California election officials are defending against cyberattacks — without any help from D.C.

California election officials are guarding their voting machines and registration lists against Russian hackers — although no one has spotted any.

“I operate under the assumption that hacking is actually happening and California is a target,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla says.

“This year, there’s a big focus on several congressional races that could determine the House majority. The stakes in California have national implications.”

But would the Russians actually try to change election outcomes?

“I have no doubt that if they could, they would,” says Padilla, a Democrat who’s heavily favored to win reelection in November.

Hacking into California’s voting system and altering votes, however, is considered by most experts to be practically impossible. That’s because voting machines aren’t hooked up to the internet. State law forbids it. A hacker might attack one machine but couldn’t reach into the entire vote-collecting system.

“We invited the Department of Homeland Security to try to hack into our system,” says Joe Holland, Santa Barbara County’s recorder-assessor and president of the state association of election officials. “They stayed five days and couldn’t do it.”

Voter registration lists are different, however.

“People are registered online. Records are connected to the internet. And hackers could break into those,” says Matt Bishop, a UC Davis computer science professor. “They could create chaos by disenfranchising voters.”

Why would Russians want to do that? To tick off Americans and undermine the credibility of U.S. elections — to further divide us and exacerbate political polarization. This was their goal in interfering with the 2016 presidential election — that and helping President Trump beat Hillary Clinton, who really irked Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fomenting discord also is achieved by spreading false information — “fake news” — on social media, including Twitter and Facebook.

Like what?

“Everything from directing people to the wrong polling places — that happens,” Padilla says. “And there’s the age-old tactic of trying to tell voters that the election is on a different date. Two years ago, they were saying that provisional ballots aren’t counted. That’s absolutely not true.”

Yes, there were lies flowing through the internet that thousands of boxes of provisional ballots were stacked in warehouses, never to be opened. Some people actually believed it.

A provisional ballot is cast when someone shows up at a voting place and isn’t listed on the precinct registration list. The voter might have gone to the wrong location. Rather than send the person packing, a provisional ballot is handed out. And the voter is checked out later.

More here:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-california-election-cyberattack-20180813-story.html

The sheer pandemonium in Turkey continues.

It's not just Turkey's currency and sovereign bonds that have resumed their plunge today: Turkish stocks are all sharply lower, with the Borsa Istanbul down over 4% after being sharply lower earlier. However, that's in local currency terms: in dollar terms, Turkish stocks are now at their lowest level since March 2009.

So far in 2018, the local stock market has lost a fifth of its value in lira terms, but a whopping 55% in USD terms, while banks - which Goldman recently warned would see their excess capital wiped out if the lira hits 7.1 - have fared especially bad with the BIST 100 bank sector down 7.4% on Monday, 40.7% in local currency terms for the year to date, and down a whopping 70% YTD.

“Within the current backdrop, we view banks as being vulnerable to Turkish Lira depreciation given that it impacts,” Goldman warned last week.

However, another even more troubling move has been seen in Turkey’s credit default swaps which are "shooting through the roof" because the economy is heavily indebted and there is "widespread fear that a good part of these claims will have to be cancelled," wrote Commerzbank analyst Ulrich Leuchtmann.

As shown in the chart below, five-year Turkish CDS soared over 125bps to more than 550 today, the highest since 2008, and surpassing the similar maturity CDS for Greece.

Leuchtmann continued his dire outlook on Turkey, and warned that USDTRY would "strive towards infinity" on the currency market, noting that "exchange rates can then no longer be reasonably projected."

The commerzbank punchline:

"if confidence disappears as radically as in Turkey at present, money loses its value totally. This effect is domestically called hyperinflation."

Meanwhile, since a state receives most of its revenue in its domestic currency, it must either adjust its tax rates as quickly as hyperinflation gallops – which is hardly practicable or the government cannot service its FX-denominated debt any more.

His advice: impose capital controls immediately, as they would at least temporarily curb capital flight “would perhaps be the best solution from today’s point of view.” However, the bigger problem is that for Turkey, which desperately needs capital inflows…

… capital controls would also be a death sentence, if only a somewhat delayed one, as the economy would implode and it would become impossible to roll over or refi any USD-denominated debt, resulting in a wave of corporate defaults, once again sending the lira into the Venezuelan stratosphere.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-13/commerzbank-warns-turkey-facing-hyperinflation-cds-explodes

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned holding any direct talks with the United States, state TV reported. Khamenei rejected an offer last month by US President Donald Trump for talks with no preconditions with Tehran, Reuters said. “I ban holding any talks with America,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by TV. “America never remains loyal to its promises in talks… just gives empty words… and never retreats from its goals for talks.” On his official Twitter account in English, Khamenei said that “recently, US officials have been talking blatantly about us. Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations.” The statement added: “In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE US.”

https://www.rt.com/newsline/435825-iran-khamenei-us-talks/

JORDAN: Bruce Ohr Holds Key to Many Answers in Trump-Russia Investigation

By Sara Carter | August 13, 2018 | 7:37 AM EDT

Documents reveal Bruce Ohr's close relationship with ex-British spy and anti-Trump dossier author, Christopher Steele Congressmen believe Ohr can provide answers to many of their questions Steele and Ohr communicated about Russian aluminum magnate, Oleg Deripaska

More:

https://saraacarter.com/rep-jordan-bruce-ohr-holds-key-to-many-answers-in-trump-russia-investigation/

Bayer Shares Crash Most On Record After Monsanto Cancer Trial Loss

Bayer AG shares are down over 12% this morning - the biggest drop ever - to the lowest levels since October 2013, amid investor anxiety over the potential future legal costs associated with newly-acquired Monsanto's RoundUp weedkiller.

As we detailed Friday, a San Francisco Jury awarded $289 million in damages to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who said Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller gave him terminal cancer.

The trial was an important test of the evidence against Monsanto and will serve as a template for litigating thousands of other claims over the herbicide.

As Bloomberg reports, the verdict surprised Bayer investors and may stir up memories of the scandal over cholesterol-lowering pill Lipobay, said Markus Mayer, an analyst with Baader Bank AG. Bayer paid more than $1.1 billion to settle suits over the heart drug.

“Investors might worry that this will become a ‘Lipobay 2.0,’” Mayer said.

The company, whose market value fell by more than 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) Monday, says Roundup is safe.

“They’re going to appeal, and we’re going to have to see what happens then,” said Ulrich Huwald, an analyst with Warburg Research in Hamburg. Even if Bayer doesn’t face similar verdicts in other cases, the company may need to pay out settlements. “As the northern Germans say, ‘In court and on the high seas, you’re in God’s hands.’”

Bayer closed a deal to buy Monsanto for $66 billion in June. If the litigation generates large verdicts, it could have a material impact on Bayer’s bottom line, said Chris Perrella, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-13/bayer-shares-crash-most-record-after-monsanto-cancer-trial-loss

>>2581710

Musk: "I Said "Funding Secured" After Meeting With Saudis", Admits It Wasn't

Following a weekend of conflicting news between Reuters and Bloomberg, with the former saying the Saudis were not interested in taking Tesla private, while the latter said there were negotiations between Tesla and the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, while some investors sued Tesla for fraud and market manipulation even as the SEC has been sniffing to find out if Musk's "funding secured" tweet was true, moments ago Elon Musk published an damage control update on the Tesla going private transaction.

In the report Musk says that "on August 2nd, I notified the Tesla board that, in my personal capacity, I wanted to take Tesla private at $420 per share…. My proposal was based on using a structure where any existing shareholder who wished to remain as a shareholder in a private Tesla could do so, with the $420 per share buyout used only for shareholders that preferred that option."

Musk first explains why he made a public announcement on Twitter:

The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn’t be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly. To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.

He then laid out the recent contact he had with the Saudi fund:

"going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private. They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil. They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction."

"Obviously" maybe, but did they guarantee that any of this capital would be allocated toward an MBO? It appears it was a matter of semantics:

Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5% of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time. I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.

And here is where the "funding secured" statement came from:

I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving. This is why I referred to “funding secured” in the August 7th announcement.

But was the funding really secured? Apparently not, because in the very next paragraph Musk writes that "following the August 7th announcement, I have continued to communicate with the Managing Director of the Saudi fund. He has expressed support for proceeding subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals. He has also asked for additional details on how the company would be taken private, including any required percentages and any regulatory requirements."

More:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-13/musk-publishes-update-tesla-going-private-transaction-explains-funding-secured

>>2581737

This is weird