07-30-2016, 11:36 PM
The documents that Justo leaked have set off a chain reaction of investigations in at least half a dozen countries, and led to what Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, described last week as “the largest kleptocracy case” in US history. According to lawsuits filed last week by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), at least $3.5bn has been stolen from 1MDB. The purpose of the fund, which was set up by Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, in 2009, was to promote economic development in a country where the median income stands at approximately £300 per month. Instead, the DoJ alleged that stolen money from 1MDB found its way to numerous associates of Prime Minister Najib, who subsequently went on a lavish spending spree across the world. It also accused Najib of receiving $681m of cash from 1MDB – a claim he denied. Money from 1MDB, the US also claimed, helped to purchase luxury apartments in Manhattan, mansions in Los Angeles, paintings by Monet, a corporate jet, and even financed a major Hollywood movie.
A FEW WEEKS AGO I spoke to a trade group of construction company CEOs and CFOs. I thought their top concern would be taxes, regulations, the slow-growth economy or, perhaps, the 2016 election. Wrong. It was the lack of skilled labor. Welders, carpenters, HVAC technicians–the U.S. has far too few of them. The shortfall in welders alone runs as high as 240,000, and it will get worse. The American Welding Society predicts it will reach 340,000 by 2024. The average welder is 54 years old, compared with about age 40 for the American workforce as a whole. Young people simply aren’t going into skilled trades like welding.
This Tragic Economic Mismatch Costs Trillions and Orphans Millions - Forbes
Gold and the stock market have never quite seen eye to eye, but recently the relationship has become one of outright antagonism. That means an investor looking to hedge against a potential market drop could do much worse than picking up some gold.
If you own gold, you’re basically short stocks
Amazon's cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, didn't fail to impress again this quarter. It had $2.8 billion in revenue, up 58% year-over-year, on a healthy 25% operating margin. That puts AWS on a very impressive $11 billion revenue run rate. "We feel like we’re in the leadership position and we’re looking to expand that," Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said about AWS's growth during the press call on Thursday. Olsavsky went on to attribute the success of AWS to 3 factors:
These are the reasons why Amazon Web Services is so successful - Business Insider
Specifically, he recommends buying the 101-strike weekly calls expiring on Friday, and selling the 102-strike calls. This trade will cost a total of 24 cents per share, and return a profit of 76 cents, or 317 percent, if Apple closes the week at $102 or above. "It's a little bit of a gamble," Gordon granted, "but we have an attractive reward-to-risk ratio."