Tag: naked capitalism

Eviction Moratorium Deemed Unconstitutional by Federal Judge in Texas

Mary Pat Campbell
Eviction Moratorium Deemed Unconstitutional by Federal Judge in Texas

Excerpt:

Judge J. Campbell Barker of the Eastern District of Texas, sided with plaintiffs who challenged the CDC’s eviction moratorium on Constitutional grounds. We’ve embedded the opinion for Terkel v. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the end of this post. Even though some will be inclined to dismiss the ruling as politically-motivated (Barker was a Trump nominee), recall that it was the Trump Administration that first launched the eviction freeze. It initially ran through December 31, and covered tenants who gave their landlord a declaration attesting that the made less than $100,000 a year, had suffered a large hit to their income, were seeking assistance and would pay as much rent as they could. The Biden Administration planned to extend the moratorium to the end of March.

Bear in mind that the eviction halt dumped the cost of keeping coronavirus-whacked workers housed on landlords, rather than having the government provide income or rental subsidies.

Before we turn to the reasoning of the ruling, keep in mind that Judge Barker did not issue an injunction against the CDC’s moratorium, since the CDC apparently made noises at trial that they’d withdraw the moratorium if they lost. However, Barker told the plaintiffs they could come back and seek an injunction if the CDC didn’t play nice. There is no indication yet as to whether the Administration will appeal.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 26 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Chief GameStop Tout and Registered Representative Keith Gill, Target of Class Action Suit, at Congressional Hearings Today

Mary Pat Campbell
Chief GameStop Tout and Registered Representative Keith Gill, Target of Class Action Suit, at Congressional Hearings Today

Excerpt:

The filing argues that Gill’s Roaring Kitty/DeepFuckingValue persona was a ruse, intended to hide his status as an industry professional who’d bought GameStop at prices averaging $5. The filing curiously doesn’t include Gill’s (presumably not faked) E*Trade account shots as part of the ruse, since any registered rep is normally required to trade only though his employer.1

The tricky part is that securities fraud, and this is a securities fraud case, requires establishing intent, which the lawyers call scienter, as in knowing in advance that what they were doing was wrong. The fact that Gill has so many securities licenses will make it pretty much impossible for him to pretend that he didn’t know what the relevant rules were. So his defense is likely to rest on “Gee, I thought this was a great trade. How was I to know so many people would agree and make the same bet?”

The filing makes a good go at pre-rebutting that. Even though Gill initially depicted his YouTube channel as being about general financial education, it became more and more fixated on GameStop, with “at least” 56 of 80 presentations devoted to it, and many of them discussing its vulnerability to a short squeeze. Virtually all of his tweets from July 2020 were about GameStop.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Criminal Tax Cheat Robert Smith of Private Equity Firm Vista Gets a Pass for Conduct Worse Than Apollo’s Leon Black, Now in Epstein Doghouse

Mary Pat Campbell
Criminal Tax Cheat Robert Smith of Private Equity Firm Vista Gets a Pass for Conduct Worse Than Apollo’s Leon Black, Now in Epstein Doghouse

Excerpt:

Smith, who has a $7 billion net worth and is best known for having paid off the student debt of the 2019 graduates of Morehouse College, paid $139 million, admitted to guilt, and agreed to cooperate in the criminal tax fraud case against Texas software billionaire Robert T. Brockman, where the Feds allege $2 billion in tax evasion over 20 years. Brockman put Smith’s Vista in business as the sole investor in its first fund, via a $1 billion capital commitment.

Before we get to the details of the aggressive influence-peddling deployed to keep Smith from being indicted, bear in mind why it’s certain Smith got off easy.

First, the IRS unearthed that Smith’s hidden income, estimated at $200 million, via external means, in this case, being accused by his former wife. That lead probably led to other digging, say probing with Suspicious Activity Reports from Smith’s banks. That means that “more than $200 million” is pretty certain to be the minimum amount of money Smith stashed away from the taxman’s eyes. If Smith had been indicted, prosecutors would have done discovery on Smith’s accounts and probably on those of individuals and companies whose dealings with Smith could possibly have been part of his schemes.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 10 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Monetary Policy and Racial Inequality

Mary Pat Campbell
Monetary Policy and Racial Inequality

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The gap between the income and wealth of black and white households in the US is large and persistent. According to the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the median wealth of a white household is almost nine times higher than that of a black household. The income gap is smaller (1.7 times) but still large.  Moreover, these gaps are as large as they were 50 years ago (Kuhn et al. 2020).  Concern about racial inequality has increased recently with evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate effect on the black community (Bertocchi and Dimico 2020). These stark facts have attracted the attention of economists (e.g. Mayhew and Wills 2020, Chetty et al. 2018) and policymakers. For instance, Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, recently stated that the Federal Reserve “can play an important role in helping to reduce racial inequities and bring about a more inclusive economy”.1

A prominent line of thinking is that an accommodative monetary policy lowers unemployment rates and increases labour income for marginal workers, who are oftentimes low-income and minority households. This is what Coibion et al. (2014) call the earnings channel of monetary policy.  More specifically, Carpenter and Rodgers (2004) show that a monetary policy accommodation reduces the gap between the unemployment rates of black and white households.

Author(s): By Alina Kristin Bartscher, PhD candidate, University of Bonn, Moritz Kuhn, Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Bon, Moritz Schularick, Professor of Economics, University of Bonn, CEPR Research Fellow, Member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin-Brandenburg and Paul Wachtel, Professor of Economics, New York University Stern School of Business. Originally published at VoxEU

Publication Date: 10 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

The Fatuous Uproar About Robinhood and GameStop

Mary Pat Campbell
The Fatuous Uproar About Robinhood and GameStop

Excerpt:

First, the spectacle of the Senate wasting its time, in the middle of a pandemic, on some trading junkies maybe having not made as much money as they felt entitled to, is pathetic. It shows how warped the priorities of our putative elites are. This is secondary market trading in one bloody stock. Secondary market trading is societally unproductive (more on that shortly) and should be discouraged by increasing transaction costs (this is one of the big reasons to push for a financial transactions tax, not for revenue purposes, although that’s a nice side bennie, but to shrink the financial casinos).

The company is unimportant. The parties on both sides are competitors in a beauty contest between Cinderella’s ugly sisters: clueless new gen day traders versus clumsy shorts, many of whom look inept at the basic survival requirement of managing trading risk. And as we’ll address in due course, the real bad guy, the SEC for promoting such a socially unproductive market, has yet to receive the criticism it deserves. It’s simply bizarre that cheap market liquidity is being treated as some sort of right.

The focus has been the traders on Robinhood, a free trading platform, although some of the bigger low-cost services also had some trading halts in GameStop. These punters are surprised that a free service might not give them the best, or any execution in a bad market? Did they not work out that they were the product and having their order flow to Citadel might not be a great position to put themselves in?1 Or as Financial Times reader AM put it:

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 29 January 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Negative Interest Rates Are Coming, but There Is No Chance That They Will Work

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/02/negative-interest-rates-are-coming-but-there-is-no-chance-that-they-will-work.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

As The Guardian and many other newspapers reported yesterday, the Bank of England yesterday announced that it was preparing the ground for negative official interest rates within six months.

As the Bank has suggested, this does not mean that there will be negative rates. But unless they allow for the possibility if that now they will, as they admit, restrict their policy options. In that case this announcement has to be seen as creating the possibility of negative nominal interest rates.

….

Sixth, it is an unfortunate fact that this will not work. As I have already noted, in practice we already have real negative interest rates. There is nothing new then about this policy. And since existing negative rates have not stopped people saving, making such rates official will have little macro impact. After a crisis people are cautious. They are willing to pay the price of a government guarantee. And if that is a negative interest rate, so be it. I suggest that will continue to be true for several years based on past trends.

My suggestion is, then, that the Bank can try this policy but it will be a vain attempt to stimulate the economy that will not succeed. Much more radical thinking is required to achieve that. I will address that in another post, soon. I will link it when it is up.

Author(s): Yves Smith, Richard Murphy

Publication Date: 6 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Mayberry v. KKR: Kentucky Attorney General Shows True Colors, Looks Over-Eager to Settle Pathbreaking Pension Case Rather Than Inconvenience Private Equity Kingpins Blackstone and KKR

Mary Pat Campbell
Mayberry v. KKR: Kentucky Attorney General Shows True Colors, Looks Over-Eager to Settle Pathbreaking Pension Case Rather Than Inconvenience Private Equity Kingpins Blackstone and KKR

Excerpt:

A key hearing next week, on February 8, ought to shed some light on how Judge Philip Shepherd intends to deal with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is showing perilous little respect for the judge’s desire to move the landmark pension case, Mayberry v. KKR, along in a disciplined manner after it has languished for over three years. We’ve embedded Judge Shepherd’s order of December 28, the Attorney General’s request for an extension of time, and the Tier 3 Plaintiffs’ Motion of Opposition to the Attorney General’s extension of time. You can see the other major filings, including the complaint by the Tier 3 members that they hope to get leave to file, here.

We need to cover a lot of background before getting to the elephant in the room, that the timing of the Attorney General’s intervention looks suspect, particularly since he is a protege of Mitch McConnell and the suit he pulled from the jaws of apparent death by his intervention fingers heavyweight Republican donors Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone and Henry Kravis of KKR personally, along with their firms. Political insiders in Kentucky believe that Cameron needed some good headlines after getting considerable criticism in the national press for going easy on the cops that shot Brionna Taylor. One theory was that the revival of this lawsuit was also effectively a shakedown: Cameron would give the private equity firms a “cost of doing business” settlement, with no embarrassing discover, with an expected quid pro quo in dark money payments. Another theory is that Cameron might pursue the case a little but still enter into a cheapie settlement if he can use discovery to damage the Beshears, a Democratic party dynasty that had their fingers all over the Kentucky Retirement System mess.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 5 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

More Jockeying on Kentucky Pension Case, Mayberry v. KKR

Mary Pat Campbell
More Jockeying on Kentucky Pension Case, Mayberry v. KKR

Excerpt:

A short update on the Mayberry v. KKR, a pathbreaking public pension suit targeting customized hedge funds designed for the sitting duck Kentucky Retirement Systems by Blackstone, KKR, and PAACO. The litigation is on track to becoming a Jarndyce v Jarndyce level case study in the (mis)use of procedure to delay a case. 

…..

I neglected to add that one reason for trying another amendment as opposed to a new filing would be to assure that Shepherd remained the trial judge. New cases are assigned randomly to judges and the other judge in Frankfort is pro-corporate. However, the Attorney General’s Motion to Intervene was assigned to Shepherd’s colleague, and he bounced it over to Shepherd, so that risk looks to no longer be operative.

Author: Yves Smith

Publication Date: 8 January 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism