• Dirty Money Runs Deep at These Five Banks
• Nikola Founder and Inventor of Hill-Powered Truck Steps Down
• Godfather Trump Gives TikTok Global His Blessing
• The Truth About Today’s Bloodbath in Stocks

 FINANCE 

Dirty Money Runs Deep at These Five Banks

In shocking news that surprises no-one, global banks have allowed dirty money to run rampant through their organizations for nearly two decades.

Five banks — JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon — facilitated the movement of trillions of tainted dollars, according to a bombshell report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. (Join the ICIJ now and claim your free old-timey hat and a piece of paper that says “PRESS” on it.)

Everything’s coming up the International Consortium of Investigative journalists!

Between 1999 and 2017, these banks moved more than $2 trillion that were flagged as possible money laundering or other criminal activity by their own internal compliance officers, because it was more profitable to do crime than to not do crime.

The report shows that these banks profited from moving money from dangerous and sexy criminals, even as US authorities fined them for moving money for dangerous and sexy criminals. (When the fines are lower than the profits from the rime, why stop?)

In some cases, banks moved dirty money for mobsters, fraudsters, or corrupt regimes, even as US officials threatened them with criminal prosecution and a mild scolding if they didn’t stop.

“By utterly failing to prevent large-scale corrupt transactions, financial institutions have abandoned their roles as front-line defenses against money laundering,” Paul Pelletier, a former senior U.S. Justice Department official and financial crimes prosecutor, told the International Consortium of News Dweebs.

The ICIJ’s report was based on leaked suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks and other financial firms with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), obtained by the Very Serious Journalists at Buzzfeed News. (Click here to take our “Which Corrupt Financial Institution Are You?” quiz.)

The leaked documents, known by their nom de guerre: the FinCen Files, document 2,100 reports of suspicious activity, totaling more than $2 trillion in transactions, between 1999 and 2017.

It’s worth noting that the “suspicious activity report” themselves aren’t immediate proof of wrongdoing. However, it’s also worth noting that these reports represent less than 0.02% of the more than 12 million suspicious activity reports filed during that period.

Some of the most fun examples of willful ignorance from the report include:

• Standard Chartered knowingly moved money on behalf of a business accused of laundering money for the Taliban.
• HSBC allowed a Ponzi scheme banned in three states to move more than $15 million.
• And pretty much everyone processed millions of dollars in transactions for the fraudster and wanted fugitive Viktor Khrapunov, even after Interpol issued a Red Notice for his arrest.

 TECH 

Nikola Founder and Inventor of Hill-Powered Truck Steps Down

Nikola founder and Executive Chairman Trevor Milton is stepping down amid allegations of fraud, lying to investors, and pushing a truck to the top of a hill and letting it roll down.

The electric vehicle company finds itself under an uncomfortable amount of scrutiny, following a report from short-seller Hindenburg Research alleging its “proprietary technology” was a bunch of cool science fiction that didn’t actually work.

The resulting brouhaha has prompted the DOJ to brouha-vestigate whether Nikola misled investors, including one instance of filming a truck rolling down a hill and presenting it as a working prototype.

With zero emissions and requiring no fuel, Nikola’s hill-powered truck is technically the greenest vehicle in the world.

Milton will be succeeded by Stephen Girsky, a former GM exec who sits on the truck company’s board, and had no previous knowledge of the potentially fraudulent behavior, I’m sure.

Our old pal Trevor, who’s Twitter outbursts will be dearly missed, said he would step down, so the focus is on the business. (Which is what folks who did nothing wrong do all the time. Quit their job because they’re just so darn distracting.)

In a separate Twitter post, which definitely hadn’t passed through the Nikola PR department, Trev said he intended to defend himself against “false allegations leveled against me by outside detractors.”

All of this has done little to quell investor’s concerns over Nikola. A week after the EV company went public, the company was valued at $30 billion. Today, it’s down to about $13 billion.

 POLITICS 

Godfather Trump Gives TikTok Global His Blessing

President Trump has given his blessing to a deal that will rescue TikTok from an impending US ban and this will be the last time I’m writing about it until this stupid app IPOs next year.

In a sentence that I never thought I’d have to write, US tech company Oracle is joining forces will not-a-tech-company Walmart to form TikTok global, a new company headquartered here in the US.

“I have given the deal my blessing,” Trump said. “I approve the deal in concept.”

The president’s blessing — “on this, the day of my Walmart’s wedding” — seems to put the button on this whole banning TikTok thing. However, tech security experts have warned that the deal fails to address the national security concerns that started the whole dumpster fire in the first place.

“The interactions with the Chinese government, and the ability of the Chinese government to put pressure on the ByteDance company, is still substantial,” Chris Kelly, former chief privacy officer at Facebook, told NPR.

“It won’t be strange to have interaction between the two companies on a number of different issues, including algorithmic operations, so that could stretch into personal data pretty easily.”

Despite a claim from the president that this new, equally annoying incarnation of TikTok will have “nothing to do with China”, TikTok’s Beijing owners ByteDance has released a statement saying it will own 80% of the US-based company.

According to ByteDance, as part of the deal, the crack team of Oracle and Walmart will take TikTok Global public on US markets within 12 months.

In Other News

(Source)

ONE LAST THING

The Truth About Today’s Bloodbath in Stocks
By Money & Crisis Editor Graham Summers

We went into some detail on the stock market’s likely trajectory last Friday, but in light of this morning’s bloodbath, I know many of you are worried about what’s to come.

First and foremost, this correction was to be 100% expected. Markets are living, dynamic entities. And like people, they can get “exhausted” from pushing too hard or overextending themselves.

With that in mind, take a look at how stretched the S&P 500 was from its 50-day moving average (DMA) during this recent rally (purple circle) relative to recent tops (red circles). The markets were EXTREMELY overbought and exhausted going into this correction.

Again, it is HIGHLY unusual for the market to be this stretched and NOT stage a significant correction. This was a VERY expected move and the fact that stocks are falling should NOT be very worrisome from a technical perspective.

So, What Is Likely to Play Out Here?

I believe stocks will likely put in a new low this week, before preparing for their next leg up. In terms of price action, I expect something like this to unfold:

We’ve already seen this play out once before. Take a look at similarities between this recent correction /consolidation and the one the S&P 500 experienced in June 2020.

This is what I’m watching this week.

MARKET MOVEMENTS

Closing Data for Today

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