TITAN25 USAF E-4B Nightwatch west from JBA
This is Secretary of Defense departing for Singapore, Hanoi and Manila stops
SAM954 USAF C-32A nw also from JBA
99-6143 USAF C-32B north from Savannah Int'l Airport, GA overnight and on final at Hagerstown Regional Airport
>morning
Deutsche Bank Enabled ‘Massive’ U.S. Ponzi Scheme, Lawsuit Says
Deutsche Bank AG is accused of turning a blind eye to a years-long Ponzi scheme that involved fraudulent investments in Florida, expanding the growing list of legal and compliance headaches for Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing.
Liquidators of two now-bankrupt Cayman Islands investment funds sued the bank in New York and Florida, claiming it “enabled theft on a massive scale” that led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, court records show. Deutsche Bank maintained accounts for entities involved in the scheme despite repeated red flags and SEC sanctions against them, and it failed to enforce its own rules to prevent money laundering, the suits allege. “As we have maintained, these claims lack merit and we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves,” a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman said by email.
Deutsche Bank has been wrestling for years with claims of lax internal controls, and it’s paid out billions of dollars in fines to resolve criminal and civil cases. Recently, it was accused of mis-selling foreign-exchange derivatives in Spain, the U.S. Federal Reserve has slammed the lender for ongoing compliance failures, and the German watchdog Bafin expanded the mandate of the anti-money-laundering monitor it installed at the bank. Sewing, who was promoted to CEO in 2018, has been trying to get a grip on the bank’s compliance issues and is in the final stretch of a four-year turnaround plan. He has said that he still has work to do on fixing the lender’s controls. The CEO recently ceded responsibility over the investment bank and the corporate bank to another management board member, Fabrizio Campelli, and he shifted oversight over compliance and anti-financial crime away from Chief Risk Officer Stuart Lewis to legal head Stefan Simon. The departures of two senior executives global FX head Jonathan Tinker and the head of the wind-down unit, Louise Kitchen are linked to the internal probe into the alleged derivatives mis-selling, Bloomberg News has reported.
The two complaints involving the bankrupt Cayman Islands funds shine a light on Deutsche Bank’s long record of insufficient money-laundering controls. The first case was filed last year by liquidators of Madison Asset LLC, and the other was filed earlier this month by liquidators of entities known as the Biscayne group of companies, which invested in Florida real estate. Prosecutors said they used shell companies and Deutsche Bank accounts to hide debt and raise additional cash from investors for entities they knew were effectively insolvent. The new money went to pay off older debt and investors, to capitalize a money-losing real estate company and to benefit the schemers themselves, the government said. Two people involved in the funds have already pleaded guilty to U.S. money-laundering charges, including one who opened a Deutsche Bank account on behalf of Madison in 2014, court records show.
According to one of the lawsuits, some Deutsche Bank staffers in early 2016 flagged suspicious activity in the related accounts but the firm failed to act decisively on them. Deutsche Bank continued serving the fund even after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order to Biscayne in May 2016, the liquidators said in their complaints. In a December court filing, Deutsche Bank said it “made a series of information requests to the Madison-managed entities in 2016 and 2017 that went unanswered or to which the entities provided incomplete responses.” When the entities failed to provide the information, the bank notified Madison that it was closing the account at the end of August 2017, Deutsche Bank said.
The cases are Martin Nicholas John Trott et al v. Deutsche Bank, 20-cv-10299, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), and Michael Pearson et al v. Deutsche Bank, 21-cv-22437, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/deutsche-bank-enabled-massive-u-s-ponzi-scheme-lawsuit-says-1.1632224
US Services PMI Plunges Unexpectedly To 5-Month Lows As Business Outlook Slumps
After US Services PMI (and ISM) unexpectedly plunged from record highs in June, analysts expected the plunge to stop in preliminary July data (despite an ongoing downtrend in 'hard' economic data performance)... they were wrong.
While US Manufacturing picked up modestly from 62.1 to 63.1 (better than the 62.0 expected), US Services tumbled further to 59.8 from 64.6 (well below the 64.5 expected). That is the weakest Services print since February. The drop in Services weighed heavily on the US Composite which dropped to 4-month lows.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-services-pmi-plunges-unexpectedly-5-month-lows-business-outlook-slumps
good morning B
China's Xi Jinping visits Tibet for first time as president
China's President Xi Jinping visited the Tibet Autonomous Region on July 21-22, according to the official Xinhua news agency, in his first recorded visit as leader of the nation.
Xi flew into the city of Nyingchi on Wednesday and took a train to Tibetan capital Lhasa the following day along a section of the high-elevation railway being built to link the mountainous border region with Sichuan province.
In Lhasa, Xi visited a monastery and the Potala Palace Square, and "inspected ethnic religion" and Tibetan cultural heritage protection, according to Xinhua. The palace is the traditional home of Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is in exile and has been branded a dangerous separatist by Beijing. In Nyingchi, he also inspected rural rejuvenation and environmental protection. Tibet, on China's border with India, is seen as having critical strategic importance to Beijing. Last year China and India saw the most serious clash in decades on their disputed border in the Himalayas, with deaths on both sides.
Photos released by Xinhua show Xi was accompanied by Zhang Youxia, a vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission and a senior general in the People's Liberation Army. Xi was last in Tibet in 2011, when he was vice president. Beijing sent troops into Tibet in 1950 in what it officially terms a peaceful liberation and maintains a heavy security presence in the region, which has been prone to unrest.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-s-Xi-Jinping-visits-Tibet-for-first-time-as-president
Russia raises key rate to 6.5% in sharpest move since 2014
Russia’s central bank increased its key interest rate to 6.5% on Friday to curb stubbornly high inflation and indicated that further rate increases were possible even after the 100 basis point hike, its sharpest since late 2014.
The decision to raise the rate from 5.5% was in line with the forecast in a Reuters poll. The Bank of Russia had raised rates by 50 basis points last month. Friday’s decision, its fourth rate increase this year, came after annual consumer inflation, the central bank’s main area of responsibility, overshot expectations and accelerated to 6.5% in June, its highest since August 2016 when the key rate was at 10.5%. “If the situation develops in line with the baseline forecast, the Bank of Russia will consider the necessity of further key rate increase at its upcoming meetings,” the central bank said in a statement.
The central bank said inflation was at 6.5% as of July 19 and will finish this year at 5.7-6.2% before returning to 4.0-4.5% in 2022. The central bank targets inflation of 4%.
High inflation eats into living standards and has been a key concern among households ahead of September parliamentary elections in which the ruling party United Russia is widely expected to retain its dominance. Higher rates help tame consumer inflation by making borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive, while also supporting the rouble by buttressing demand for Russia’s high-yielding assets. The rouble hit 73.5125 versus the dollar after the rate decision, its strongest level since July 6.. On the flip side, pricier credit can hamper economic growth. But the central bank said had revised its forecasts and now expects the economy to grow by 4.0-4.5% in 2021 versus its earlier projection of 3-4% growth.
Governor Elvira Nabiullina will shed more light on the central bank’s forecasts and monetary policy plans during an online news conference at 1200 GMT. The next rate-setting meeting is scheduled for Sept. 10.
https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-economy-rates/update-3-russia-raises-key-rate-to-6-5-in-sharpest-move-since-2014-idUSL8N2OZ2BP