Anonymous ID: be3c6c June 21, 2021, 8 a.m. No.64964   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Spectators at Tokyo Olympic venues capped at 10,000

 

Olympic organizers on Monday decided on a spectator limit of 10,000, or up to 50% of capacity, per venue for domestic fans at the Games that open in just over a month.

 

The decision came after the government lifted the state of emergency in Tokyo and other prefectures on Sunday. Although a quasi-state of emergency will be in place in Tokyo, the spectator limit at large events is expected to lifted to 10,000 after the restriction is lifted on July 11. Currently, the upper limit is at 50% of capacity or 5,000 people. Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto told reporters that organizers will hold a meeting to consider steps such as banning spectators if there is any rapid increase in infections and the medical system comes under strain. Currently, 3.64 million tickets have been sold. Organizers are aiming to cut the number to 2.72 million through a lottery, for which details will be unveiled later this week. "We will reduce the number of spectators in a fair manner," Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto said. Due to the spectator limit, ticket revenue will be "less than half" of the 90 billion yen ($819 million) it had originally expected, Muto added. He said Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the national government and Tokyo 2020 would discuss how to make up for the loss.

 

At all venues, those involved with the Games such as sponsors and officials of international sports federations will not be included in the numbers to be cut. "They are not spectators but they are one of the organizers," Muto said. Students in a schools' spectator program will be also exempted from the reduction -- 590,000 tickets have been sold through this program. The opening ceremony will be attended by fewer than 20,000 people including spectators and those stakeholders. Asked if the stakeholders will be allowed to attend should all the spectators are banned under the state of emergency, Muto did not provide a clear answer. "It is possible to think that they could be allowed to enter the venue because they are not spectators," Muto said. "We will consider it carefully when the games will be held behind closed doors," he added.

 

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Monday that if a new state of emergency is declared during the games, it is possible they will be held behind closed doors. "When the declaration is needed, we will prioritize people's safety while flexibly considering banning spectators," Suga added. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said before the meeting: "If there should be a major dramatic change in the infection situation, we need to revisit this among ourselves, and we may need to consider the option of having no spectators in the venues."

 

Organizers have waited until the last minute to decide on domestic spectators as "it has been difficult to judge the situation" as the infection status is changing all the time, Tokyo 2020 president Seiko Hashimoto told reporters last week. Shigeru Omi, the government's top medical adviser on COVID-19, proposed to organizers on Friday that holding the Olympics behind closed doors is "desirable" to tame infection risks, claiming it was the least risky way to hold the games. The remote meeting on Monday was attended by the Tokyo and national governments, Tokyo 2020, and the International Olympic and Paralympic Committee. At the meeting, IOC president Thomas Bach said that "well above 80%" of athletes who will stay at the Olympic Village will be vaccinated, and "much closer to the 80%" of foreign journalists are expected to be vaccinated.

 

"We have also made it very clear to all the participants that whether vaccinated or not, that all the rules apply, always, to everybody," Bach added." We will continue to work together with you to ensure these safe and secure games... I can only say, here we go... and we are ready."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Tokyo-2020-Olympics/Spectators-at-Tokyo-Olympic-venues-capped-at-10-000

Anonymous ID: be3c6c June 21, 2021, 8:21 a.m. No.64966   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Supreme Court sends Goldman Sachs case back to lower court

 

The Supreme Court on Monday sent a case involving a shareholder class-action lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS, 1.87% back to a lower court. The high court ruled that a federal appeals court needs to again consider whether the suit can proceed. Investors led by the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System filed the suit, which accused the bank of hiding conflicts of interest related to mortgage-backed securities.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/supreme-court-sends-goldman-sachs-case-back-to-lower-court-2021-06-21

Anonymous ID: be3c6c June 21, 2021, 8:33 a.m. No.64968   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>4973 >>4988 >>4997 >>5007

Experts Have Been Warning for Months of an Unprecedented Stock Market Bubble Set to Explode

 

One thing is for sure. When the current stock market bubble does eventually crash, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is not going to be able to sit before Congress and tell lawmakers that nobody could have seen it coming. Wall Street veterans have gone on record repeatedly in recent months to warn of a coming crash.

 

Last week Michael Burry, who heads the hedge fund Scion Asset Management and was immortalized in “The Big Short” movie for making a fortune shorting subprime debt before it collapsed in the 2008 crash, took to Twitter with the latest of these warnings. (The Tweets were subsequently deleted after they were heavily publicized in the business media and retweeted.)

On Tuesday, Burry Tweeted this: “People always ask me what is going on in the markets. It is simple. Greatest Speculative Bubble of All Time in All Things. By two orders of magnitude. #FlyingPigs360.”

On Thursday, Burry upped the ante, warning that the crash would “approach the size of countries.” Burry wrote: “All hype/speculation is doing is drawing in retail before the mother of all crashes. #FOMO Parabolas don’t resolve sideways; When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, #MainStreet losses will approach the size of countries. History ain’t changed.”

FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.”

 

The next day, Friday, June 18, Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad Tweeted this: “Biggest bubble in world history getting bigger. Biggest crash in world history coming. Buying more gold and silver. Waiting for Bitcoin to drop to $24 k. Crashes best time to get rich. Take care.”

 

It should be noted that not all crashes are the best time to get rich. After the market crashed beginning in 1929 it took 25 years for the stock market to regain the peak it set in 1929. As for buying Bitcoin at $24,000, you might want to consider this: The Smartest Guys in the Room Call Bitcoin “Rat Poison Squared,” “a Colossal Pump-and-Dump Scheme” and “a Big Criminal Scam” but Federal Regulators Look the Other Way.

 

The warnings have been punctuated with ever-growing cracks in the plumbing, raising the specter that a major rupture could occur at any time. In the last week of March, a hedge fund that wasn’t on anyone’s radar, Archegos Capital Management, blew itself up, bringing down by 50 percent the share prices of some of the stocks it had pumped up using 85 percent leverage. Major investment banks had made the highly-leveraged margin loans to Archegos, including Credit Suisse, Nomura, UBS, Morgan Stanley and others. It cost the banks more than $10 billion in losses when Archegos couldn’t meet the margin loans.

 

The debacle revealed that Wall Street mega banks were up to their old games again – secretly loaning out their balance sheets to hedge funds while simultaneously denying the public and regulators the ability to see the massive levels of concentrated risk. (See Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)

 

According to the 13F filings that five of the largest Wall Street banks made with the SEC for the quarter ending December 31, 2020, they hold a combined $2.66 trillion in stock – either for themselves, their customers, or highly-leveraged hedge funds like Archegos. The breakdown is as follows:

Bank of America: $776.2 Billion

JPMorgan Chase: $680.6 Billion

Morgan Stanley: $647.47 Billion

Goldman Sachs: $388.6 Billion

Citigroup: $169.39 Billion

Each of these financial institutions also own federally-insured banks. JPMorgan Chase is the largest federally-insured depository bank in the United States. In addition to its common stock holdings, the federal regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), reports that as of December 31, 2020 JPMorgan Chase is also sitting on $2.65 trillion in stock derivatives. What has been holding this Wall Street house of cards together this long is the New York Fed’s willingness (even eagerness) to throw trillions of dollars at the problem at the earliest sign of a hiccup. The fly in this ointment is that the New York Fed is literally owned by these same Wall Street mega banks while simultaneously creating emergency bailout programs and then outsourcing the work to the banks being bailed out.

 

If ever there was the perfect design for a replay of the Hindenburg, this is it.

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/experts-have-been-warning-for-months-of-an-unprecedented-stock-market-bubble-set-to-explode/

Anonymous ID: be3c6c June 21, 2021, 9:53 a.m. No.64987   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>4988 >>4997 >>5007

KPMG Faces $21 Million Fine for H.I.G. Capital Conflict

 

KPMG U.K. Ltd. faces a 15 million pound ($21 million) fine after it committed “gross misconduct” over a conflict of interest when it advised bed manufacturer Silentnight and the private equity firm that bought it in 2011.

 

The U.K.’s audit regulator said the conflict with H.I.G. Capital LLC was “obvious” in documents prepared for a sanctions hearing Monday. The Financial Reporting Council said that KPMG “lost their objectivity and dishonestly advanced, or associated themselves with, misleading statements,” with misrepresentations repeated on eight separate occasions. The tribunal’s executive counsel also recommended that David Costly-Wood, an ex-KPMG partner who worked on the sale, face a personal fine of at least 500,000 pounds and be stripped of his membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales for 15 years. A fine of anything over 15 million pounds would represent a record for the FRC, after it ordered Deloitte LLP to pay that amount for its failures over the audit of Autonomy Corp. “The tribunal’s draft findings relate to restructuring work performed over a decade ago,” said KPMG U.K. in an emailed statement. “We will consider those findings and our options for a possible appeal at the appropriate time. We disagree with a number of the arguments being advanced by Executive Counsel at the sanctions hearing.”

 

Costley-Wood didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his LinkedIn. He has since left KPMG.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/kpmg-faces-21-million-fine-for-h-i-g-capital-conflict-1.1619775