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Critic’s Notebook: Our Never-Ending ‘Scam Season’

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

McFarland may be the one in prison for fraud, but the most fascinating thing about Fyre was how deep the scam reached. The festival was marketed by Jerry Media, an online advertising agency that began as a popular Instagram account that cribbed other peoples’ memes without credit. It was aggressively promoted by Instagram influencers — those model/advertiser/guru hybrids whose entire project rests on smoke and mirrors. Even the documentaries on the festival seemed in on the swindle. Hulu paid McFarland for an interview, while Elliot Tebele, the founder of Jerry Media, is an executive producer of the Netflix documentary. It was scams all the way down.

And at the top? The closest-held secret of modern scam artists is how woefully unimaginative they really are. Our oversaturated scam culture seems to have produced something new: utterly unappealing con men and women who could not credibly be referred to as “artists” at all.

Though the Fyre documentaries are stocked with associates who swear to McFarland’s charm, he appears to have all the appeal of a sentient airport lounge. Holmes, built up as a striking female entrepreneur with a heartfelt personal story, is revealed as stilted and vampiric onscreen; “The Inventor” includes a haunting scene in which she celebrates a company win by dancing robotically to MC Hammer. And since her unmasking, Delvey has been dragged on the internet for her tellingly bad hair.

There’s not a lovable scamp or a master chameleon in the bunch. They’re just young people who wanted to make something incredible, failed and couldn’t accept it. In a word, unexceptional. These days, there’s a scammer born every minute.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/arts/fyre-festival-billy-mcfarland-elizabeth-holmes-anna-delvey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Is a mystery plane heading to Russia loaded with Venezuelan gold?

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

On Wednesday, a member of the Venezuelan opposition and former banker at the country’s central bank, Jose Guerra, claimed he has information of the planned shipment of tons of gold bars, amounting to 20 percent of the bank’s holdings. The lawmaker said that a Russian jet, which arrived from Moscow, was ready to transport the cargo.

The statement was then reported by Bloomberg, and then by other Western media. The rumors were fueled by other reports, claiming that a mystery Boeing 777, which can carry some 400 passengers and belonging to Russia’s Nordwind Airlines, was spotted at the local airport after flying direct from Moscow.

Also on rt.com Refusal to hand over Venezuelan gold means end of Britain as a financial center – Prof. Wolff

The Kremlin rejected the reports, calling them fake news.

“There is no such information,” said Peskov. “It is necessary to be very cautious about different hoaxes,” he added.

Vladimir Putin’s spokesman also stressed that Russia is ready to help resolve the political turmoil in Venezuela “without interfering in the country’s internal affairs” as Moscow is against any third countries’ meddling in Venezuela’s politics.

The South American nation plunged deeper into political crisis after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president following calls for regime change from Washington. The US and some other Western nations were quick to recognize Guaido as the country’s new leader, while Russia, Turkey, Iran, and China pledged their support for President Nicolas Maduro, who was sworn in for his second term earlier this year.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/450156-venezuela-sends-gold-russia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Refusal to hand over Venezuelan gold means end of Britain as a financial center – Prof. Wolff

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

He told RT America that Britain and its central bank have shown themselves to be “under the thumb of the United States.”

“That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it’s not the safe place as it once was,” he said.

The Bank of England is currently withholding $1.2 billion in gold from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government, but is being urged by Washington to release it to the chairman of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido. Last week, the US backed Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, after he declared himself interim president.

According to Professor Wolff, control of Venezuela’s oil has always been an urgent issue for Washington.
He also said that the collapse of Britain as a global power, which was accelerated by Brexit, is now about to take another step.

“One of the few things left for Britain is to be the financial center that London has been for so long. And one of the ways you stay a financial center is if you don’t play games with other people’s money,” he said.

Also on rt.com Mystery of the Venezuelan gold: Bank of England is independent of UK govt – but not of foreign govt

The economist added that it is for the Venezuelans who put the money into the care of the British bank to determine what is done with it, and not for the Bank of England.

“You can be sure that every government in the world is going to rethink putting any money in London, as they used to do, when they are watching this political manipulation with the money that they entrusted to the British. It is very dangerous for the world but for Britain particularly,” said Wolff.

He explained: “What the British are showing is that they can’t continue apparently to be the neutral place where you can safely put your money.”

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/450144-venezuela-gold-boe-wolff/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Ex-insurance agent known as ‘Lord Voldermort’ faces prison for harassing clients

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Ye Lin Myint, a 36 year-old Myanmar national and Singapore permanent resident apparently hit hard times at Prudential, the insurance company he worked for. After some of his clients cancelled their scheduled appointments and refused their policies in 2017, the agent decided that threats are a more efficient way to boost his career.

After careful planning, the man reportedly took his wife’s laptop and created email accounts on a Switzerland-based email service that did not require personal data to register. The accounts were registered under the monikers “Lord Voldermort” – a misspelled version of the name given to Harry Potter’s nemesis – and “Dr Bruce Banner,” the alter ego of Marvel Comics character The Incredible Hulk.

Also on rt.com Ex-Credit Suisse bankers arrested on US charges over $2bn fraud scheme

He also linked these anonymous accounts to a bitcoin wallet which he created to receive the cryptocurrency from his victims. The threatening emails, signed off as fictional characters, were sent to his former and potential clients, the offender also harassed his victims’ neighbors. A total of 33 people were reportedly affected.

The chilling letters claimed the man behind them was stalking his victims and their families and could physically hurt them.

“I can make your life total humiliated and miserable [sic] in your Myanmar community. I can make you become jobless. I can even physically harm you and your wife and your parents if I want to,” one of the threats from “Lord Voldermort” read as cited by Channel News Asia.

Also on rt.com Goldman Sachs faces criminal charges in Malaysia for helping billions vanish from state fund

In another case, Ye reportedly asked a victim if the person wants to “stay stressful not knowing whether (your daughter) will be safe or not.”

None of the victims are believed to have sent bitcoin to the offender, but alerted the police instead, deputy public prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran said at the court hearing.

On Tuesday, Ye pleaded guilty to five charges of criminal intimidation along with eight charges of harassment. The former agent was handed a jail term of 29 months, less than the prosecutors asked for. After the hearing the man was released on bail. He is set to begin his sentence in February.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/450141-voldemort-jailed-harassment-singapore/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe will be completed this year

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

“The first line [of the Nord Stream 2] will be ready in November, the second in December,” he said at the European Gas Conference on Tuesday.

The $11 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project is set to run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It is expected to double the existing pipeline’s capacity of 55 billion cubic meters annually.

Also on rt.com US threatens sanctions against Nord Stream 2 contractors as construction goes at full drive

Nord Stream 2 is projected to provide transit for 70 percent of Russian gas sales to the EU. The project, led by a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is being implemented in partnership with German energy firms Wintershall and Uniper, French multinational Engie, British-Dutch oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell, as well as Austrian energy company OMV.

EU officials, including European Council President Donald Tusk, previously expressed concerns that the completion of the Nord Stream 2 project would lead to Ukraine missing out on €2.5 billion in annual transit fees which Kiev currently receives.

READ MORE: Pipe-laying for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 begins in Finland and Sweden

According to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nord Stream 2 is a “purely economic project” and its completion does not mean the end of gas transit through Ukraine.

Also on rt.com Nord Stream 2 is purely economic project, doesn’t prevent gas supplies through Ukraine – Putin

Construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project has been approved by Germany, Finland, and Sweden. Denmark is the only country which hasn’t authorized the project so far. Last year, Nord Stream 2 AG said the consortium could avoid the Nordic state’s territorial waters if it didn’t get permission.

The head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, said earlier that the implementation of the construction schedule for Nord Stream 2 makes it possible to talk about a possible start of gas supplies through the pipeline from January 1, 2020.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/450123-nord-stream-2-ready/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Tech Fix: How to Save on Your Next Apple Purchase

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

But in general, prices jumped. That was surprising given that product costs typically fall as technologies mature and parts become widely available, which was what happened with televisions.

The more I examined the pricing, though, the more evidence there was that the latest Apple products are more expensive to make. Apple also appears to be under pressure to introduce more complex innovations to compete in the brutal technology market.

Take a look at the company’s gross profit margin, or the money it makes from products after the cost to make and sell them is factored in. If Apple’s gross margins are lower today even though prices are higher, that indicates the products cost more to make.

And that is indeed the case. Toni Sacconaghi, a financial analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein who has studied Apple for years, estimated that the company’s gross margins for the iPhone were below 40 percent, down from more than 50 percent several years ago.

Mr. Sacconaghi said the shrinking margins demonstrated how tough it had become to compete in the technology market. Apple has had to add features like stronger metals, sophisticated cameras, high-resolution displays, advanced chips and faster wireless connectivity while trimming back on some profit given that rival products from the likes of Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo have become very capable. If Apple had wanted to keep profit margins consistent with past years, he said, it would have had to raise prices even higher and risk losing sales.

“You have to put in more to stay competitive, or you’re going to lose share,” he said.

Jared Wiesel, a partner at Revenue Analytics, a pricing and sales consulting firm, said Apple was still in a unique position to introduce broad price increases. Other companies, such as grocery brands, lack the clout to do so because their competitors might undercut them and lure away customers.

“They’re in the very enviable position that they can, by and large, take major action across the board without, so far, seeing a major erosion of loyalty as a result,” Mr. Wiesel said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/technology/personaltech/save-next-apple-purchase.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

On Money: What Soybean Politics Tell Us About Argentina and China

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

It should have been easy, traveling through Argentina, to find a bottle of soy sauce. My sons, born and raised in Asia, have a habit of seasoning their food with a few drops of it, and Argentina happens to be one of the world’s leading producers of soybeans. Flying over the country’s heartland — the fertile expanse known as the pampa húmeda — we could see endless fields of the legume. Over the past three decades, soybeans have gone from being a tiny part of Argentina’s agriculture-dependent economy to occupying nearly 50 percent of its cultivated land. Yet in every restaurant we visited, my sons’ requests for soy sauce were met with a quizzical look and a shrug: No hay. (“There is none.”)

The vast majority of Argentina’s soy products are exported, mostly to China. Rising Asian demand — for soy sauce, tofu, animal feed — has fueled the explosion of the soybean industry across Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The pattern is a familiar one for Argentina. A century ago, it became one of the world’s wealthiest countries on a per-capita basis by shipping the pampa’s abundant yields of grain and beef to Europe. The opulent 1929 Beaux-Arts building that houses the Board of Trade in Rosario, Argentina’s agricultural capital, evokes those days of grandeur. Today, however, it is the price of soybean futures that dominates the electronic tickers on the wall. Last year, Argentina exported $17 billion in soybean products, more than a quarter of its overall export earnings. Half the ships leaving the country are now full of soy goods — beans, meal, oil, etc. — and heading to Asia. “The old saying in Argentina is still true: ‘With a good harvest, we are saved,’ ” says Patricia Bergero, the board’s deputy director for economic research. “Our economy is very dependent on soybeans and China — perhaps too dependent.”

The beans, however, are just the beginning. Over the past decade, China has more than doubled its overall trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, to $244 billion in 2017, elevating China past the United States as the region’s top trading partner, a stunning development in America’s own backyard. Early on, China focused on gobbling up the resources it needed to feed its voracious economy: oil from Venezuela and Ecuador, copper and iron from Peru and Chile, soybeans from Brazil and Argentina. In the past few years, though, Chinese engagement has spread and deepened, especially with left-leaning governments that are in financial trouble and looking for an alternative to American influence. In Argentina, the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, turned to China in 2014 after her government defaulted on $100 billion of international debt. In addition to offering $11 billion in currency swaps to increase Argentina’s depleted reserves, China began rebuilding a rail line across Argentina’s agricultural heart, constructing two hydroelectric dams and erecting a space station in the arid plateau of northern Patagonia.

When the conservative businessman Mauricio Macri succeeded Kirchner in December 2015, he seemed eager to do something few other leaders have dared: to push China away. Macri immediately suspended construction of the two dams in southern Patagonia, citing the lack of transparency and environmental impact surveys. Three months later, the Argentine Coast Guard sank a Chinese fishing boat that refused to leave the country’s territorial waters. The resistance didn’t last long. Not only did China quickly reduce its soybean imports by 30 percent in the first seven months of Macri’s government, but Chinese officials also reminded Macri that its investments in Argentina were linked. The dam contracts even had default clauses stipulating that the suspension of work would trigger the suspension of China’s railroad project, too. It was all or nothing. Did Macri want to end up with nothing?

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/magazine/what-soybean-politics-tell-us-about-argentina-and-china.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News

Russia vows to defend its Venezuelan oil assets

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Russia has kept close ties with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and has extended loans to Venezuela, including oil firm Rosneft lending money to Venezuela’s state-held firm PDVSA. Rosneft has extended $6 billion of loans to PDVSA, which needs to be fully redeemed in crude oil supplies by the end of this year.

Also on rt.com Chinese investments most at risk from US sanctions against Venezuela

According to SP Global Platts, as of November 2018, Venezuela had $3.1 billion outstanding loan to repay to Rosneft. The Russian company also has five joint upstream projects with PDVSA in Venezuela.

However, the US Treasury slapped another round of sweeping sanctions against PDVSA on Monday, in order to “help prevent further diverting of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro and preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela.”

The US backed last week Juan Guaido, the chairman of the National Assembly, as the legitimate president of Venezuela, after Guaido declared himself interim president.

Venezuela devalues currency to align it with black market – AFP citing official

“The path to sanctions relief for PdVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the Interim President or a subsequent, democratically elected government,” Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin said.

The Kremlin considers the sanctions against PDVSA as “illegal”, a sign of “unfair competition” and an attempt to interfere with Venezuela’s internal affairs, Peskov said on Tuesday.

Russia is assessing the potential consequences of the sanctions on PDVSA for Moscow, Peskov added.

According to analysts briefed by Platts, whatever the outcome of Venezuela’s political impasse, Rosneft won’t be cut off from Venezuelan oil assets, as oil is pretty much the only hard-currency revenue the country can get. An analyst at a Western bank estimates Rosneft’s assets in Venezuela at up to $2.5 billion, plus another $2.5 billion in crude supplies for the loan to PDVSA.

“The worst-case scenario – which is unlikely to materialize – under which Rosneft loses all the money it invested in Venezuela, would be biting but not critical for the company, with quarterly free cash flow at over $4 billion,” the analyst told Platts.

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/450116-russia-oil-assets-venezuela/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

You Know the Lorena Bobbitt Story. But Not All of It.

January 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

The filmmakers who approached her over the years never wanted to focus on the abuse, the story she really wanted to talk about. Even though the “War of the Bobbitts,” as People magazine called it, happened two years after Anita Hill inserted sexual harassment into the conversation and “Thelma Louise” turned a housewife and a waitress into renegade icons of female revenge, most people never really thought of Lorena in those terms. Men, speaking from Charlie Rose’s table and Geraldo Rivera’s armchairs, made Lorena seem like an unsatisfied, unhinged wife who had dealt a ghastly blow in the gender wars. And while many women defended Lorena and wondered what John must have done to drive her to it, some feminists argued that she had hurt the cause, making the sisterhood look deranged. “It was like, ‘Oh yeah, so now a lot of women are going to do this,’” remembered Katha Pollitt, who wrote about the trial for The Nation. “I do not remember Lorena Bobbitt, feminist hero.”

Domestic violence activists tried to refocus the conversation. “Nobody cared about anything except John and his surgery and his ‘loss,’” said Kim A. Gandy, a former president of the National Organization for Women. “We did a lot of interviews and the approach was often something like ‘Well, that’s what you feminists wanted all along.’”

Then, in 1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested and later acquitted in the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman. That same year Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act. “The national dialogue that started with Anita Hill, Lorena Bobbitt, O.J. Simpson, finally created a national discourse that gave us some traction on legislation,” said Katie Ray-Jones, chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

So, even though most portrayals of Lorena made her seem like, in her words, “this crazy, jealous lady,” the Bobbitt trial did play a part in the laws changing.

That was the version of the story that Joshua Rofé, a documentarian who had made “Lost for Life,” about juveniles serving life sentences in prison, wanted to tell. He explained that to Lorena when he reached out to her in December 2016, after reading about her work with domestic violence victims in HuffPost. They talked for nearly a year before Lorena, motivated by her outrage about the election of Donald J. Trump and, months later, the #MeToo movement, decided the climate was finally right to tell her side. It just so happened that at the same time, a wave of movies, documentaries and podcasts (“I, Tonya,” “The Clinton Affair,” “Slow Burn”) had shined new light on other women engulfed in scandals in the 1990s. Lorena identified with Tonya Harding and Monica Lewinsky. “We were vilified by the media, vilified and that is so sad. It happens to women,” she said. Maybe, she figured, her story could finally get equal billing to John’s penis.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/arts/television/lorena-bobbitt-documentary-jordan-peele.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

The Lonely, and Often Risky, Pursuit of R. Kelly: ‘Where Was Everybody Else?’

January 29, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Mr. DeRogatis worked with three separate media outlets on the story, each of which progressed far along the editing process before dropping out. After the last outlet canceled, on a Wednesday afternoon in July 2017, Mr. DeRogatis contacted Shani O. Hilton, the vice president of news and programming at BuzzFeed News, who accepted the piece. It was edited, fact-checked and given a legal review in four days.

“He literally FedExed all of his boxes of evidence, his tapes, his transcriptions,” Ms. Hilton said.

That article, published the next Monday at nearly 5,000 words, and several others that followed spawned an activist hashtag, #MuteRKelly, that called for Mr. Kelly to be dropped by his label, RCA, and by streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

His BuzzFeed stories also led to Kreativ, a television production company that has a deal with Bunim/Murray Productions — the reality-TV giant behind shows like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” — to begin laying the groundwork for the documentary. Interviews with victims and family members who had been identified through Mr. DeRogatis’s reporting were lined up.

After selling the project to Lifetime, the producers approached Ms. Hampton, who said that at first, the Bunim/Murray association turned her off.

“They said they were approaching this very seriously and wanted to center these black girls,” Ms. Hampton said. “I took off my sunglasses and stopped eating my sushi and all of a sudden took this meeting very seriously.”

Ms. Hampton, 47, joined the project in February 2018, as showrunner and executive producer, and her involvement immediately gave it credibility. As a hip-hop journalist in the 1990s, she developed a reputation as both an insider and a cutting critic of the culture’s shortcomings. She developed close friendships with the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z, yet called out Dr. Dre and other rappers for violence against women.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/business/media/r-kelly-jim-derogatis-dream-hampton.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business
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