in the deserts of Texas.

Trump won Indiana (51% to 35% aka landslide), a state that Cruz and his religious zealots viewed as a place where God would make his will known. Clowns, like Glenn Beck, took to fasting as a method to curry the favor of the Lord, in order to help the lying fuckhead, Rafael Cruz, win the primary in Indiana.

The Lord has spoken, Cruzbots, and he wants America to be great again.

I know some of you had a rough day. The market hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park the past week. Worldwide, central banks are falling flat on their collective faces, stuck with negative interest rates. Here at home, our central bank wants to try something different.

Instead of fighting the fires with water, they want to try shooting gasoline out from their hoses, at a very high psi, in order to see if it will extinguish those pesky little flames.

3 rate hikes for ’16, says the Sanfransicko Fed President.

What I’m about to show you is the strongest seasonal trend going in the market, along with ‘buy TLT in the summer.’

Like clockwork, energy stocks rip higher from January through April. Starting May, things start to sour, rapidly, in the oil patch. You’d be remiss to ignore this data.

Oil stocks are being ravaged today.

WTI showing some material weakness.

Ignore at your own peril.

APC has rallied quite a bit from the lows, but not today.

Naturally, they’re talking their book, as you would expect. But I find it fascinating, that on call after call, these oil companies are reporting record oil production levels. What happened to the theory that low prices would force production offline? The only lines being created in the oil patch are of the unemployment varietal. These companies have not stopped producing. Clearly, the pain hasn’t been maximized.

Notes via Briefing:

Company believes they will continue to see improvement of commodity prices with near term volatility.

Oil industry is in a ‘much better’ place than it was in at the end of last quarter.

Continue to see a ‘pretty strong’ interest from people looking to buy property from APC.

$700 mln of divestitures in Q2 expected. They will update cash and volume impacts once completed.

Company does not expect to increase capital budget in 2016, even if oil prices were to rise above $50/barrel.

Co has reduced cost per well ‘pretty significantly’ over the last quarter.

Believe they will be flat Y/Y on oil volumes.

Full disclosure, I never wanted markets to go down, but it was bound to happen. After all, rejection of a rally predicated upon crude trading higher isn’t a rally at all. The best tell, as far as I’m concerned, was the Apple warning.

But here we are, with markets getting slammed, as predicted almost to the precise day by yours truly. But you don’t see me bragging or comporting myself in a way that could be misconstrued as being a ‘poor winner.’

No.

Instead, you see me here, handling my effervescent victories with grace and the type of panache you’d expect from a space alien magician (SAM).

Markets are plunging.

Italy is getting meat ball’d because they have the worst banks.

Commodity stocks have rolled over and have begun to die.

Not even our dearly beloved Dow with all of its Caterpillar shares could withstand the barrage of sell orders.

The ark floats.

The Citi team is out with a doomful note of grave concern today, citing a sundry of reasons to be fearful, heretofore, of a global recession.

The reasons are clear and forthwith.

China, Emerging markets, political risk, U.S. economy surprisingly weak, and world central banks are out of ammo.

China’s recent return to a credit- and investment-led growth model “appears likely to exacerbate existing credit and investment excesses, and increase risks of an eventual credit and financial bust or a long-lasting period of low growth,” writes Citi’s team.
Emerging markets haven’t been fixed just yet
EM asset prices have been flattered by two things—”both of which may prove temporary,” write Rahbari and Co. While the U.S. dollar is weaker and expectations of an aggressive Fed tightening cycle have receded, “structural issues persist throughout many EM countries,” they say.
Omnipresent political risk
“A number of political risks threaten, including the risk of Brexit following the UK’s E.U. referendum on 23 June,” writes Citi.

The world’s economic engine is sputtering
“U.S. activity remains surprisingly weak,” the economists note.

If the whole rally since February is predicated upon some magical resurgence in crude oil prices and a stabilization of China, one would be hard pressed to defend that thesis under any minor degree of cognitive thinking and subsequent debate. Along those lines, should the price of crude drop again into the $30’s, it’d be supremely interesting to see how markets could absorb such a blow to its most central concern.