Alright so it is currently over $60 a share and has gone up $9 just this week alone. Having just been listed for public trading in 2019, they have already rocketed over 300%. They just expanded a partnership with Canada for NFL fantasy sports.
Online gambling is the future and more and more states are going to be legalizing it in the future. If the 3 big states New York, California, and Texas legalize online sports betting that will be a 30 billion dollar increase in the industry.
Earnings is 2/26 so plenty of time to ride it up. Not to mention how many people are going to be using DraftKings this weekend for the SUPERBOWL!
This is not financial advise, I just like the stock.
Current position is $54 Call 2/12

Alright degenerates, if you want to make some easy money in the long run. Start looking into DraftKings. It’s not going to make you rich overnight but has the potential to double in price over the next year.
Currently over $60 a share and having just been listed for public trading in July of 2019, they have already rocketed over 300%.
They just expanded a partnership with Canada for NFL fantasy sports.
Online gambling is the future and more and more states are going to be legalizing it in the future. If the 3 big states New York, California, and Texas legalize online sports betting that will be a 30 billion dollar increase in the industry.
Earnings is 2/26 so plenty of time to ride it up. Not to mention how many people are going to be using DraftKings this weekend for the SUPERBOWL!
This is not financial advise, I just like the stock.
Current position is $54 Call 2/12

How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All

TL:DR: yes its long. Grab a beer.

Until his dying day in 2014, Nelson Bunker Hunt, who had once been the world’s wealthiest man, denied that he and his brother plotted to corner the global silver market.
Sure, back in 1980, Bunker, his younger brother Herbert, and other members of the Hunt clan owned roughly two-thirds of all the privately held silver on earth. But the historic stockpiling of bullion hadn’t been a ploy to manipulate the market, they and their sizable legal team would insist in the following years. Instead, it was a strategy to hedge against the voracious inflation of the 1970s—a monumental bet against the U.S. dollar.
Whatever the motive, it was a bet that went historically sour. The debt-fueled boom and bust of the global silver market not only decimated the Hunt fortune, but threatened to take down the U.S. financial system.
The panic of “Silver Thursday” took place over 35 years ago, but it still raises questions about the nature of financial manipulation. While many view the Hunt brothers as members of a long succession of white collar crooks, from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, others see the endearingly eccentric Texans as the victims of overstepping regulators and vindictive insiders who couldn’t stand the thought of being played by a couple of southern yokels.
In either case, the story of the Hunt brothers just goes to show how difficult it can be to distinguish illegal market manipulation from the old fashioned wheeling and dealing that make our markets work.
The Real-Life Ewings
Whatever their foibles, the Hunts make for an interesting cast of characters. Evidently CBS thought so; the family is rumored to be the basis for the Ewings, the fictional Texas oil dynasty of Dallas fame.
Sitting at the top of the family tree was H.L. Hunt, a man who allegedly purchased his first oil field with poker winnings and made a fortune drilling in east Texas. H.L. was a well-known oddball to boot, and his sons inherited many of their father’s quirks.
For one, there was the stinginess. Despite being the richest man on earth in the 1960s, Bunker Hunt (who went by his middle name), along with his younger brothers Herbert (first name William) and Lamar, cultivated an image as unpretentious good old boys. They drove old Cadillacs, flew coach, and when they eventually went to trial in New York City in 1988, they took the subway. As one Texas editor was quoted in the New York Times, Bunker Hunt was “the kind of guy who orders chicken-fried steak and Jello-O, spills some on his tie, and then goes out and buys all the silver in the world.”
Cheap suits aside, the Hunts were not without their ostentation. At the end of the 1970s, Bunker boasted a stable of over 500 horses and his little brother Lamar owned the Kansas City Chiefs. All six children of H.L.’s first marriage (the patriarch of the Hunt family had fifteen children by three women before he died in 1974) lived on estates befitting the scions of a Texas billionaire. These lifestyles were financed by trusts, but also risky investments in oil, real estate, and a host of commodities including sugar beets, soybeans, and, before long, silver.
The Hunt brothers also inherited their father’s political inclinations. A zealous anti-Communist, Bunker Hunt bankrolled conservative causes and was a prominent member of the John Birch Society, a group whose founder once speculated that Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent” of Soviet conspiracy. In November of 1963, Hunt sponsored a particularly ill-timed political campaign, which distributed pamphlets around Dallas condemning President Kennedy for alleged slights against the Constitution on the day that he was assassinated. JFK conspiracy theorists have been obsessed with Hunt ever since.
In fact, it was the Hunt brand of politics that partially explains what led Bunker and Herbert to start buying silver in 1973.
Hard Money
The 1970s were not kind to the U.S. dollar.
Years of wartime spending and unresponsive monetary policy pushed inflation upward throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, in October of 1973, war broke out in the Middle East and an oil embargo was declared against the United States. Inflation jumped above 10%. It would stay high throughout the decade, peaking in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution at an annual average of 13.5% in 1980.
Over the same period of time, the global monetary system underwent a historic transformation. Since the first Roosevelt administration, the U.S. dollar had been pegged to the value of gold at a predictable rate of $35 per ounce. But in 1971, President Nixon, responding to inflationary pressures, suspended that relationship. For the first time in modern history, the paper dollar did not represent some fixed amount of tangible, precious metal sitting in a vault somewhere.
For conservative commodity traders like the Hunts, who blamed government spending for inflation and held grave reservations about the viability of fiat currency, the perceived stability of precious metal offered a financial safe harbor. It was illegal to trade gold in the early 1970s, so the Hunts turned to the next best thing.
📷

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; chart by Priceonomics

As an investment, there was a lot to like about silver. The Hunts were not alone in fleeing to bullion amid all the inflation and geopolitical turbulence, so the price was ticking up. Plus, light-sensitive silver halide is a key component of photographic film. With the growth of the consumer photography market, new production from mines struggled to keep up with demand.
And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases were big enough to move the global market.
But silver was not the Hunts' only speculative venture in the 1970s. Nor was it the only one that got them into trouble with regulators.
Soy Before Silver
In 1977, the price of soybeans was rising fast. Trade restrictions on Brazil and growing demand from China made the legume a hot commodity, and both Bunker and Herbert decided to enter the futures market in April of that year.
A future is an agreement to buy or sell some quantity of a commodity at an agreed upon price at a later date. If someone contracts to buy soybeans in the future (they are said to take the “long” position), they will benefit if the price of soybeans rise, since they have locked in the lower price ahead of time. Likewise, if someone contracts to sell (that’s called the “short” position), they benefit if the price falls, since they have locked in the old, higher price.
While futures contracts can be used by soybean farmers and soy milk producers to guard against price swings, most futures are traded by people who wouldn’t necessarily know tofu from cream cheese. As a de facto insurance contract against market volatility, futures can be used to hedge other investments or simply to gamble on prices going up (by going long) or down (by going short).
When the Hunts decided to go long in the soybean futures market, they went very, very long. Between Bunker, Herbert, and the accounts of five of their children, the Hunts collectively purchased the right to buy one-third of the entire autumn soybean harvest of the United States.
To some, it appeared as if the Hunts were attempting to corner the soybean market.
In its simplest version, a corner occurs when someone buys up all (or at least, most) of the available quantity of a commodity. This creates an artificial shortage, which drives up the price, and allows the market manipulator to sell some of his stockpile at a higher profit.
Futures markets introduce some additional complexity to the cornerer’s scheme. Recall that when a trader takes a short position on a contract, he or she is pledging to sell a certain amount of product to the holder of the long position. But if the holder of the long position just so happens to be sitting on all the readily available supply of the commodity under contract, the short seller faces an unenviable choice: go scrounge up some of the very scarce product in order to “make delivery” or just pay the cornerer a hefty premium and nullify the deal entirely.
In this case, the cornerer is actually counting on the shorts to do the latter, says Craig Pirrong, professor of finance at the University of Houston. If too many short sellers find that it actually costs less to deliver the product, the market manipulator will be stuck with warehouses full of inventory. Finance experts refer to selling the all the excess supply after building a corner as “burying the corpse.”
“That is when the price collapses,” explains Pirrong. “But if the number of deliveries isn’t too high, the loss from selling at the low price after the corner is smaller than the profit from selling contracts at the high price.”
📷

The Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. Photo credit: Jeremy Kemp

Even so, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that a single family from Texas had contracted to buy a sizable portion of the 1977 soybean crop, they did not accuse the Hunts of outright market manipulation. Instead, noting that the Hunts had exceeded the 3 million bushel aggregate limit on soybean holdings by about 20 million, the CFTC noted that the Hunt’s “excessive holdings threaten disruption of the market and could cause serious injury to the American public.” The CFTC ordered the Hunts to sell and to pay a penalty of $500,000.
Though the Hunts made tens of millions of dollars on paper while soybean prices skyrocketed, it’s unclear whether they were able to cash out before the regulatory intervention. In any case, the Hunts were none too pleased with the decision.
“Apparently the CFTC is trying to repeal the law of supply and demand,” Bunker complained to the press.
Silver Thursday
Despite the run in with regulators, the Hunts were not dissuaded. Bunker and Herbert had eased up on silver after their initial big buy in 1973, but in the fall of 1979, they were back with a vengeance. By the end of the year, Bunker and Herbert owned 21 million ounces of physical silver each. They had even larger positions in the silver futures market: Bunker was long on 45 million ounces, while Herbert held contracts for 20 million. Their little brother Lamar also had a more “modest” position.
By the new year, with every dollar increase in the price of silver, the Hunts were making $100 million on paper. But unlike most investors, when their profitable futures contracts expired, they took delivery. As in 1973, they arranged to have the metal flown to Switzerland. Intentional or not, this helped create a shortage of the metal for industrial supply.
Naturally, the industrialists were unhappy. From a spot price of around $6 per ounce in early 1979, the price of silver shot up to $50.42 in January of 1980. In the same week, silver futures contracts were trading at $46.80. Film companies like Kodak saw costs go through the roof, while the British film producer, Ilford, was forced to lay off workers. Traditional bullion dealers, caught in a squeeze, cried foul to the commodity exchanges, and the New York jewelry house Tiffany & Co. took out a full page ad in the New York Times slamming the “unconscionable” Hunt brothers. They were right to single out the Hunts; in mid-January, they controlled 69% of all the silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX) in New York.
📷

Source: New York Times

But as the high prices persisted, new silver began to come out of the woodwork.
“In the U.S., people rifled their dresser drawers and sofa cushions to find dimes and quarters with silver content and had them melted down,” says Pirrong, from the University of Houston. “Silver is a classic part of a bride’s trousseau in India, and when prices got high, women sold silver out of their trousseaus.”
According to a Washington Post article published that March, the D.C. police warned residents of a rash of home burglaries targeting silver.
Unfortunately for the Hunts, all this new supply had a predictable effect. Rather than close out their contracts, short sellers suddenly found it was easier to get their hands on new supplies of silver and deliver.
“The main factor that has caused corners to fail [throughout history] is that the manipulator has underestimated how much will be delivered to him if he succeeds [at] raising the price to artificial levels,” says Pirrong. “Eventually, the Hunts ran out of money to pay for all the silver that was thrown at them.”
In financial terms, the brothers had a large corpse on their hands—and no way to bury it.
This proved to be an especially big problem, because it wasn’t just the Hunt fortune that was on the line. Of the $6.6 billion worth of silver the Hunts held at the top of the market, the brothers had “only” spent a little over $1 billion of their own money. The rest was borrowed from over 20 banks and brokerage houses.
At the same time, COMEX decided to crack down. On January 7, 1980, the exchange’s board of governors announced that it would cap the size of silver futures exposure to 3 million ounces. Those in excess of the cap (say, by the tens of millions) were given until the following month to bring themselves into compliance. But that was too long for the Chicago Board of Trade exchange, which suspended the issue of any new silver futures on January 21. Silver futures traders would only be allowed to square up old contracts.
Predictably, silver prices began to slide. As the various banks and other firms that had backed the Hunt bullion binge began to recognize the tenuousness of their financial position, they issued margin calls, asking the brothers to put up more money as collateral for their debts. The Hunts, unable to sell silver lest they trigger a panic, borrowed even more. By early March, futures contracts had fallen to the mid-$30 range.
Matters finally came to a head on March 25, when one of the Hunts’ largest backers, the Bache Group, asked for $100 million more in collateral. The brothers were out of cash, and Bache was unwilling to accept silver in its place, as it had been doing throughout the month. With the Hunts in default, Bache did the only thing it could to start recouping its losses: it start to unload silver.
On March 27, “Silver Thursday,” the silver futures market dropped by a third to $10.80. Just two months earlier, these contracts had been trading at four times that amount.
The Aftermath
After the oil bust of the early 1980s and a series of lawsuits polished off the remainder of the Hunt brothers’ once historic fortune, the two declared bankruptcy in 1988. Bunker, who had been worth an estimated $16 billion in the 1960s, emerged with under $10 million to his name. That’s not exactly chump change, but it wasn’t enough to maintain his 500-plus stable of horses,.
The Hunts almost dragged their lenders into bankruptcy too—and with them, a sizable chunk of the U.S. financial system. Over twenty financial institutions had extended over a billion dollars in credit to the Hunt brothers. The default and resulting collapse of silver prices blew holes in balance sheets across Wall Street. A privately orchestrated bailout loan from a number of banks allowed the brothers to start paying off their debts and keep their creditors afloat, but the markets and regulators were rattled.
Silver Spot Prices Per Ounce (January, 1979 - June, 1980)
📷

Source: Trading Economics

In the words of then CFTC chief James Stone, the Hunts’ antics had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the United States” like nothing had in decades. Writing about the entire episode a year later, Harper’s Magazine described Silver Thursday as “the first great panic since October 1929.”
The trouble was not over for the Hunts. In the following years, the brothers were dragged before Congressional hearings, got into a legal spat with their lenders, and were sued by a Peruvian mineral marketing company, which had suffered big losses in the crash. In 1988, a New York City jury found for the South American firm, levying a penalty of over $130 million against the Hunts and finding that they had deliberately conspired to corner the silver market.
Surprisingly, there is still some disagreement on that point.
Bunker Hunt attributed the whole affair to the political motives of COMEX insiders and regulators. Referring to himself later as “a favorite whipping boy” of an eastern financial establishment riddled with liberals and socialists, Bunker and his brother, Herbert, are still perceived as martyrs by some on the far-right.
“Political and financial insiders repeatedly changed the rules of the game,” wrote the New American. “There is little evidence to support the ‘corner the market’ narrative.”
Though the Hunt brothers clearly amassed a staggering amount of silver and silver derivatives at the end of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove definitively that market manipulation was in their hearts. Maybe, as the Hunts always claimed, they just really believed in the enduring value of silver.
Or maybe, as others have noted, the Hunt brothers had no idea what they were doing. Call it the stupidity defense.
“They’re terribly unsophisticated,” an anonymous associated was quoted as saying of the Hunts in a Chicago Tribune article from 1989. “They make all the mistakes most other people make,” said another.
p.s. credit to Ben Christopher

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
I am doing a separate post for the insurrection and related events. I think it is important to make sure the news in this post doesn't get overlooked.
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Russia

A new report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) found that Trump political appointees politicized intelligence around foreign election interference in 2020, resulting in significant errors. ODNI analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf delivered the report to Congress on Thursday: “Analysis on foreign election interference was delayed, distorted or obstructed out of concern over policymaker reactions or for political reasons.” The biggest misrepresentation of intel involved diminishing the threat posed by Russia and overstating the risk of interference from China.

“Russia analysts assessed that there was clear and credible evidence of Russian election influence activities. They said IC management slowing down or not wanting to take their analysis to customers, claiming that it was not well received, frustrated them. Analysts saw this as suppression of intelligence, bordering on politicization of intelligence from above.”

WaPo: Zulauf, a career official, also found an “egregious” example of attempted politicization of the Russian interference issue in March talking points on foreign election threats, prepared “presumably by ODNI staff” and “shaped by” then-Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

The Justice Department and the federal judiciary revealed that the Russian Solar Winds hack also compromised their computer systems. 3% of the DOJ’s Microsoft Office 365 were potentially affected; it does not appear that classified material was accessed. The impact on the judiciary seems much more significant, jeopardizing “highly sensitive confidential documents filed with the courts.”

The sealed court files, if indeed breached, could hold information about national security, trade secrets and wiretap transcripts, along with financial data from bankruptcy cases and the names of confidential informants in criminal cases...

Appointees

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has accused U.S. Agency for Global Media Director Michael Pack of funneling $4 million in nonprofit funds to his own for-profit company. In a civil lawsuit filed last week, Racine states that for over 12 years, Pack used a nonprofit company he owned to direct money to his private documentary company, enabling “Pack to line his company’s coffers with a stream of tax-exempt dollars without...a competitive bidding process, public scrutiny, or accounting requirements regarding its spending.”
Employees at Voice of America have filed a whistleblower complaint accusing Pack of using the agency “to disseminate political propaganda in the waning days of the Trump administration. The staffers take issue with a planned speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be broadcast from VOA headquarters. The event, to be attended by a live audience, “is a specific danger to public health and safety” in the middle of a pandemic. Finally, the whistleblowers say the event is “ a gross misuse of government resources,” costing at least $4,000 in taxpayer funds to date and using 18 employees who would otherwise be producing VOA content.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has announced his appointees to the panel set to rename confederate military bases and plan the removal of confederate symbols/monuments. Most controversially, Miller named White House liaison Joshua Whitehouse, who oversaw the purge of the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Business Board last month. The other three Miller-appointees are former acting Army general counsel Earl Matthews, acting assistant secretary of Defense Ann Johnston, and White House official Sean McLean. The remaining four members will be appointed by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

The 10 Army posts named in honor of Confederate generals are Camp Beauregard and Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.

Trump

The Trump Inaugural Committee, a nonprofit, improperly paid a $49,000 hotel bill that should have been picked up by Trump’s for-profit business. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine revealed the allegation in an existing lawsuit against the committee, which already accuses Trump’s hotel of illegally pocketing about $1 million of donors’ money. “The Trump Organization was liable for the invoiced charges...The [Committee’s] payment of the invoice was unfair, unreasonable and unjustified and ultimately conferred improper private benefit to the Trump Organization.”
The Professional Golfer’s Association voted last night to move the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s Bedminster course. Jim Richerson, PGA of America president, said in a statement that “it has become clear that conducting” the championship at Trump’s property would “be detrimental to the PGA of America brand” and put the organization's ability to function "at risk."
Amid speculation that Trump may spend inauguration day at his Scottish golf course, Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned him that even presidents can’t break the country’s pandemic restrictions. “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose,” she said.
Trump is on a Presidential Medal of Freedom spree, giving out the award to sports figures and Republican allies. Last Monday, Trump awarded the medal to Rep. Devin Nunes for his work undermining the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s election interference. “Devin Nunes’ courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president,” the White House press release states. Likewise, Trump gave the medal to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for his “effort to confront the impeachment witch hunt” and “exposing the fraudulent origins of the Russia collusion lie.”

The day after Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol, Trump awarded the medal to retired professional golfers Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player. The president planned on giving New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick the medal on Thursday, but he declined the offer, saying that “the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award.”

Courts

Dominion Voting Systems filed suit against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation. Powell falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez, and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract,” the lawsuit states. Citing millions spent on security for employees, damage control to its reputation, and future losses, Dominion requests damages of more than $1.3 billion.

Dominion's lawyer told reporters last week the lawsuit against Powell “is just the first in a series of legal steps.” Ari Cohn, a free speech and defamation lawyer, told WaPo: “If I had to guess I would say that [Poulos] wants a very public vindication with a ruling establishing that Sidney Powell defamed them and that her statements were baseless...That's not something you generally get in a settlement agreement.”
Just last week, Trump again said at a rally that Dominion machines allowed “fraudulent ballots” to be counted during the 2020 election (clip).

The Supreme Court declined to fast track eight Trump-related cases related to the 2020 election, ensuring they won’t be taken up before Biden’s inauguration. The cases include one brought by attorney Lin Wood against Georgia’s Secretary of State, the so-called “Kraken” cases, and three brought by Trump’s campaign. It is possible the lawsuits will be declared moot after Biden is sworn in.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases alleging that the Treasury Dept. incorrectly distributed Coronavirus aid meant for tribal governments. The Lower 48 Tribes argue that Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) are not eligible for CARES Act funding, while the Trump administration wants to divvy up the money between tribes and ANCs.

Immigration

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s final attempt to restrict U.S. asylum laws. District Judge James Donato (Obama appointee) ruled in favor of advocacy groups who argued that acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf lacked authority to impose the new rules, which would have resulted in the denial of most asylum applications.

“The government has recycled exactly the same legal and factual claims made in the prior cases, as if they had not been soundly rejected in well-reasoned opinions by several courts,” Donato wrote. “This is a troubling litigation strategy. In effect, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping that someday it might break through.”

On Monday, acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf submitted his resignation, citing the recent court ruling that he is not a valid appointee to the position. His resignation letter does not cite the Capitol riots or Trump’s language inciting the insurrection. FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor will be the new acting secretary.

"Unfortunately, this action is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary. These events and concerns increasingly serve to divert attention and resources away from the important work of the Department in this critical time of a transition of power," Wolf added.

A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy will make it harder for immigrant minors to obtain asylum in the U.S. The change was made at the end of last month by then-acting agency leader Tony Pham, who served in the position for less than five months.

Beginning Dec. 29, ICE officers were told that they must review whether an immigrant child is still “unaccompanied” each time they encounter the minor… The memo indicates that the evaluation by ICE officers can come at any time, including when an officer is reviewing immigration court records of a child, and if it’s determined that an immigrant is no longer unaccompanied, they will move to change their status.
Such a change could lead to making some children ineligible to have their asylum claims initially heard and processed… “If implemented aggressively, this policy could significantly decrease the number of children who ultimately receive asylum in the United States,” said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are really putting the onus on ICE officers to do everything they can as frequently as they can to remove these designations.”

The Trump administration is still awarding border wall contracts, even in areas where private land has not yet been acquired. The move will make it more difficult for Biden to stop construction of the border wall.

Attempts to halt construction completely, as Biden promised, will prove difficult, particularly if contracts continue to be struck -- a challenge [acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark] Morgan acknowledged Tuesday. "They could terminate those contracts if they want to, but that's going to be a very lengthy, messy process," Morgan said.
"We're going to have to go into settlement agreements with each individual contractor," Morgan added, noting, that payments will have to be made for what they've already done, as well as for materials produced. He estimated the process could cost billions.

Trump is set to visit Alamo, Texas, today to celebrate the completion of more than 400 miles of the border wall. You can watch the event on YouTube at 3:00 pm eastern.

Miscellaneous

Stories that didn’t fit in the above categories...
The Trump administration auctioned off leases to drill oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week. Only two private companies bid, each winning large tracts of land. Knik Arm Services, from Alaska, paid $1.6 million for a 50,000-acre tract along the Arctic Ocean. A subsidiary of Australian company 88 Energy paid $800,000 to win the smallest tract.
One of the Health and Human Services Department’s final acts under Trump was finalizing the removal of Obama-era regulations barring discrimination among HHS grantees. The change will allow recipients of federal grant money - like adoption and foster agencies - to discriminate against LGBTQ people and those of a different religion.

Human Rights Campaign: “Statistics suggest that an estimated two million LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are interested in adoption… Further, research consistently shows that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, as many have been rejected by their families of origin because of their LGBTQ status, and are especially vulnerable to discrimination and mistreatment while in foster care. This regulation would only exacerbate these challenges faced by LGBTQ young people.

Story Time: Silver short squeeze

How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All

TL:DR: yes its long. Grab a beer.

Until his dying day in 2014, Nelson Bunker Hunt, who had once been the world’s wealthiest man, denied that he and his brother plotted to corner the global silver market.
Sure, back in 1980, Bunker, his younger brother Herbert, and other members of the Hunt clan owned roughly two-thirds of all the privately held silver on earth. But the historic stockpiling of bullion hadn’t been a ploy to manipulate the market, they and their sizable legal team would insist in the following years. Instead, it was a strategy to hedge against the voracious inflation of the 1970s—a monumental bet against the U.S. dollar.
Whatever the motive, it was a bet that went historically sour. The debt-fueled boom and bust of the global silver market not only decimated the Hunt fortune, but threatened to take down the U.S. financial system.
The panic of “Silver Thursday” took place over 35 years ago, but it still raises questions about the nature of financial manipulation. While many view the Hunt brothers as members of a long succession of white collar crooks, from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, others see the endearingly eccentric Texans as the victims of overstepping regulators and vindictive insiders who couldn’t stand the thought of being played by a couple of southern yokels.
In either case, the story of the Hunt brothers just goes to show how difficult it can be to distinguish illegal market manipulation from the old fashioned wheeling and dealing that make our markets work.
The Real-Life Ewings
Whatever their foibles, the Hunts make for an interesting cast of characters. Evidently CBS thought so; the family is rumored to be the basis for the Ewings, the fictional Texas oil dynasty of Dallas fame.
Sitting at the top of the family tree was H.L. Hunt, a man who allegedly purchased his first oil field with poker winnings and made a fortune drilling in east Texas. H.L. was a well-known oddball to boot, and his sons inherited many of their father’s quirks.
For one, there was the stinginess. Despite being the richest man on earth in the 1960s, Bunker Hunt (who went by his middle name), along with his younger brothers Herbert (first name William) and Lamar, cultivated an image as unpretentious good old boys. They drove old Cadillacs, flew coach, and when they eventually went to trial in New York City in 1988, they took the subway. As one Texas editor was quoted in the New York Times, Bunker Hunt was “the kind of guy who orders chicken-fried steak and Jello-O, spills some on his tie, and then goes out and buys all the silver in the world.”
Cheap suits aside, the Hunts were not without their ostentation. At the end of the 1970s, Bunker boasted a stable of over 500 horses and his little brother Lamar owned the Kansas City Chiefs. All six children of H.L.’s first marriage (the patriarch of the Hunt family had fifteen children by three women before he died in 1974) lived on estates befitting the scions of a Texas billionaire. These lifestyles were financed by trusts, but also risky investments in oil, real estate, and a host of commodities including sugar beets, soybeans, and, before long, silver.
The Hunt brothers also inherited their father’s political inclinations. A zealous anti-Communist, Bunker Hunt bankrolled conservative causes and was a prominent member of the John Birch Society, a group whose founder once speculated that Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent” of Soviet conspiracy. In November of 1963, Hunt sponsored a particularly ill-timed political campaign, which distributed pamphlets around Dallas condemning President Kennedy for alleged slights against the Constitution on the day that he was assassinated. JFK conspiracy theorists have been obsessed with Hunt ever since.
In fact, it was the Hunt brand of politics that partially explains what led Bunker and Herbert to start buying silver in 1973.
Hard Money
The 1970s were not kind to the U.S. dollar.
Years of wartime spending and unresponsive monetary policy pushed inflation upward throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, in October of 1973, war broke out in the Middle East and an oil embargo was declared against the United States. Inflation jumped above 10%. It would stay high throughout the decade, peaking in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution at an annual average of 13.5% in 1980.
Over the same period of time, the global monetary system underwent a historic transformation. Since the first Roosevelt administration, the U.S. dollar had been pegged to the value of gold at a predictable rate of $35 per ounce. But in 1971, President Nixon, responding to inflationary pressures, suspended that relationship. For the first time in modern history, the paper dollar did not represent some fixed amount of tangible, precious metal sitting in a vault somewhere.
For conservative commodity traders like the Hunts, who blamed government spending for inflation and held grave reservations about the viability of fiat currency, the perceived stability of precious metal offered a financial safe harbor. It was illegal to trade gold in the early 1970s, so the Hunts turned to the next best thing.
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Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; chart by Priceonomics

As an investment, there was a lot to like about silver. The Hunts were not alone in fleeing to bullion amid all the inflation and geopolitical turbulence, so the price was ticking up. Plus, light-sensitive silver halide is a key component of photographic film. With the growth of the consumer photography market, new production from mines struggled to keep up with demand.
And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases were big enough to move the global market.
But silver was not the Hunts' only speculative venture in the 1970s. Nor was it the only one that got them into trouble with regulators.
Soy Before Silver
In 1977, the price of soybeans was rising fast. Trade restrictions on Brazil and growing demand from China made the legume a hot commodity, and both Bunker and Herbert decided to enter the futures market in April of that year.
A future is an agreement to buy or sell some quantity of a commodity at an agreed upon price at a later date. If someone contracts to buy soybeans in the future (they are said to take the “long” position), they will benefit if the price of soybeans rise, since they have locked in the lower price ahead of time. Likewise, if someone contracts to sell (that’s called the “short” position), they benefit if the price falls, since they have locked in the old, higher price.
While futures contracts can be used by soybean farmers and soy milk producers to guard against price swings, most futures are traded by people who wouldn’t necessarily know tofu from cream cheese. As a de facto insurance contract against market volatility, futures can be used to hedge other investments or simply to gamble on prices going up (by going long) or down (by going short).
When the Hunts decided to go long in the soybean futures market, they went very, very long. Between Bunker, Herbert, and the accounts of five of their children, the Hunts collectively purchased the right to buy one-third of the entire autumn soybean harvest of the United States.
To some, it appeared as if the Hunts were attempting to corner the soybean market.
In its simplest version, a corner occurs when someone buys up all (or at least, most) of the available quantity of a commodity. This creates an artificial shortage, which drives up the price, and allows the market manipulator to sell some of his stockpile at a higher profit.
Futures markets introduce some additional complexity to the cornerer’s scheme. Recall that when a trader takes a short position on a contract, he or she is pledging to sell a certain amount of product to the holder of the long position. But if the holder of the long position just so happens to be sitting on all the readily available supply of the commodity under contract, the short seller faces an unenviable choice: go scrounge up some of the very scarce product in order to “make delivery” or just pay the cornerer a hefty premium and nullify the deal entirely.
In this case, the cornerer is actually counting on the shorts to do the latter, says Craig Pirrong, professor of finance at the University of Houston. If too many short sellers find that it actually costs less to deliver the product, the market manipulator will be stuck with warehouses full of inventory. Finance experts refer to selling the all the excess supply after building a corner as “burying the corpse.”
“That is when the price collapses,” explains Pirrong. “But if the number of deliveries isn’t too high, the loss from selling at the low price after the corner is smaller than the profit from selling contracts at the high price.”
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The Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. Photo credit: Jeremy Kemp

Even so, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that a single family from Texas had contracted to buy a sizable portion of the 1977 soybean crop, they did not accuse the Hunts of outright market manipulation. Instead, noting that the Hunts had exceeded the 3 million bushel aggregate limit on soybean holdings by about 20 million, the CFTC noted that the Hunt’s “excessive holdings threaten disruption of the market and could cause serious injury to the American public.” The CFTC ordered the Hunts to sell and to pay a penalty of $500,000.
Though the Hunts made tens of millions of dollars on paper while soybean prices skyrocketed, it’s unclear whether they were able to cash out before the regulatory intervention. In any case, the Hunts were none too pleased with the decision.
“Apparently the CFTC is trying to repeal the law of supply and demand,” Bunker complained to the press.
Silver Thursday
Despite the run in with regulators, the Hunts were not dissuaded. Bunker and Herbert had eased up on silver after their initial big buy in 1973, but in the fall of 1979, they were back with a vengeance. By the end of the year, Bunker and Herbert owned 21 million ounces of physical silver each. They had even larger positions in the silver futures market: Bunker was long on 45 million ounces, while Herbert held contracts for 20 million. Their little brother Lamar also had a more “modest” position.
By the new year, with every dollar increase in the price of silver, the Hunts were making $100 million on paper. But unlike most investors, when their profitable futures contracts expired, they took delivery. As in 1973, they arranged to have the metal flown to Switzerland. Intentional or not, this helped create a shortage of the metal for industrial supply.
Naturally, the industrialists were unhappy. From a spot price of around $6 per ounce in early 1979, the price of silver shot up to $50.42 in January of 1980. In the same week, silver futures contracts were trading at $46.80. Film companies like Kodak saw costs go through the roof, while the British film producer, Ilford, was forced to lay off workers. Traditional bullion dealers, caught in a squeeze, cried foul to the commodity exchanges, and the New York jewelry house Tiffany & Co. took out a full page ad in the New York Times slamming the “unconscionable” Hunt brothers. They were right to single out the Hunts; in mid-January, they controlled 69% of all the silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX) in New York.
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Source: New York Times

But as the high prices persisted, new silver began to come out of the woodwork.
“In the U.S., people rifled their dresser drawers and sofa cushions to find dimes and quarters with silver content and had them melted down,” says Pirrong, from the University of Houston. “Silver is a classic part of a bride’s trousseau in India, and when prices got high, women sold silver out of their trousseaus.”
According to a Washington Post article published that March, the D.C. police warned residents of a rash of home burglaries targeting silver.
Unfortunately for the Hunts, all this new supply had a predictable effect. Rather than close out their contracts, short sellers suddenly found it was easier to get their hands on new supplies of silver and deliver.
“The main factor that has caused corners to fail [throughout history] is that the manipulator has underestimated how much will be delivered to him if he succeeds [at] raising the price to artificial levels,” says Pirrong. “Eventually, the Hunts ran out of money to pay for all the silver that was thrown at them.”
In financial terms, the brothers had a large corpse on their hands—and no way to bury it.
This proved to be an especially big problem, because it wasn’t just the Hunt fortune that was on the line. Of the $6.6 billion worth of silver the Hunts held at the top of the market, the brothers had “only” spent a little over $1 billion of their own money. The rest was borrowed from over 20 banks and brokerage houses.
At the same time, COMEX decided to crack down. On January 7, 1980, the exchange’s board of governors announced that it would cap the size of silver futures exposure to 3 million ounces. Those in excess of the cap (say, by the tens of millions) were given until the following month to bring themselves into compliance. But that was too long for the Chicago Board of Trade exchange, which suspended the issue of any new silver futures on January 21. Silver futures traders would only be allowed to square up old contracts.
Predictably, silver prices began to slide. As the various banks and other firms that had backed the Hunt bullion binge began to recognize the tenuousness of their financial position, they issued margin calls, asking the brothers to put up more money as collateral for their debts. The Hunts, unable to sell silver lest they trigger a panic, borrowed even more. By early March, futures contracts had fallen to the mid-$30 range.
Matters finally came to a head on March 25, when one of the Hunts’ largest backers, the Bache Group, asked for $100 million more in collateral. The brothers were out of cash, and Bache was unwilling to accept silver in its place, as it had been doing throughout the month. With the Hunts in default, Bache did the only thing it could to start recouping its losses: it start to unload silver.
On March 27, “Silver Thursday,” the silver futures market dropped by a third to $10.80. Just two months earlier, these contracts had been trading at four times that amount.
The Aftermath
After the oil bust of the early 1980s and a series of lawsuits polished off the remainder of the Hunt brothers’ once historic fortune, the two declared bankruptcy in 1988. Bunker, who had been worth an estimated $16 billion in the 1960s, emerged with under $10 million to his name. That’s not exactly chump change, but it wasn’t enough to maintain his 500-plus stable of horses,.
The Hunts almost dragged their lenders into bankruptcy too—and with them, a sizable chunk of the U.S. financial system. Over twenty financial institutions had extended over a billion dollars in credit to the Hunt brothers. The default and resulting collapse of silver prices blew holes in balance sheets across Wall Street. A privately orchestrated bailout loan from a number of banks allowed the brothers to start paying off their debts and keep their creditors afloat, but the markets and regulators were rattled.
Silver Spot Prices Per Ounce (January, 1979 - June, 1980)
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Source: Trading Economics

In the words of then CFTC chief James Stone, the Hunts’ antics had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the United States” like nothing had in decades. Writing about the entire episode a year later, Harper’s Magazine described Silver Thursday as “the first great panic since October 1929.”
The trouble was not over for the Hunts. In the following years, the brothers were dragged before Congressional hearings, got into a legal spat with their lenders, and were sued by a Peruvian mineral marketing company, which had suffered big losses in the crash. In 1988, a New York City jury found for the South American firm, levying a penalty of over $130 million against the Hunts and finding that they had deliberately conspired to corner the silver market.
Surprisingly, there is still some disagreement on that point.
Bunker Hunt attributed the whole affair to the political motives of COMEX insiders and regulators. Referring to himself later as “a favorite whipping boy” of an eastern financial establishment riddled with liberals and socialists, Bunker and his brother, Herbert, are still perceived as martyrs by some on the far-right.
“Political and financial insiders repeatedly changed the rules of the game,” wrote the New American. “There is little evidence to support the ‘corner the market’ narrative.”
Though the Hunt brothers clearly amassed a staggering amount of silver and silver derivatives at the end of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove definitively that market manipulation was in their hearts. Maybe, as the Hunts always claimed, they just really believed in the enduring value of silver.
Or maybe, as others have noted, the Hunt brothers had no idea what they were doing. Call it the stupidity defense.
“They’re terribly unsophisticated,” an anonymous associated was quoted as saying of the Hunts in a Chicago Tribune article from 1989. “They make all the mistakes most other people make,” said another.
p.s. credit to Ben Christopher

Hello there! I just found this subreddit. Also I’m not too sure this belongs in the subreddit but i think it might. Also on mobile so if I miss anything I apologize!
So a bit of backstory:
At the time of one of the many times this has happened to me, I was visiting Las Vegas with my family for Christmas. I was 21 at the time, my birthday was that past August, so I was in legal age to gamble and/or drink. I just wanted to try to gamble at one of the casinos.
We were staying at the Treasure Island hotel and casino, in which I loved staying there and would recommend anyone whom asked me where would they stay. Anyways, I’m am from and still live in Texas as I have a bit of a Texan draw and accent, but my voice was still a bit higher than it is now. I had made a few friends at that casino that were around my same age, and we were playing the Dragon Spin slot machine. I made a joke about the luck I had, I had hit one of the three slot games where the dragon would roar and shake the game, and got close to $200 I think. With it happening 3 years ago I’m not for sure on the little details.
Then came the incident.....
I told my two friends that I was sitting with that I was going to go cash out because I didn’t want to gamble what I had earned away and I was going to start over on $20 that I had brought with me specifically for the trip. (In all I saved around $500 for the trip to buy souvenirs or to gamble a bit). At the time I’d only used about $50 for gambling and I was happy with that, and with the money I got from the slot game, I was well over what I had brought with me. (No im not bragging! This is part of the story!) So I go and pull the cash out and put it in my wallet that I was carrying around with me when I am grabbed by the arm by a woman with a casino manager and a security guard.
Meet the entitled windbag!
EW: this whore took my wallet and stole my money! This girl is too young to even be in here! I saw her drinking alcohol and smoking! She has to be no younger than 14 and you won’t even let my 16 year old daughter in her! She should be thrown out of here!
My eyes are as wide as saucers at this woman’s accusations. Now this grip actually bruised and ALMOST broke my arm! She grabbed me by the part of my arm closer to my shoulder. (Edit: I completely forgot the name of that bone to be honest 😅😅) Her grip was a mix of an alligator bite and a vice grip! Or at least it felt like it to me then.....
I continued to try to pull myself free when my two friends saved me.
F1 and F2 will be called Jane and Kira for the sake of the story.....
Jane: what’s going on?
Kira: you’re hurting her!
The woman let me go and practically threw me to Jane and Kira.
EW: you see she isn’t alone in soliciting her body! Throw them out NOW!
Me: hold on a second! You haven’t even let me tell my side!
I glared at the EW.
Me: first off.... this bag is mine! I have MY room key, MY license, and MY money in here so you ain’t taking shit from me lady! Secondly, I am 21 years of age yeah I look young but who cares?
When I said that I pulled out my license and room key showing what room I was in.
EW: THATS MY KEY GIVE IT TO ME NOW!
She swiped for my room key. Before she could take it, I handed it to the manager and security guard.
Me: here check my name and see which room I’m in.
Jane and Kira saw this next part but told me afterward.
The EW lunged for my wallet. Kira stood to my left side while Jane stood on my right.
Manager: -to the security guard- watch them no one leaves until we find out the truth
The Manager walked away as Kira, Jane and I glared to the EW. She began sweating and stuttering to try to pull something else.
As it turned out?
The EW wasn’t even staying at the hotel/casino! She was trying to steal from not only me but anyone she could sucker into getting money and then use the person she suckered into giving her anything she tried to ask for. I laugh at that every once in a while but cringe and get pretty hot-headed if someone insults me or anyone I know about stature, age, looks, etc.
But the most idiotic part of all this?
When the EW called all three of us hookers, whores and other profanities:
I was wearing boot cut jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt, a Jean jacket and boots!
Jane was wearing skinny jeans, a short sleeve t-shirt, a sweatshirt and converse.
And
Kira was wearing some clothes she borrowed from me which were, regular blue jeans, a tunic top, and some sandals she brought.
So were we looking like some kind of hookers? Or was this woman just too drunk?

Long time lurker, first time poster.
Before I begin.. I have never done a write up on here before, so, if I am lacking anything, welp, please be gentle. There are a bunch of pictures in the various articles linked below.
An elderly couple hadn't answered their phone in three days and their nephew, Marvin Marlin, was growing increasingly concerned. Marvin decided to go to their home but found the house was all locked up and the blinds drawn closed. He had no way to check on his aunt and uncle, so he called the police and requested a welfare check.
On June 23, 1965, Houston police officers accompanied Marvin to the home of the elderly couple. When there was no answer, they kicked the door in. Inside there was no sign of the couple or their son.
The house was a little messy, but according to Marvin, his aunt and uncle were not the neatest of people. What did seem odd was the moldy dinner on the table and the smell of rot coming from the 3-by-5 electric refrigerator in the kitchen.
After opening the freezer, police noticed the stacks and stacks of butchered hog meat.
The officers realized what they were dealing with after opening the crisper to find two human heads.
"On all the shelves and in the freezer compartment were the dismembered bodies, cut in unwrapped, washed off pieces smaller than individual joints. There was little food in the icebox."
"Whoever did this apparently took their time and knew what they were doing. The dismembering was a fairly neat job."
Edwina Rogers, 79, had been beaten and shot execution style. The killer had smashed in 81 year old Fred Rogers' head with a hammer, gouging out his eyes and removing his organs. Both were dragged to the master bedroom, drained of blood, chopped into pieces, and placed in the fridge. The organs were later found in a nearby sewer - the killer had chopped them up and flushed them down the toilet.
The house had been carefully cleaned, the only blood was discovered on the keyhole of a bedroom door. The bedroom belonged to the couples' son, 43 year old son Charles Rogers.
It was estimated that the Rogers' had been dead for three days, meaning they were murdered on Father's Day, June 20, 1965.
Charles was a recluse who only communicated with his parents via notes slipped under his bedroom door and rarely seen by neighbors.
The police never got the chance to speak with Charles, who, despite a nationwide manhunt, was never seen or heard from again. He was declared legally dead in 1975 by a Houston judge.
Charles Frederick Rogers was 43 years old and said to be extremely intelligent and with an intense interest in ham radios. He spoke several languages and had a Bachelor of Science degree in nuclear physics. He had been a pilot for the US Navy during WWII and served in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Upon discharge, he became a seismologist for Shell Oil Company. At some point in the 1950's, Charles is said to have been involved in the Civil Air Patrol where he met David Ferrie - a man later accused of being involved in the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
After 9 years with Shell, Charles inexplicably quit his job without explanation and moved in with his parents, but they rarely ever saw their son. Charles turned into a loner and recluse living in the attic bedroom.
After the murders of Fred & Edwina, an international manhunt commenced in search of Charles. Most of the Rogers' neighbors were shocked to learn they had a son at all. Those who knew about Charles, like his cousin Marvin, said Charles rarely left the house, but when he did it become dawn and he would not return until after dark.
** THEORIES *\*
1
In 1992, John R. Craig & Phillip A. Rogers documented Charles' life in the book The Man on the Grassy Knoll.
In it, the authors - who were investigators for the National Intelligence Service Bureau - claim that Charles was a CIA agent until the mid 1980's. They accuse Charles of being one of the men who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and of impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City. They say Charles was 1 of the "three tramps", along with Charles Harrelson [father of actor Woody Harrelson] and Chauncey Holt, who were arrested in Dealey Plaza after the assassination of Kennedy.
The authors also claim that this is why Charles had to kill his parents, Edwina was listening to and keeping track of Charles' CIA phone calls. The elderly couple knew too much and needed to be killed.
According to the Man on the Grassy Knoll, Charles fled to Guatemala, where he likely died of old age. The book has been heavily criticized for its complete lack of sources and blatantly fictionalized accounts of certain events, conversations and attributed thoughts.
2
In 1997, forensic accountant Hugh Gardenier and his wife, Martha, began investigating the crime themselvers. They wrote their own book detailing their theories, The Ice Box Murders.
In the book, they acknowledge that Charles had dealings with CIA contract workers while he was a seismologist for Shell, but they completely reject the notion that Charles was a CIA agent himself who needed to dismember his parents after they overheard his not so secret/secret phone calls from the attic about killing Kennedy.
Instead, the Gardeniers believe Charles was emotionally and physically abused as a child, and as an adult, by his father. Which, you know, cutting off his father's genitals on Father's Day, might confirm that a bit.
They also claim that near the end of their life, Edwina and Fred were both defrauding their son, forging his signature on deeds of land he owned, and taking out loans in his name and pocketing the money. The Gardeniers label Fred and Edwina "devious con artists." They say Fred worked as a bookie, regularly engaging in gambling and fraud, stealing large sums of money from Charles and continuing to physically abuse the grown man.
The Gardeniers claim Charles had been planning his parents' death for years and used his "powerful friends", whom he had met through his ham radio hobby while working in the oil industry, to flee to Mexico. They theorize Charles eventually ended up in Honduras where he experienced some cosmic karma when he was killed over a wage dispute with miners.
The Ice Box Murders has been called "a work of fact based fiction."
Sources:
https://truecrimesociety.com/2019/09/21/1815-driscoll-street-houston-tx/amp/
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/amp/grisly-ice-box-murders-7251178.php
https://www.houstoniamag.com/news-and-city-life/2018/11/icebox-murders
https://heresthefuckingtwist.com/2020/01/21/true-crime-tuesday-the-ice-box-murders/amp/

21 year old Preston Bolden's body was found near railroad tracks in the vicinity of 419 Nolan near the 600 block of North Walnut Street in San Antonio, Texas on May 8, 1953 around 6:00 a.m. Preston's body was found by [name redacted in the Department of Justice's closing memorandum] who was walking along the railroad tracks that morning and saw Preston's body laying between the tracks with his head pointing west and wearing a shoe only on his right foot. Thinking Preston was asleep at first, [name redacted] tried to wake Preston but then noticed he was dead so [name redacted] used a neighbor's phone to call the police. The memorandum noted that [Name redacted] was not acquainted with Preston.
Two officers [both names redacted] arrived at the scene and filed a report. They found Preston without a hat and on his back near the Southern Pacific Railway tracks. Preston's left two-tone brown and white shoe was missing and his shirt was pulled up. The officers noted that Preston had been struck in the front of the head as his face was covered with blood. They found a pair of dice and $2.30 in cash in Preston's pockets which led them to believe robbery was not the motive. Other witnesses in the area reported hearing an argument in the area but an investigation later showed that the participants in the argument were in no way related to the circumstances surrounding Preston's death. Another officer, whose name was redacted, reported that he saw an old model Plymouth with a canvas top near the railroad tracks around 3:30 a.m.
Justice of the Peace M.D. Buck Jones ruled that the cause of death was "murder at the hands of some person or persons unknown.” According to the police report, Dr. G.D. Boyd said Preston's neck was broken at the third vertebra and an autopsy found that Bolden’s spine was severed at the base of the skull by a blunt instrument. The autopsy also noted that Preston died at about 2:30 that morning.
1953 San Antonio Investigation:
The San Antonio Police Department along with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office investigated Preston's murder. Several witnesses who were acquainted with Preston told police that Preston, nicknamed Mullins, was in the company of friends the night before and was gambling with them. Their description of the night before are summarized below but contains a number of redactions:
Interview No. 1: On the evening of May 7, an acquaintance, whose name was redacted, saw Preston being followed by several men who were asking him for money. The acquaintance believed Preston had won a craps game which is why the men were asking to borrow money. There was an ongoing conversation which the acquaintance joined where one of the men in the group suggested that another group member [name redacted] should ask Preston for money since Preston liked this man more than the others in the group. This group member, following the group's wishes, asked Preston to honor one of the other men's request for money; Preston suggested that the group member lend the 50 cents requested and Preston would repay the group member once he obtained change. The group eventually all stopped at Four Hour Cleaners where Preston pulled out a wad of money and straightened up the bills on the store's counter. Preston then gave his money to the group member so he could get change. The acquaintance then saw Preston get into someone's Dodge and drive north on Chestnut Street which is the last time the acquaintance saw Preston.
Interview No. 2: [Name redacted] was with the acquaintance in Account No. 1 when he saw Preston and a group of men on the street. Preston was in the lead followed by two men [both names redacted] who were asking him for money. [Name redacted] heard the men say they had been in a craps game and Preston had "broke the other two." Acquaintance No. 1 left [name redacted] to join the group. [Name redacted] then watched the group walk to the Four Hour Cleaners after which he did not see Preston again.
Interview No. 3: [Name redacted] was a woman who knew Preston for approximately a year. On the evening of May 7, she was asleep at home but was woken up by noise outside her home. She saw a group of men shooting dice outside and recognized Preston and five others plus two soldiers in uniform. She told the group to not gamble there or else she would call the police. After the game ended, she spoke to Preston who told her not to call the police because he "had broke the rest of the fellows and he pulled out a big handful of bills." She thought there were at least several hundred dollars in his hand. She then saw him go down the street with others and never saw him again. She learned of Preston's death the following morning.
Interview No. 4: [Name redacted] told investigators that Preston came to his shop, Four Hours Cleaners, around 6:15 to 6:30 the night before. 2 men [both names redacted] followed Preston to the doorstep of the cleaners and one of the men grabbed Preston by the wrist and tried to force Preston to go with him, saying “Come on man.” When one of the men tried to stop the other from forcing Preston to go, the other man then said "you have everything you need and you don’t want anybody else to make anything.” The two men then left Preston and Preston came inside the cleaners where he told [name redacted] that the others wanted his money but he "wasn't going to be fooled into letting them have his money." Preston wanted to buy a shirt and pants from [Name redacted]'s business but he did not have enough money partly because he owed his lawyer money. Preston then asked one of the men in his group for a ride so he could get some money that was owed to him. After 15 minutes, Preston returned to the cleaners but looked like he had had a “shot of something” because he was falling asleep. Preston did not buy the pants he originally wanted to purchase but picked up his dry cleaning. Preston stepped outside as the business was closing and [name redacted] alerted one of the men in Preston's group to look after him. Preston was then observed standing in the middle of the sidewalk but sound asleep. [Name redacted] closed his shop for the night and then drove home. He did not see Preston again.
Interview No. 5: Another acquaintance of Preston's, whose name was redacted, told investigators that between 4:30-5:00 p.m., he observed Preston and a group of men shoot dice in the kitchen of the E. Commerce Bar and Café for about one and a half hours. One of the men broke even but another lost $14 by the time the game ended. Some time after, [name redacted] saw Preston and others walk towards Chestnut Street so he followed them so he could play dice as well. After 5 minutes, the woman in Interview No. 3, yelled at the men to quit playing or she would call police. [Name redacted] determined he lost $3 as Preston walked away from the game. [Name redacted] then saw Preston standing alone at a taxi stand on E. Commerce Street and did not see him again afterwards.
According to the police report, the men interviewed were booked on a vagrancy hold and one was scheduled to take a polygraph test. Due to the number of redactions, it is hard to determine which men were booked or scheduled for the polygraph test. No further information was provided about the results of the polygraph test or any further developments about the investigation.
2009 Federal Investigation:
In 2009, the FBI initiated a review of Carrie's death pursuant to the Department of Justice's Cold Case Initiative and the Emmett Till Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. The initiative sought to investigate violations of criminal civil rights statutes that occurred no later than December 31, 1969 and resulted in death. As part of its investigation, the FBI looked at contemporary newspaper articles concerning Preston's murder along with records from the Homicide Unit of the San Antonio Police Department. The FBI also contacted the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety but none of the agencies had any records on Preston. The FBI also posted public notices on the internet and other media seeking witnesses as well as relatives but no one has responded.
Four newspaper articles from the San Antonio Express provided information not reflected in police reports. Police Lieutenant W.J. Robitsch theorized that Preston had been beaten somewhere else and then transported in a car to the railroad tracks, where his body was dumped on the ground. According to one article, an “old model car” had been parked at approximately the spot where the body was found at about 3:30 a.m., and tire marks were observed near the body. Two of the articles referred to Preston as a part-time narcotics informer for the police. One article says the police arrested an unnamed suspect within an hour after Preston's body was found. The suspect reportedly heard Preston giving information to Lieutenant Robitsch.
Another article quotes Police Chief Joe Hester who said that Preston operated an “unusual racket” in that he sold keys to “gullible and amorous servicemen that would supposedly unlock doors behind which eager women were waiting." Chief Hester said the keys were “junk" and theorized that one of Preston's “suckers tracked him down” and murdered him. Police Lieutenant [name redacted] noted in one of the articles that other than the broken neck, there were no other marks on Preston.
The FBI located the former Police Lieutenant whose name was redacted but he was unable to recall Preston's murder. The FBI determined that Lieutenant Robitsch died in 1986. It is unclear if the FBI was able to find Chief Hester or interview him.
The Department of Justice closed Preston's case as there was insufficient evidence to establish that Preston's death was a racially-motivated homicide. Accordingly, the FBI declined to investigate further.
Preston's murder remains unsolved.
Links:
Department of Justice: Preston Bolden-Notice to Close File
Digital Journal: November 19, 2009-FBI Continues to Probe Civil Rights-Era Racial Murders
Discussion:
I came across the Department of Justice’s cold case initiative (Emmett Till Civil Rights Act) while reading an article discussing journalists’ efforts to install a billboard on an Arkansas highway aimed at solving the 1954 lynching of Isadore Banks. The Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice launched a website (linked above) to make information about the department’s investigation of cold cases from the Civil Rights Era more accessible to the public. As a result of the initiative, the Department of Justice has prosecuted and convicted Edgar Ray Killen for the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi (the "Mississippi Burning" case); he is the eighth defendant convicted. The Department has also been able to charge and convict perpetrators of the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama and secured a life sentence for James Ford Seale for the kidnapping and murder of two teenagers in Franklin County, Mississippi in 1964.
Unfortunately, many cases which were submitted to the Department of Justice remain unsolved due to the passage of time resulting in evidentiary and legal barriers. In each case that is not prosecutable, the Department of Justice wrote a closing memorandum explaining the investigative steps taken and the basis for their conclusion. To date, the Department of Justice has uploaded 115 closing memos. I hope to be able to post on all of the closed cases as I share in the belief with the Department of Justice that “these stories should be told [as] there is value in a public reckoning with the history of racial violence and the complicity of government officials.”
Other posts from the Department of Justice's Cold Case Initiative:
1. Isadore Banks-unsolved murder in Marion, Arkansas-June 1954
2. Willie Joe Sanford-unsolved murder in Hawkinsville, Georgia-March 1957
3. Ann Thomas-unsolved murder in San Antonio, Texas-April 1969
4. Thad Christian-murdered on August 30, 1965 in Central City, Alabama
5. Silas Caston-killed on March 1, 1964 by a Hinds County Sheriff’s Office Deputy in Jackson, Mississippi
6. Clifford "Clifton" Walker-unsolved murder in Woodville, Mississippi-February 1964
7. Jasper Greenwood- his badly decomposed body was found in Vicksburg, Mississippi in June 1964
8. Mattie Greene- killed in a bomb explosion in Ringgold, Georgia on May 19, 1960
9. Samuel O'Quinn-unsolved murder in Centreville, Mississippi-August 1959
10. Ladislado Ureste-unsolved murder in San Antonio, Texas-April 1953
11. Carrie Brumfield-unsolved murder in Franklinton, Louisiana-September 1967

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
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Trump’s playbook is Russia’s playbook

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in July withheld an intelligence bulletin warning of a Russian plot to spread misinformation regarding Joe Biden's mental health. The bulletin, titled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of U.S. Candidates to Influence 2020 Election,” was blocked by the office of acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf on July 9.

The bulletin states that analysts had “high confidence” in their conclusion. However, a DHS spokesperson tried to defend the “delay” in issuing the document by saying it did not meet the agency’s standards. This is curious because just a week later, on July 16, DHS circulated a bulletin on anarchists in Portland that officers admitted they had “low confidence” in. Why was the Russia memo held back but the Portland one released?
Trump has been pushing the same line of attack against Biden for months - yet another instance of Russia and Trump operating from the same playbook. For instance, in March Trump said there was “something going on” with Biden; in June Trump ran selectively edited ads asserting that Biden is “unfit to serve as Commander in Chief”; last month Trump ran a digital ad portraying Biden as perpetually confused and mentally unstable. Most recently, Trump said questions about his own health are only in the news because “they want to try and get me to be on Biden's physical level."

DHS is just the latest agency in the Trump administration to erode election security, following actions by the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last month. DNI John Ratcliffe announced he was ending in-person congressional briefings on election security ahead of November and AG Bill Barr removed a leading career official at the Justice Department’s national security division, replacing him with an inexperienced political appointee.
The ODNI’s decision to halt congressional election briefs may have been influenced by top White House officials. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, among others, have repeatedly discussed in meetings with staff and with Trump “how to restrict and control the flow of information on such sensitive topics to Capitol Hill.”

One White House official told The Daily Beast that Meadows has for months been wary of the type of briefings on Capitol Hill that Democratic sources can potentially use to try to make Trump look bad through surreptitious leaks to media outlets.

Meanwhile, interim Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Marco Rubio (R-FL) said last week that his committee will be granted an exception to the ODNI’s new policy and continue to receive in-person briefings from top U.S. intelligence officials about election-security issues. This essentially means that only Democrat-led committees have been cut out of the process ensuring election security.
House Democrats wrote to Ratcliffe insinuating if his office does not provide the previously scheduled briefings this month they will issue subpoenas and/or defund the ODNI in the appropriations bill due by the end of the month. Read the letter here.
In addition to attacks on Biden’s health, DHS has determined that Russia is seeking to “amplify” concerns over the integrity of U.S. elections by promoting allegations that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud. Intelligence analysts say this strategy has been underway since at least March, coinciding with Trump’s own assaults on mail-in voting.

For instance, in March Trump said if he agreed to funding vote-by-mail expansions in the first coronavirus stimulus bill, the U.S. would see “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” (clip). Fact check: Neither party has historically benefited. On April 7, at the White House press briefing, Trump claimed: "Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they're cheaters… They're fraudulent in many cases" (clip). Fact check: There is no evidence that mail ballots are dangerous or fraudulent.

At a White House press briefing on Friday, Trump denied there is any proof that Russia poisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Instead of backing the German government's analysis of Nalvany's illness, Trump then redirected the criticism from Russia to China (clip).

"I don't know exactly what happened. I think it's tragic. It's terrible; it shouldn't happen. We haven't had any proof yet, but I will take a look. It is interesting that everybody is always mentioning Russia - and I don't mind you mentioning Russia - but I think probably China, at this point, is a nation that you should be talking about much more so than Russia. Because the things that China's doing are far worse.”

Trump then went on to say he’s “taken stronger action against Russia than any other country in the world,” but added “I do get along with President Putin” (clip).

RELATED: Leaked notes obtained by the Telegraph say that when Theresa May asked for Trump to take a strong stand after Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal, Trump replied “I’d rather follow than lead.” He pushed May to “put together a coalition” first.

The Trump administration plans to deport a Russian national living in America, a move experts say is in response to a politically motivated request by Russia. Gregory Duralev was persecuted by the Russian state for exposing corruption. He fled to America and applied for asylum in 2015. While waiting for a decision on his application, he was arrested by ICE and jailed for nearly 18 months. His case is now in court.

“DHS has acted no better than the Russian authorities,” Duralev said. “They simply fabricated charges against me for violations I never committed — and if DHS can trump up charges against immigrants with impunity, nobody can guarantee they won’t start doing it” to regular Americans. “So that’s the main message I now hope to send.”

Michael Cohen & Peter Strzok

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has a book coming out called “Compromised.” In it, he alleges that FBI investigators came to believe it was “conceivable, if unlikely” that Russia was secretly controlling President Trump after he took office:

“We certainly had evidence that this was the case: that Trump, while gleefully wreaking havoc on America’s political institutions and norms, was pulling his punches when it came to our historic adversary, Russia,” Strzok writes. “Given what we knew or had cause to suspect about Trump’s compromising behavior in the weeks, months, and years leading up to the election, moreover, it also seemed conceivable, if unlikely, that Moscow had indeed pulled off the most stunning intelligence achievement in human history: secretly controlling the president of the United States — a Manchurian candidate elected.”

He now says he doesn’t believe that Trump is literally a Russian spy: “I don’t think that Trump, when he meets with Putin, receives a task list for the next quarter,” Strzok said, referencing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “But I do think the president is compromised, that he is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well.”
In an interview with Politico, Strzok confirms that he and then-deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, opened a counterintelligence case on the president, but that it likely was never pursued. Two weeks ago, NYT reported that Rosenstein secretly closed it.
As if there weren’t enough political books coming out this summefall, Michael Cohen is releasing his, called “Disloyal: A Memoir.” The following a couple of quick takeaways:
Cohen says that he, Trump, Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, and others, watched a strip show in Las Vegas where one performer simulated peeing on another performer, who pretended to drink it. Trump reportedly reacted with “delight.” Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate mogul, is a trusted associate of Putin and reportedly served as a liaison between Trump and the Russian president during Trump’s trip to Moscow.
WaPo:

On Russia, Cohen writes that the cause behind Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin is simpler than many of his critics assume. Above all, he writes, Trump loves money — and he wrongly identified Putin as “the richest man in the world by a multiple.” Trump loved Putin, Cohen wrote, because the Russian leader had the ability “to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact.”
...According to Cohen, Trump’s sycophantic praise of the Russian leader during the 2016 campaign began as a way to suck up and ensure access to the oligarch’s money after he lost the election. But he claims Trump came to understand that Putin’s hatred of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, dating to her support for the 2011 protest movement in Russia, could also help Trump amass more power in the United States.

USPS & mail voting

According to a Washington Post report yesterday, Postmaster Louis DeJoy engaged in campaign money laundering, also called a straw-donor scheme, at his former logistics business. Five of his former employees told WaPo that they were “urged” to donate to politicians in North Carolina and would be paid back through bonuses from DeJoy. Such a plan would allow DeJoy to illegally circumvent campaign donation limits.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired.
“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said [another] former employee.
...A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show.

More than one million mail-in ballots were sent late to voters during the 2020 primary elections, an audit by the USPS IG’s office determined. Most of the ballots were late, the USPS says, because local election boards sent the ballots to voters at the last minute. Official press release.

[The audit] found the problems during primaries had been most pronounced in Kentucky and New York, where a combined 628,000 ballots were sent out late. In 17 states, the audit found, more than 589,000 ballots were sent from election boards to voters after the state’s ballot mailing deadline. In 11 states, more than 44,000 ballots were sent from election boards to voters the day of or the day before the state’s primary election.
One particularly troubling situation, auditors found, unfolded in Pennsylvania, where 500 ballots were sent to voters the day after the election.

Furthermore, only 13% of the ballots were mailed with the recommended bar code tracking technology.
Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) was blocked from attending two scheduled tours of USPS facilities last week. Local Postal Service officials informed her and union leaders waiting to accompany her into the building that national USPS leadership had directed them to bar the group from the building. A Postal Service spokeswoman said they simply needed more notice for a tour.
Many states, including important battleground states, are not legally permitted to process mail-in/absentee ballots until Election Day, leading to concern that results will be delayed by days or weeks. For instance, in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan election officials cannot even begin processing ballots until Election Day. Processing involves opening envelopes, flattening ballots to run through the scanning machine, and prepping for the scanning.

"When voters have to wait so long for results, it erodes trust in the process and leaves room for partisan bad actors to dispute the will of the people," said Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit organization.

AG Bill Barr made three stunning false claims about mail voting during an interview with Wolf Blitzer last week. First, Barr wouldn’t even acknowledge that voting twice is a crime - because just hours earlier, Trump encouraged his North Carolina supporters to vote twice to “test” the state’s mail-in voting system (clip).

BLITZER: It sounds like he’s encouraging people to break the law and try to vote twice.
BARR: It seems to me what he’s saying is, he’s trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good. And it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time you would be caught if you voted in person.
BLITZER: That would be illegal if they did that. If somebody mailed in a ballot and then actually showed up to vote in person, that would be illegal.
BARR: "I don't know what the law in the particular state says.”
BLITZER: You can’t vote twice.
BARR: "I don't know what the law in the particular state says.”

Then, Barr tried to assert that foreign countries could fake ballots, but when challenged he admitted he had no evidence (clip).

BLITZER: You’ve said you were worried that a foreign country could send thousands of fake ballots, thousands of fake ballots to people that it might be impossible to detect. What are you basing that on?
BARR: I’m basing — as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m basing that on logic.
BLITZER: Pardon?
BARR: Logic.

Finally, Barr cited a supposed incident of mail-in voting fraud in Texas. Too bad it doesn’t exist.

The payroll

Charles Rettig, the Trump-appointed IRS Commissioner who has refused to release President Trump’s tax returns, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars renting out Trump properties while in office. Rettig makes $100,000 - $200,000 a year from two units at Trump International Waikiki. When first nominated, Rettig failed to disclose his financial ties to Trump Waikiki. When questioned by Congress, he did not directly answer concerns about the properties.

CREW: With Trump’s name removed from some buildings as it began to hurt property values, we can only imagine how toxic it would become if a bombshell in his tax returns were released. Which means the IRS Commissioner has a vested interest in the success of the Trump brand—and of preventing anything that could damage it.

Voice of America staffers say Trump appointee Michael Pack is threatening to wash away legal protections intended to insulate their news reports from political meddling. Since arriving, Pack has fired the network's leaders, pushed out agency executives, refused to approve allotted budgets, and refused to renew visas for foreign employees.

Further reading: “Deleted Biden video sets off a crisis at Voice of America,” Politico.

Pack suggested the staff he fired and foreign journalists he essentially kicked out may have been foreign spies, without offering any evidence to support his claim. A group of 14 senior VOA journalists are openly disputing his explanation:

“Mr. Pack has made a thin excuse that his actions are meant to protect national security, but just as was the case with the McCarthy ‘Red Scare,’ which targeted VOA and other government organizations in the mid-1950s, there has not been a single demonstrable case of any individual working for VOA — as the USAGM CEO puts it — ‘posing as a spy,’ ” they wrote.

The White House is searching for a replacement for Federal Trade Commission Chair Joe Simons, a Republican who has publicly resisted President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on social media companies. Simons, a veteran antitrust lawyer, cannot legally be removed by the president except in cases of gross negligence. But the White House has already interviewed at least one candidate for the post.

RELATED: The Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month, after Attorney General William P. Barr overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case.

Richard Grenell, formerly the highest-ranking out gay official in the Trump administration, has joined a law firm founded by Pat Robertson that has a history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights. Grenell also recently joined the Republican National Committee to do outreach to LGBTQ+ voters.
The Trump administration has quietly named a new acting State Department inspector general. Matthew Klimow, the U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan since mid-2019, is the third acting IG since Trump and Pompeo ousted Senate-confirmed IG Steve Linick in May.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s current special envoy to Northern Ireland, former Chief of Staff, and former acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is starting a hedge fund focused on financial services regulation. Ethics experts say Mulvaney explicitly using his knowledge of CFPB to place bets for and against companies gives him an unfair and perhaps illegal advantage.

Court and DOJ matters

Court cases
The Trump administration must, for now, stop winding down in-person counting efforts for the 2020 census, a federal judge in California ordered.
The three-judge panel hearing a challenge to Trump’s new anti-immigrant census policy seemed hostile to the government’s arguments in a hearing last week.
A federal judge has stopped the Trump administration from enforcing a rule change that would let health care providers deny medical services to LGBTQ patients on the grounds of religion.
Justice Department
Federal prosecutors are preparing to charge longtime GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests. Broidy helped raise millions for Donald Trump’s election and the Republican Party.
Barr ordered another round of changes to FISA rules, tightening the use of government surveillance on political candidates or their staffers — a move conservatives will likely cheer, as they have long criticized how the FBI investigated the Trump campaign in 2016.

Before conducting physical searches or wiretaps of a federal election official, members of the official's staff, candidates for federal office, or their staff or advisers, the FBI must now consider giving them a "defensive briefing," to tell them that they could be the target of foreign influence.

With the closure of almost half of Atlantic City's casinos, Newark set to vote on gambling and casinos or racinos in almost every state, it seems as if the reasons for the very existence of Atlantic City are in serious jeopardy.
Israel Joffe
Atlantic City, once a major vacation spot during the roaring 20s and 1930s, as seen on HBOs Boardwalk Empire, collapsed when cheap air fare became the norm and people had no reason to head to the many beach town resorts on the East Coast. Within a few decades, the city, known for being an ‘oasis of sin’ during the prohibition era, fell into serious decline and dilapidation.
New Jersey officials felt the only way to bring Atlantic City back from the brink of disaster would be to legalize gambling. Atlantic City’s first casino, Resorts, first opened its doors in 1978. People stood shoulder to shoulder, packed into the hotel as gambling officially made its way to the East Coast. Folks in the East Coast didn't have to make a special trip all the way to Vegas in order to enjoy some craps, slots, roulette and more.
As time wore on, Atlantic City became the premier gambling spots in the country.
While detractors felt that the area still remained poor and dilapidated, officials were quick to point out that the casinos didn't bring the mass gentrification to Atlantic City as much as they hoped but the billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs for the surrounding communities was well worth it.
Atlantic City developed a reputation as more of a short-stay ‘day-cation’ type of place, yet managed to stand firm against the 'adult playground' and 'entertainment capital of the world' Las Vegas.
Through-out the 1980s, Atlantic City would become an integral part of American pop culture as a place for east coast residents to gamble, watch boxing, wrestling, concerts and other sporting events.
However in the late 1980s, a landmark ruling considered Native-American reservations to be sovereign entities not bound by state law. It was the first potential threat to the iron grip Atlantic City and Vegas had on the gambling and entertainment industry.
Huge 'mega casinos' were built on reservations that rivaled Atlantic City and Vegas. In turn, Vegas built even more impressive casinos.
Atlantic City, in an attempt to make the city more appealing to the ‘big whale’ millionaire and billionaire gamblers, and in effort to move away from its ‘seedy’ reputation, built the luxurious Borgata casino in 2003. Harrah’s created a billion dollar extension and other casinos in the area went through serious renovations and re-branded themselves.
It seemed as if the bite that the Native American casinos took out of AC and Vegas’ profits was negligible and that the dominance of those two cities in the world of gambling would remain unchallenged.
Then Macau, formally a colony of Portugal, was handed back to the Chinese in 1999. The gambling industry there had been operated under a government-issued monopoly license by Stanley Ho's Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau. The monopoly was ended in 2002 and several casino owners from Las Vegas attempted to enter the market.
Under the one country, two systems policy, the territory remained virtually unchanged aside from mega casinos popping up everywhere. All the rich ‘whales’ from the far east had no reason anymore to go to the United States to spend their money.
Then came the biggest threat.
As revenue from dog and horse racing tracks around the United States dried up, government officials needed a way to bring back jobs and revitalize the surrounding communities. Slot machines in race tracks started in Iowa in 1994 but took off in 2004 when Pennsylvania introduced ‘Racinos’ in an effort to reduce property taxes for the state and to help depressed areas bounce back.
As of 2013, racinos were legal in ten states: Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia with more expected in 2015.
Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia's Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races.
The famous Aqueduct race track in Queens, NY, once facing an uncertain future, now possesses the most profitable casino in the United States.
From June 2012 to June 2013, Aqueduct matched a quarter of Atlantic City's total gaming revenue from its dozen casinos: $729.2 million compared with A.C.'s $2.9 billion. It has taken an estimated 15 percent hit on New Jersey casino revenue and climbing.
And it isn't just Aqueduct that's taking business away from them. Atlantic City's closest major city, Philadelphia, only 35-40 minutes away, and one of the largest cities in America, now has a casino that has contributed heavily to the decline in gamers visiting the area.
New Jersey is the third state in the U.S. to have authorized internet gambling. However, these online casinos are owned and controlled by Atlantic City casinos in an effort to boost profits in the face of fierce competition.
California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Texas are hoping to join Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and the U.S. Virgin Islands in offering online gambling to their residents.
With this in mind, it seems the very niche that Atlantic City once offered as a gambling and entertainment hub for east coast residents is heading toward the dustbin of history.
Time will tell if this city will end up like Detroit. However, the fact that they are losing their biggest industry to major competition, much like Detroit did, with depressed housing, casinos bankrupting/closing and businesses fleeing , it all makes Atlantic City’s fate seem eerily similar.

Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. 2009

The coronavirus shutdown is hammering supply and demand across the globe. That has forced the real economy into a sharp recession and triggered a rolling financial crisis. Below is a primer on one key piece of this mess: the crisis in corporate debt markets. This branch of finance is vitally important because even healthy companies often need access to credit. If they do not get it, they go under.
In 2008, the vector of crisis ran from mortgage-backed securities to the rest of the financial sector and then to the real economy. This time, the real economy is being hit directly, and the damage is reverberating back into financial markets. The failing markets, in feedback-loop fashion, further threaten the real economy as corporations find it harder to borrow. As the corporate debt markets sour, major companies will go bankrupt. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Some analysts expect the economy to contract by an annualized rate of 30 percent during the second quarter of 2020.
Already, US financial markets are on public life support. The Federal Reserve has committed to unlimited purchases of all sorts of assets: US Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, car loans, municipal debts, and, in a historic step, both short term and long-term corporate debt. But the crisis will require more than a financial rescue.
The key political question now is: What sort of controls will come with the state intervention? Corporate greed and self-dealing need to be checked not merely in the name of fairness but also to make sure public bailout money is actually invested in the real economy rather than just gambled away, as it was after the 2008 crash and rescue.

The Rise of Corporate Debt

Since 2008, household debt levels have actually declined and are now lower than they were going into the last crash. But not corporate debt. Measured as a firm’s “net debt” compared to its EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization), corporate debt has doubled since the last crash. In 2009, the average American company owed $2 of debt for every $1 in earnings. Today, the average firm carries net debt to EBITDA of 3 to 1, and many firms — like Ford Motor, CarMax, Harley-Davidson, and General Motors — carry ratios ranging from 8 to 1, to as high as 15 to 1. Boeing, a special case because of its 737 MAX crisis, carries a ratio of 37 to 1.
Over the last two decades, corporate America’s credit rating has collapsed. In the early ’90s, more than sixty companies held AAA credit ratings. Today, only two US firms are AAA rated: Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. In 2001, fewer than one in five “investment-grade” firms were rated BBB. Today half of all investment-grade corporate debt belongs to firms rated “triple-B” (BBB) or lower. A third of those firms are rated triple-B minus (BBB-), one notch away from speculative or “junk” status.
Already many triple-B-rated corporate bonds are trading on secondary markets at unusually low prices and high yields, often above 5 percent; that means even “investment grade” bonds are being treated as junk. Soon many triple-B-rated corporations will be formally downgraded to junk. That will drive up their borrowing costs and restrict their access to credit. Even healthy companies often need access to ready credit. If they do not get it, they go under.
The rating agency Moody’s estimates the default rate for “speculative-grade” debt — companies with ratings lower than Baa from Moody’s Investors Service, or a rating lower than BBB from Standard & Poor’s — might reach 10 percent this year, up from 2.3 percent last year. The consequences of all this will reverberate throughout the wider economy, deepening and extending the recession.
Total global corporate debt, including bonds and loans, is approximately $66 trillion; more than double what it was a decade ago. For comparison, the combined gross national product of all economies was estimated at $80.27 trillion in 2017. About a quarter of that is the US economy.

What They Did With the Money

After the 2008 crash, the world’s central banks, with the US Federal Reserve in the lead, spent the next decade pushing money into the financial markets by way of super-low interest rates and the direct public purchase of financial assets from the private sector via quantitative easing (QE).
The cheap credit encouraged lots of corporate borrowing in the form of loans from banks and massive issuance of corporate bonds. Unlike loans, which can be routinely extended, or sometimes abruptly terminated, or have interest rates that float up and down, corporate bonds are debt instruments issued by a company committing to repay borrowed money on a specified schedule at a specified, usually fixed, rate of interest.
Corporations have been borrowing for a variety of reasons that range from shrewd arbitrage to stupid and reckless asset stripping. For a struggling and unprofitable company, for example JCPenney, debt can be a lifeline. For a profitable firm, borrowing money can be a way to raise capital without diluting existing shareholders’ claim on the company’s profits, which would happen if the firm issued stock.
Even some profitable firms with piles of cash borrowed rather than spend their cash, in part for the firepower effect: letting other competitors and market entrants know that the firm has enough money on hand to buy out any threatening start-ups, and showing the world the firm is ready to ride out any economic crisis.
Some firms used their borrowed money to buy other firms. This helped fuel a post-2008 wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Deloitte reported “more than $10 trillion in [M&A] domestic transactions since 2013.” Targeted companies borrowed to stockpile cash as a defense against such takeovers.
Firms also borrowed to fund CEO compensation, distributions to investors via dividends, and stock buybacks. Companies buy back their own stock so as to boost its price. A rising stock price is useful in many ways: it can keep away hostile raiders by making a targeted company too expensive to take over, but it can also draw in friendly suitors because (with some creative accounting) a rising stock value can make a weak firm appear more profitable. Corporate executives like a rising stock price because compensation packages are both tied to stock performance and almost always include some payment in company stock, so the higher the stock price, the higher the executives’ payout.
Sometimes, firms even invested their borrowed money in actual production. The capital-intensive oil and gas industry did that, but as we explain below, it still faces a crisis, perhaps more salient than other sectors.

Bad Credit as Perverse Incentive

The end result of all the borrowing was declining corporate credit-worthiness: corporate debt soon badly outpaced their earnings growth and cash balances. This led to widespread credit-rating downgrades.
Perversely, lower credit ratings did not slow the borrowing binge, but rather spurred on further lending and borrowing, because as corporate credit ratings slipped, the interest rate that the downgraded firms had to pay on their loans and bonds increased. And, thus, so too did the lenders’ profits.
Corporate debt and stock prices entered into a twisted dialectic, each driving the other. As the stock market continued to inflate over the last decade, it provided the confidence investors required to continue their purchases of risky corporate bonds.
Keep in mind that many of the lending banks and asset funds were actually or essentially borrowing from Uncle Sam at inflation-adjusted rates close to zero, then lending to companies with triple-B and triple-B minus ratings at 5 percent interest. Profits like that meant there were always banks and asset funds eager to lend to debt-burdened corporations.
Investors could directly purchase specific corporations’ bonds, or, as is more often the case, invest in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that target an array of corporate bonds. High-risk loans were also sliced and diced and repackaged into bundles called “collateralized loan obligations” (CLOs), a class of securities backed by an underlying portfolio of corporate loans.
According to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the majority of American CLOs are held by US institutional investors, including insurance companies, mutual funds, and depository institutions. This means that when the debt is unable to be serviced, the pain will be absorbed within the US economy, much of it by the unassuming customers of these financial behemoths.
As was the case with the mortgage-backed securities of the 2008 crash, these funds helped “distribute risk” and thus gave an appearance of safety. The logic was that owning 1 percent of a hundred different loans would be safer, even if some loans went bad, than owning the entirety of a single debt security. The logic is not entirely wrong. And that is part of the problem: it encouraged yet more lending. As long as the economic forecast was optimistic, there was no reason for the debt spree to let up.

Zombies and Others

Corporate debt, like much of the economy, is a story of disparities. Not every corporation is burdened by debt. Some firms are actually awash in cash. Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet Inc, and Apple each sit on more than $100 billion in cash. As a whole, corporate America has been sitting on record amounts of cash in recent years. But at the same time, Morgan Stanley Investment Management estimates that one in six US companies cannot cover even the interest payments on their debts.
At the heart of the problem are “leveraged loans” and so-called zombie firms. Leveraged loans are a type of expensive, high-risk credit extended to already heavily indebted companies. Since the 2008 crash, the leveraged loan market has doubled to $1.2 trillion. Now, leveraged loans in the United States are being re-sold at only 84 cents on the dollar, their lowest price since August 2009. The majority of leveraged loans — more than half — are in the form of the aforementioned CLOs. In the fourth quarter of 2018, there were $617 billion of CLOs outstanding.
Zombie firms are defined by the Bank for International Settlements as heavily indebted, well-established companies that have failed to be profitable over an extended period and have low expected profitability in the future. In other words, heavily indebted start-ups do not qualify as zombies. The most threatened sectors are energy, automotive, insurance, capital goods (meaning equipment and machinery), telecoms, aerospace and defense, and some parts of retail.
The bull market of rising, often overvalued, stock prices allowed many uncompetitive and unprofitable companies to appear healthy based solely on their stock’s performance. Even before the markets started to crash on March 9, some analysts were prescient enough to call the market’s bluff at the beginning of the year.
But in this rapidly developing crisis, firms all across the economy may soon find it impossible to meet their liabilities. With the coronavirus breaking supply chains and forcing massive constrictions in consumer demand, corporate earnings are contracting fast, which in turn will badly hurt corporate debt servicing.
Like a hypertrophied organ rupturing, the putrefaction of unsustainable corporate debt now threatens to create a generalized economic sepsis that will hurt even healthy firms.

Profiles in Debt

Airlines. The top six major US airlines spent enormous sums to buy back their stock over the last decade. US airlines (as a whole) spent 96 percent of their borrowed money on buying back stock. Now, revenue from flights is plummeting. United Airlines’ bookings have fallen by 70 percent. Back in 2011, American Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $29 billion in liabilities; today, they have over $34 billion in debt. Yields on some of their bonds reached a whopping 12 percent, a particularly distressing sign as interest rates have been slashed by the Fed in an effort to relieve credit markets.
Energy. Even before the effects of coronavirus eviscerated demand for fossil fuels, US energy companies were suffering due to high fixed costs and low energy prices. In the last five years, 208 US energy companies have declared bankruptcy. Energy prices have been pushed down by the fracking revolution, the rise of renewable energy, and oil overproduction due to struggles between large producers like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States.
Now the coronavirus shock is pushing firms over the edge. Occidental Petroleum — which has $40 billion in debt, while its market value (the value of all of its stocks combined) is less than $11 billion — recently had its debt downgraded to junk.
Energy mutual funds reveal the crisis in the energy sector as a whole. Vanguard Energy Fund, considered one of the top four oil mutual funds, has lost over 41 percent of its value since the beginning of the year. Of course, the biggest oil companies, the “Oil Majors” (such as BP, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) have enough resources, market power, and government support to survive the crisis. But the effects on the less established firms stretch beyond the energy industry itself.
Lenders. As the oil and gas firms go into crisis, the banks that extended them credit may also face defaults. Loans outstanding to the petroleum sector from regional banks in North America exceed $100 billion. Banks financing oil companies in Texas and Oklahoma saw their share prices drop nearly 30 percent. In oil-dependent states, public budgets will hurt as tax revenues decline sharply.
Retail. A number of important retailers carry net debt to EBITDA ratios that are too high to be sustainable under current conditions. For example, Rite Aid owes $15.80 for every dollar it earns. For JCPenney, the ratio is $8.30 to $1; for Walgreens Boots Alliance, it is $5.80 to $1. Office Depot owes $4.60 compared to every dollar earned.

Beyond Bailout

Bailing out distressed companies, even taking them under public ownership for a while, may staunch the bleeding. And the bubble can eventually be reinflated with enough effort. But a replay of the 2008 bailout, which involved lots of public money but very little public regulation and planning, will only mean a long slump followed by a bubble for the rich.
The American economy is a sick beast. It needs not only government handouts and ownership — which it is getting — it also needs planning.
Oil, airlines, and cruise ships — these are high-emission industries that, in the face of climate crisis, must be radically transformed or cease to exist. With government ownership and planning, these industries could be unwound and their resources redeployed.
Although COVID-19 set off our current recession, it was the indulgence of the 1 percent built into the 2008 rescue that is responsible for the depth and severity of our current economic crisis. Without guidance, money was poured into the financial system. Not surprisingly, it blossomed alongside the mutually reinforcing dynamic of artificially inflated stock prices and ballooning corporate debt.
Capitulation to the gluttony of financiers is deeply unjust. But it is also unworkable in purely technical terms. Without constraints on greed, there will be another bubble and crash and a longer slump, more suffering, greater inequality, and more social instability. We have to force government to use its legal and financial power to steer the American economy toward more egalitarian, socially rational, and environmentally sustainable purposes. We have to make this bailout work for the majority of us.

Corporate Socialism: The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You

The U.S. government is enacting measures to save the airlines, Boeing, and similarly affected corporations. While we clearly insist that these companies must be saved, there may be ethical, economic, and structural problems associated with the details of the execution. As a matter of fact, if you study the history of bailouts, there will be.
The bailouts of 2008–9 saved the banks (but mostly the bankers), thanks to the execution by then-treasury secretary Timothy Geithner who fought for bank executives against both Congress and some other members of the Obama administration. Bankers who lost more money than ever earned in the history of banking, received the largest bonus pool in the history of banking less than two years later, in 2010. And, suspiciously, only a few years later, Geithner received a highly paid position in the finance industry.
That was a blatant case of corporate socialism and a reward to an industry whose managers are stopped out by the taxpayer. The asymmetry (moral hazard) and what we call optionality for the bankers can be expressed as follows: heads and the bankers win, tails and the taxpayer loses. Furthermore, this does not count the policy of quantitative easing that went to inflate asset values and increased inequality by benefiting the super rich. Remember that bailouts come with printed money, which effectively deflate the wages of the middle class in relation to asset values such as ultra-luxury apartments in New York City.
The Generalized Bob Rubin Trade: Keep the profits, transfer losses to taxpayers. Named after Bob Rubin who pocketed 120 million dollars from Citi but claimed uncertainty and kept past bonuses. This encourages anyone to never be insured for such eventualities since the government will pick up the tab.

If It’s Bailed Out, It’s a Utility

First, we must not conflate airlines as a physical company with the financial structure involved. Nor should we conflate the fate of the employees of the airlines with the unemployment of our fellow citizens, which can be directly compensated rather than indirectly via leftovers of corporate subsidies. We should learn from the Geithner episode that bailing out individuals based on their needs is not the same as bailing out corporations based on our need for them.
Saving an airline, therefore, should not equate to subsidizing their shareholders and highly compensated managers and promote additional moral hazard in society. For the very fact that we are saving airlines indicates their role as utility. And if as such they are necessary for society, then why do their managers have optionality? Are civil servants on a bonus scheme? The same argument must also be made, by extension, against indirectly bailing out the pools of capital, like hedge funds and endless investment strategies, that are so exposed to these assets; they have no honest risk mitigation strategy, other than a trained naïve reliance on bailouts or what’s called in the industry the “government put”.
Second, these corporations are lobbying for bailouts, which they will eventually get thanks to the pressure they can exert on the government via lobby units. But how about the small corner restaurant ? The independent tour guide ? The personal trainer? The massage professional? The barber? The hotdog vendor living from tourists near the Met Museum ? These groups cannot afford lobbyists and will be ignored.

Buffers Not Debt

Third, as we have been warning since 2006, companies need buffers to face uncertainty –not debt (an inverse buffer), but buffers. Mother nature gave us two kidneys when we only need about a portion of a single one. Why? Because of contingency. We do not need to predict specific adverse events to know that a buffer is a must. Which brings us to the buyback problem. Why should we spend taxpayer money to bailout companies who spent their cash (and often even borrowed to generate that cash) to buy their own stock (so the CEO gets optionality), instead of building a rainy day buffer? Such bailouts punish those who acted conservatively and harms them in the long run, favoring the fool and the rent-seeker.

Not a Black Swan

Furthermore, some people claim that the pandemic is a “Black Swan”, hence something unexpected so not planning for it is excusable. The book they commonly cite is The Black Swan. Had they read that book, they would have known that such a global pandemic is explicitly presented there as a white swan: something that would eventually take place with great certainty. Such acute pandemic is unavoidable, the result of the structure of the modern world; and its economic consequences would be compounded because of the increased connectivity and overoptimization. As a matter of fact, the government of Singapore, whom we advised in the past, was prepared for such an eventuality with a precise plan since as early as 2010.

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^{^>Section} ^{^4009.} ^{^Temporary} ^{^Government} ^ⁱⁿ ^{^the} ^{^Sunshine} ^{^Act} ^{^Relief.} ^{^Temporarily} ^{^permits} ^{^the} ^{^Board} ^{^of} ^{^Governors} ^{^of} ^{^the} ^{^Federal} ^{^Reserve} ^{^Federal} ^{^Reserve} ^{^to} ^{^conduct} ^{^meetings} ^{^without} ^{^regards} ^{^to} ^{^the} ^{^Government} ^ⁱⁿ ^{^the} ^{^Sunshine} ^{^Act,} ^{^which} ^{^institutes} ^{^certain} ^{^requirements} ^{^for} ^{^meetings} ^{^that} ^{^may} ^{^be} ^{^{impracticable}} ^{^to} ^{^carry} ^{^out} ^{^under} ^{^certain} ^{^unusual} ^{^and} ^{^exigent} ^{^{circumstances,}} ^{^such} ^{^as} ^{^those} ^{^related} ^{^to} ^{^the} ^{^coronavirus} ^{^outbreak,} ^{^if} ^{^the} ^{^Chairman} ^{^determines,} ^ⁱⁿ ^{^writing,} ^{^that} ^{^such} ^{^{circumstances}} ^{^exist.} ^{^The} ^{^Federal} ^{^Reserve} ^{^is} ^{^still} ^{^required} ^{^to} ^{^keep} ^{^a} ^{^record} ^{^of} ^{^all} ^{^votes} ^{^and} ^{^the} ^{^reason} ^{^for} ^{^votes} ^{^during} ^{^this} ^{^time.} ^{^This} ^{^authority} ^{^expires} ^{^at} ^{^the} ^{^earlier} ^{^of} ^{^December} ^{^31,} ^{^2020,} ^{^or} ^{^the} ^{^date} ^{^on} ^{^which} ^{^the} ^{^national} ^{^emergency} ^{^declaration} ^{^related} ^{^to} ^{^coronavirus} ^{^is} ^{^terminated.} ^{^{https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Title%20IV_Section%20by%20Section.pdf}}
^{This.is.your.brain.on.central.banking,regulatory.capture,and.financialization.}

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2020 Dow Futures Reverse Gains Despite Trump’s $6 Trillion Fiscal Bomb Dow futures spiked after Trump's top economic advisor Larry Kudlow unveiled a gigantic $6 trillion stimulus package for the U.S. But the gains didn't last amid underlying concerns about the health of the economy.

In 1969, Thomas Hoyt Friedkin, signed a franchise deal with Toyota to distribute their automobile vehicles and parts in the Houston area of Texas. The company was called the Gulf States Toyota Distributors.
Three years later, in 1972, the company employed 35 associates and had sold over 5000 Toyota cars and trucks through 14 dealerships. Since then, it has accounted for over 13% of all Toyota sales in the United States across the five states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas.
The Gulf States Toyota Distributors is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Friedkin Group, which is now led by Thomas Friedkin’s son, Daniel. The Friedkin Group now encompasses a consortium of companies across many industries - automotive, hospitality, entertainment, and sports.
On 17th August 2020, Italian football club AS Roma announced that it had been acquired in a €591million deal with the Friedkin Group. This takeover brought an end to the 8-year reign of the former Boston-based club owner James Pallotta, who took over the club in August of 2012.
The investment was made via a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) - Romulus and Remus Investments LLC - a company incorporated under the laws of the state of Delaware in the United States.
This takeover meant that the Friedkin Group now owned 86.6% of the club owning a total of 544,468,535 at the price of €0.1165 per share. The remaining 13.4% of the club’s share capital is publicly owned, with the Friedkin Group initiating a mandatory tender offer upon these publicly-owned shares.
Stumbling Blocks
In the semi-annual Financial Report released by AS Roma for the 2019-20 financial year, the Giallorossi earned €94.641 million as its income. This is approximately €40 million less than this time last year.
As for the total costs incurred by the club during this time, there was a slight decrease from last year dropping from €136 million to €123 million.
Part of the reason for this loss in revenue was the dissolution of the agreement AS Roma had with their training kit sponsor Betway. In July 2018, the Italian government had passed the “Dignity Decree” - a legislation that prohibits the advertising of gambling logos, forcing the club to terminate their relationship with the betting company.
In the first 9 months of the 2019/20 financial season, the Giallorossi sustained losses totaling €126 million, with the total debt at €280 million.
This is not a one-off situation either. Roma has been struggling financially for quite some time now. For instance, revenue dropped down €17m to €236m, mainly due to less progress in the Champions League. Television revenue also went down 13% to €145m. So did matchday revenue, which dropped 14% to €34m.
The good news is that commercial revenue was up €10m to €55m, and revenues from player sales went up 19% from €320m to €380m.
The Road Ahead
The revenue highlights show that it’s important for the Giallorossi to qualify for the Champions League and go a step ahead. The 2018/19 revenue of €236m was greatly influenced by revenues directly received from the Champions League, earning the club almost €66m. This was not as much as last year’s revenue though, with Roma earning €98m from the Champions League.
This is part of the reason that the Friedkin Group took over the capital-based club. The new Board of Directors includes a mix of astute businessmen and financial lawyers who bring the necessary expertise to run the club.
For instance, besides the Chairman Dan Freidkin, the BOD includes people like Marc Watts, who is President of The Friedkin Group. Partner at taxation law firm Salvini and Partners, Ines Gandini also joins the BOD bringing her years of taxation experience into the club.
In addition, Professor of legal financial regulations Mirella Pellegrini also joins the BOD, as does Eric Williamson, who is the VP of the Friedkin Business Development Group. There is also on the BOD Benedetta Navarra, who represents Unicredit - one of AS Roma’s creditors.
A new Executive committee has also been formed consisting of Dan Friedkin, Ryan Friedkin, Marc Watts, Eric Williamson with Guido Fienga as CEO.
Fienga had started working with AS Roma under the Pallotta regime as the Strategy and Media Director in 2013, before being appointed as Chief Operating Officer last year, where he handled the day-to-day operations of the club.
He will now be assisted by Ryan Friedkin, son of Daniel Friedkin, who has since moved to Italy and will be running the club’s day to day operations with Fienga.
One of the criticisms leveled against Pallotta was the lack of progress in building the much-needed new stadium for the club. This is something that the new management will have to take on. In pursuing the Stadio Della Roma project, they will have to work closely with city Mayor Virginia Raggi - who is known to be on good terms with CEO Guido Fienga.
So far, the moves made by the Friedkin Group look good on paper. They will also be getting a helping hand from the Pallotta group until the end of December to sort out their financial woes. The arrival of Pedro and Jordan Veretout will add much-needed firepower to their on-field performances too.
Whether this acquisition is something the AS Roma fans will remember with fond memories, only time will tell
PS: If you're reading this far, please consider subscribing to Your Weekend Beer - a weekend newsletter on the business of football.
PPS: You can read the full issue (Essay + Non essay) here

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I spent the whole of last week reading up on the AS Roma takeover by the Friedkin Group. What follows is a brief essay I wrote up over the weekend. What do you think?

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