The Toyota Mirai is the world’s first mainstream hydrogen fuel cell car. It's for sale now in California, and Toyota has plans to make it available in parts of the Northeast later this year.
Toyota says the car is safe, and that testing included firing a bullet into the fuel tank. Still, there are concerns, and in some places drivers aren't allowed to take the car through tunnels. Another challenge? Refueling. The car goes 312 miles on a fill, and it doesn't take long — just a few minutes — but there aren't that many hydrogen-filling stations in the US. Yet, at least. The French company Air Liquide announced last week that it will create four hydrogen fueling stations in the northeast — in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.
Toyota's not the only carmaker in this market — the Hyundai Tuscon SUV and the Honda Clarity are also powered by hydrogen (though not all are available in the U.S. yet). So, Toyota is hoping that there will be enough infrastructure to support its hydrogen-powered car — and to get people to shell out $57,500 to buy it.
Ben Johnson took a spin in the Mirai at the New York International Auto Show, and he spoke about the car (which means "future" in Japanese) with Ed LaRocque of Toyota.
The company's new Mirai envisions a world where we fill up with hydrogen instead of gas.
The majority of Singapore’s residents live in high-rise dwellings, as land for building is limited on the 277-square-mile island. But when Singaporeans do build homes or remodel their apartments, they embrace good design. Here is a selection of Singapore’s best designs on Houzz — from a sunny penthouse...
Visit the original post to see all 5 images from this gallery.
When it comes to custom-built off-road Jeeps, there aren’t many better than Starwood Motors. Each successive project seems to get bigger and badder, and is heaps loads more ambitious. Their latest, this custom built Jeep Wrangler Bandit, is no exception.
The Bandit boasts over 700 horsepower from its supercharged 7.0-liter Hemi Stroker engine and is finished with a military tan Kevlar exterior. A Lamborghini leather interior and a 48-inch frame extension gives it seating for four and makes the driving experience a dream. Eye-catching details like the Angel Eye LED headlights and the Fab Fours Metal Jacket Stubby Winch Bumper provide the finishing touches.
Elsewhere in [shareholder] activism, Starboard Value will scale back its role at Darden Restaurants, and its CEO will resign from Darden's board. Starboard, of course, won a proxy fight to replace Darden's entire board, basically because Darden's Olive Garden restaurants didn't salt their pasta water. (I mean, there were other issues too -- like how the unlimited breadsticks were delivered -- but the salt was high up there.) So can you believe this?
Not all of Starboard’s ideas worked out—for example, adding salt to the pasta water, a traditional cooking method.
Executives said that adding salt to the boiling water could jeopardize warranties on its expensive pots. While the company tested salting the water for the new board, it decided that the sauces delivered enough flavor, and Starboard came around, one person familiar with the matter said. See, salting the water was a good short-term solution (the pasta tastes good), but a bad investment for the long term (the pots rot). Classic activism.
Also Panama, Argentina, Valeant and corporate directors.
While Google publicly announced their plan for smart lenses two years ago, it appears Samsung is also working on a new design that will have everybody wanting to wear contacts. According to a patent application filed in South Korea, the tech juggernaut is designing smart contact lenses with built-in cameras. The patent image showcases a lens with a small display, a camera, an antenna and multiple sensors that detect movement and forms of input by blinking.
The display in turn projects these images directly into the eye, but in order to process the information, a smartphone must be linked to the lenses. These smart contact lenses would be a step up from smart glasses, as the lenses can give the individual a more natural means of spotting and processing imagery.
Although just disclosed, the aforementioned patent was originally filed back in 2014 (around the same time Google filed theirs, actually), so Samsung’s smart contact lenses could very well be arriving in the near future.
A huge leak of confidential documents has revealed how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.
Eleven million documents were leaked from one of the world's most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
They show how Mossack Fonseca has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax.
The company says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.
Panama Papers reaction - latest
French President Francois Hollande hailed the "good revelations" which would "increase tax revenues from those who commit fraud".
The documents show 12 current or former heads of state and at least 60 people linked to current or former world leaders in the data. They include the Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugson, who had an undeclared interest linked to his wife's wealth and is now facing calls for his resignation.
The files also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring involving close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years.
"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," he said.
The documents also shed light on how Mossack Fonseca offered financial services designed to help business clients hide their wealth.
One wealthy client, American millionaire and life coach Marianna Olszewski, was offered fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities. This is in direct breach of international regulations designed to stop money laundering and tax evasion.
An email from a Mossack executive to Ms Olszewski in January 2009 explains how she could deceive the bank: "We may use a natural person who will act as the beneficial owner… and therefore his name will be disclosed to the bank. Since this is a very sensitive matter, fees are quite high."
Ms Olszewski did not respond to the BBC's questions.
In a statement, Mossack Fonseca said: "Your allegations that we provide structures supposedly designed to hide the identity of the real owners, are completely unsupported and false.
"We do not provide beneficiary services to deceive banks. It is difficult, not to say impossible, not to provide banks with the identity of final beneficiaries and the origin of funds."
The data also contains secret offshore companies linked to the families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak, Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
Russian connection
It also reveals a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.
The operation was run by Bank Rossiya, which is subject to US and EU sanctionsfollowing Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The documents reveal for the first time how the bank operates.
Money has been channelled through offshore companies, two of which were officially owned by one of the Russian president's closest friends.
Concert cellist Sergei Roldugin has known Vladimir Putin since they were teenagers and is godfather to the president's daughter Maria.
On paper, Mr Roldugin has personally made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from suspicious deals.
But documents from Mr Roldugin's companies state that: "The company is a corporate screen established principally to protect the identity and confidentiality of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company."
Iceland connection
Mossack Fonseca data also shows how Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson had an undeclared interest in his country's failed banks.
Mr Gunnlaugsson has been accused of hiding millions of dollars of investments in his country's banks behind a secretive offshore company.
Leaked documents show that Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought offshore company Wintris in 2007.
He did not declare an interest in the company when entering parliament in 2009. He sold his 50% of Wintris to his wife for $1 (70p), eight months later.
Mr Gunnlaugsson is now facing calls for his resignation. He says he has not broken any rules, and his wife did not benefit financially from his decisions.
The offshore company was used to invest millions of dollars of inherited money, according to a document signed by Mr Gunnlaugsson's wife Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir in 2015.
Mossack Fonseca says offshore companies are available worldwide and are used for a variety of legitimate purposes.
"If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities," it said. "Similarly, when authorities approach us with evidence of possible misconduct, we always co-operate fully with them."
Jennie Granger, a spokeswoman for the UK's tax authority, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), said the organisation had received "a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation".
She said the ICIJ had been asked to share all its data with HMRC.
A document leak reveals major companies and top leaders have been hiding their money through offshore accounts.
I have to say I am a bit sympathetic to the argument of Ramon Fonseca, of Mossack Fonseca, who said in an interview not only that his Panamanian law firm has done nothing wrong in setting up offshore companies for wealthy people, but also that it "has fallen victim to 'an international campaign against privacy.'" I mean, I was sympathetic to Apple in the iPhone hacking case, too, and it seems to me that setting up an offshore shell company is a little like strong encryption, but for your financial affairs. It's certainly possible that you are doing bad stuff with your offshore shell company -- as it is certainly possible that you are doing bad stuff with your encrypted iPhone -- and it might be good if governments and reporters could crack that encryption. But then again, if you care about your privacy, you might prefer it if they couldn't. Or, as Pakistani Information Minister Pervez Rasheed put it in discussing the prime minister's family's alleged offshore companies:
"Every man has the right to do what he wants with his assets, to throw them in the sea, to sell them, or to establish a trust for them. There is no crime in this in Pakistani law or in international law," Rasheed said. If the Panama Papers leak really does lead to a crackdown on offshore companies, perhaps undersea companies will be the next frontier.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg's Blake Schmidt interviewed Fonseca and his partner Jurgen Mossack last week, and honestly they sound delightful? Here is Fonseca's story:
He boasts that his friends have labeled him “a da Vinci man” for his interests in politics, law, business, letters and philanthropy. He’s penned a half-dozen novels over the years, and for a while as a young man had considered becoming a priest.
It was during his time as a bureaucrat at the United Nations in Geneva, where he was surrounded by international lawyers, that Fonseca said he was lured by the mysterious world of offshore businesses. “One day it occurred to me that I could do it too,” he said. “I created my little office and left the UN and started with one secretary to create and sell companies.” He’d join up with Mossack soon thereafter. I realize that a lot of children grow up idolizing pop stars or basketball players or the President, and a few of them eventually achieve the dream of becoming their heroes. But my favorite stories are the ones of quieter inspiration, where U.N. bureaucrats are seduced by the mysteries of international tax law and eventually achieve the dream of creating and selling offshore companies themselves.
Elsewhere in Panama Papers, I was pleased to see some healthy skepticism about claims that they are "history's biggest data leak," which is apparently measured by metrics -- like file size and numbers of documents -- that don't even really quantify the amount of information leaked, never mind its explosiveness. It seems to me that one Abu Ghraib photo is bigger, in its way, than a terabyte of scanned LLC agreements of celebrities who want to conceal their ownership of Manhattan apartments. But here is a Wired story about "How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History," that goes heavy on the terabytes:
“How much data are we talking about?” Obermayer asked.
“More than you have ever seen,” the source responded, according to Obermayer. I hope that dialogue ends up in the movie.
Elsewhere, it seems somehow fitting that the one U.S. person so far named in connection with the Panama Papers is a "financial writer and life coach." And here is an article about Brazilian senator Delcídio do Amaral's "accounts of colossal bribes, back-room oil deals and desperate cover-ups" in the Petrobras scandal.
Inversions.
The Treasury Department announced new rules relating to tax inversions yesterday, and as tax analyst Robert Willens put it, "They’re pretty much taking all of the juice out of inversions." The biggest juicing involves earnings stripping:
The Treasury Department also took aim at another feature of these so-called corporate inversion transactions: complicated internal loans that effectively move profits of United States-based businesses overseas. This tactic, known as earnings stripping, involves the American subsidiary borrowing from the parent company and using the interest payments on the loans to offset earnings — a cost that is not reflected on financial statements but lowers the tax bill.
Monday’s rules classify this intra-company transaction as if it were stock-based instead of debt, eliminating the interest deduction for the American subsidiary. It is worth distinguishing two reasons for tax inversions. One reason is just that the U.S. has a relatively high corporate tax rate on worldwide income earned by U.S. corporations, which creates an incentive for international companies not to be located in the U.S. This will pretty much always be true as long as the U.S. taxes worldwide income this way (and as long as other countries don't); even if you ban "inversions," foreign companies will still have an advantage in acquiring U.S. ones for just this reason.
The other reason to invert is because inverted companies can structure their U.S. income to avoid paying U.S. income taxes, by creating a lot of deductible expenses (interest, licensing payments) that are paid to subsidiaries abroad. That is more or less gamesmanship, and is more or less solvable by rules. The solutions are difficult, but Treasury seems to be pretty serious about finding them.
Spoofing and speed chess.
I would say that a good general rule of thumb is that when someone tells you that he "has exceptional reasoning skills -- in the 99th percentile," you probably should stop listening to the rest of what he has to say. That goes double if it's his lawyers telling you that. But I have a soft spot in my heart for Igor Oystacher, who has been accused of spoofing in the futures market by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, just because I find the CFTC's case against him strangely unconvincing. On the other hand, the CFTC's best argument is just that Oystacher put in a lot of orders where he changed his mind half a second later, and that is a really short time in which to change your mind -- unless he was just spoofing and never really meant the first order to execute. Oystacher's responses so far have been along the lines of "If we click quicker than most, it is a skill," which, like, sure, I don't know. But now his lawyers have fleshed that argument out a bit, and it is a joy:
Outlining his defense for the first time in an April 1 court filing, lawyers said that Oystacher, a competitive speed chess player, has exceptional reaction-time skills and a customized computer mouse that make him faster than most humans at executing trades. If he clicks quicker than most, it is a skill (honed by speed chess), but it is also a special mouse. The perfect combination of man and technology. I love it.
Speaking of changing your mind quickly.
Here's a story about Southwestern Energy, which "disclosed that it drew $1.55 billion on its credit agreement on March 30, only to repay the full balance two days later." Guess what happened on March 31? That's right, the first quarter ended, and Southwestern calculated its balance sheet for the end of the quarter -- a balance sheet that had $1.55 billion more cash than it did the previous day. Also $1.55 billion more debt, but "having the cash on its balance sheet on the last day of the first quarter increases the amount of secured debt that it can borrow in the second quarter, per its indentures and credit facilities," by about $232 million.
People get mad about the weirdest things in finance. Like this is in some ways a story of Southwestern pulling a fast one -- literally! -- on its lenders. But not really. It's all disclosed. It's not dishonest, or trickery. It is, I think it is fair to say, gamesmanship: It is using a literal reading of the rules (here, the debt contracts) to get a result that Southwestern likes but that is perhaps a little counterintuitive, that maybe even violates the spirit of those rules in some way. But of course debt contracts don't have spirits. They just say what you can and can't do, and if you can do it, you can do it. There is no further appeal to spirit or generosity or patriotism to block you from doing what you're otherwise allowed to do. This trade is fine, a non-event; Southwestern's creditors will, I assume, shrug and say "yeah, you got us." But there are plenty of other scenarios where companies do what they are allowed to do under a literal reading of the rules, and nonetheless get in trouble for it. (Tax inversions, and offshore shell companies, perhaps come to mind.) And if you're used to doing this sort of literal gamesmanship, it can be hard to stop when it's no longer appropriate.
The Brothers Meyohas.
When last we talked about Sarah Meyohas, the financial artist who manipulated some micro-cap stocks (but for Art!), she had lost her Charles Schwab account for, you know, doing that. But not everyone in the Meyohas family trades retail: Sarah's brothers, Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, "two little-known financiers who hope to revive the 'British Steel' name," run a private equity firm called Greybull, and are looking to "buy the Scunthorpe steelworks from Tata, pumping £400m into the struggling plant and saving a total of around 9,000 local jobs." (Also: "The wealthy brothers' father made his fortune in the private equity industry in the United States.") In my imagination, they are a whole family of finance artists, and once they acquire the steel plant they will cover it in elaborate murals and earthwork art, and will use it to fabricate complicated sculptural allegories for the ravages of global financial capitalism. (Their sister is on the same page, and e-mailed me: "large scale sculpture if you ask me!") But realistically they're probably just buying it to make money
Bill Gross.
I have previously expressed skepticism about Bill Gross's lawsuit against Pimco claiming that it fired him in breach of his employment contract, because "(1) Pimco didn't fire him, he quit, and (2) he didn't have an employment contract." But a California judge did not share my skepticism and allowed Gross's suit to go forward, and now Pimco has filed a response arguing that Gross knew he'd lose his bonus if he quit, and quit anyway, leaving "a handwritten resignation note the next morning."
The filing has some amazing exhibits, including the resignation note itself, as well as Gross's alleged notes of a phone conversation with Reuters reporter Jennifer Ablan ("what he claimed were contemporaneous handwritten notes of his phone call with Ms. Ablan, taken in his car while he was pulled over on the side of the 405 freeway," as Pimco's lawyers put it), in which Gross told Ablan that former Pimco Chief Executive Officer (and Bloomberg View contributor) Mohamed El-Erian was undermining him, and that El-Erian had Ablan "wrapped around his little finger like everyone else."
Star analysts.
I have written before about two models of sell-side equity research. In one, the job of a research analyst is to know what stocks will go up, and tell her clients. In the other, the job of the analyst is to get her clients access to corporate managers, and her research reports are more or less beside the point. I am biased toward the second model, but of course they can coexist, and probably the real world reflects a mix of both. For instance, you could easily believe that some analysts are good at predicting which stocks will go up, and so investors care very much about their actual Buy and Sell recommendations; other analysts are mostly there for the access. Anyway here's a summary of a study finding that "a downgrade by a star analyst causes tremendous valuation changes, which are not offset by the CEO's reputation," unlike downgrades by non-star analysts.
Bitcoins and blockchains.
Here is a Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper that certain segments of the Money Stuff audience may enjoy:
This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the Bitcoin standard, a monetary system in which all media of exchange are Bitcoin or are backed by it. The paper explores the similarities and differences between the Bitcoin standard and the gold standard and describes the media of exchange that would exist under the Bitcoin standard. Because the Bitcoin standard would closely resemble the gold standard, the paper explores the lessons about how it would perform by examining the classical gold standard period, specifically 1880–1913. The paper argues that because there would be virtually no arbitrage costs for international transactions, countries could not follow independent interest rate policies under the Bitcoin standard. However, central banks would still have some limited ability to act as lenders of last resort. Based on the experience during the classical gold standard period, the paper conjectures that there would be mild deflation and constant exchange rates under the Bitcoin standard. The paper also conjectures how long the Bitcoin standard might last if it were to come into existence It's mostly about macroeconomics, though; someone should really write a more sociologically oriented paper about a world in which countries are on the bitcoin standard. How did we get there? What else has changed? Elsewhere: "Microsoft and R3 Partnership to Accelerate Adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies by Global Banks."
People are worried about unicorns.
I joked the other day that one day ambitious parents will worry more about their children's startup incubator applications than about their college applications, but you can more or less combine the two by applying to Minerva, "a San Francisco start-up aiming to offer an Ivy League-level education at half the cost of elite US colleges" that "has accepted a smaller fraction of its applicants than Harvard or Yale in its third year of operation." Minerva, which has $70 million in venture capital funding, took 306 students, who will "move between California, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Bangalore, Istanbul and London while studying a largely online curriculum" and paying about $28,000 a year. Somehow it is not called Unicorn University, which feels like a missed opportunity, though the Minerva Unicorns would be a good name for the football team. Except there is no football team. Quidditch team, probably.
Elsewhere, I always sort of think of the Enchanted Forest as a socialist utopia, at least when it is not busy being a Randian utopia, so I am not surprised that "Bernie Sanders Is Still Outraising Hillary Clinton Among Tech Workers." And here is a story about co-working startup WeWork and its new ... co-living ... concept ... called WeLive. "A walk through WeLive feels like a stroll through a millennial office worker Narnia," says the article, because everything in this section of Money Stuff inevitably turns into children's fantasy literature.
People are worried about stock buybacks.
Here is Cullen Roche, sensibly, on those worries:
Corporations are buying back shares because their profits are near record levels and their resulting cash flows are high. Equity prices are high because future profit expectations are accordingly high. Buybacks are a procyclical result of this and do not necessarily reflect manipulated stock prices, but are merely the result of record high profits and cash flows. Elsewhere: "In the battle between the barons of buybacks and the divas of dividends, the divas are getting out to an early lead."
People are worried about bond market liquidity.
If you are worried about bond market liquidity, perhaps you should consider convertible bonds, which are in an entirely other market with its own liquidity dynamics:
Finding a way to lure investors is crucial at a time when raising capital has been tougher across asset classes, especially for companies with lower credit ratings. Stocks have been on a roller-coaster ride, at the same time as wary credit market investors have driven up the cost of issuing debt for some firms.
About $7.4 billion in convertible securities have been issued in the U.S. this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While that’s down 31 percent from this time in 2015, convertible issuance has been relatively healthy compared to other asset classes. Junk bond issuance plunged 57 percent so far in 2016, the worst start to a year since the recession in 2009, according to the data. Disclosure: I used to structure and market convertible bonds, so I am always happy to see them doing well. Another disclosure: I couldn't find much real bond-market-liquidity news this morning. That just means there'll be a ton of it tomorrow.
Me yesterday.
I wrote about activism and antitrust.
Things happen.
Merrill, Other Brokerages Prepare for Fiduciary Rule. Fourteen asset managers sue Portuguese central bank. Hedge Funds Sue to Block Payment by Puerto Rico's Development Bank. A profile of Pierre Andurand, who is good at trading oil. A profile of Andrea Smith, who's in charge of stress testing for Bank of America. Are Stress Tests Still Informative? Online Lenders Enlist Silicon Alley to Avoid Next 'Big Short.' Bearer securities are still a thing. Twitter Said to Win NFL Deal for Thursday Night Streaming Rights. Marissa Mayer and Yahoo Media. There's no such thing as a free dinner. "Some guy scaled the building and used his elbow to break in" to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Money for Nothing: The Lucrative World of Club Appearances. When a New Cell Phone Almost Ruins Your Relationship. Taliban app. Is CERN summoning demons?
Also revolver draws, Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, Bill Gross, star analysts and the bitcoin standard.
This final note on the way out which comes with the observation that there's a member of the Marketplace bureau here in New York who's going to see "Hamilton" tonight for the second time, even though some of us haven't even seen it once.
Anyway, I mention that so I could pass this along.
There's a story coming in the New York Times magazine this weekend about the lead producer of the blockbuster show about this country's first Treasury Secretary and the challenges of managing a runaway hit like Hamilton.
Here's just one line item:
The show is averaging a profit of more than $500,000 dollars a week.
Pro BMX rider Nigel Sylvester has dropped the latest installment of his GO! video series, with this episode taking place on and above the streets of Los Angeles.
The footage opens up with Nigel helicoptering into LA and gives the viewer a first-person perspective of exactly what it’s like to be on his bike as he rides through the streets, dodging cars, evading stray dogs and meeting a few familiar faces. This time we see him bump into basketball player Nick Young, Rob Dyrdek, Ben Baller and more.
Click the play button to see exactly what Nigel gets up to, and if you missed it first time around, be sure to check out part 1 below.
We're glad you've endured Monday. Now, let's kick start the rest of your week with some need-to-know numbers.
Having nurses and doctors tend to you in your own home may be the future of health care. Marketplace’s Dan Gorenstein explores the growing “hospital-at-home” model as part of the latest installment in our "Secretary of the Future" series. In the series, we ask: If the next president were to appoint a Cabinet member to worry about future generations, what would be job one? Given the high costs of hospital care for many people, these home visits may be an economically viable solution. A growing body of research suggests that patients live longer and costs go down between 20 to 30 percent with this model, Gorenstein writes.
Overall it seems like a decent number of U.S. homeowners have an attachment to their current homes according to a new report from Bankrate. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. homeowners plan on renovating or sprucing up their houses in some way in the next 12 months. Why all the home improvement plans? It could be a "flag of surrender," according to a finance professor from George Mason University. After the housing crisis, people gave up on the prospect of purchasing a big, fancy house. Renovations could be their way of making do with what they have.
Things are a bit different in San Francisco, though. Workers at tech firms in the northern California city are leaving the area with its $4,500 rents, Bloomberg reports. The CEO of the startup Hired Inc. told Bloomberg that many tech workers begin their careers in San Francisco “to boost salary and establish themselves,” later moving to less pricey areas. As a result, some companies are starting to open offices in lower-priced regions like Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles.
Here are the numbers we're reading and watching for Tuesday.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump wants to force Mexico into paying for a wall at the U.S. border. His plan? Threatening to cut off the billions of dollars Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. send to people in Mexico.
Trump outlined this proposal, which would require a change in the law, in a campaign memo, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. He said he would threaten to cut off these money transfers, also known as remittances, unless the Mexican government pay between $5 billion and $10 billion to fund a wall. Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto has said he has no plans to comply with such a threat. U.S. President Barack Obama also dismissed it.
“The notion that we’re going to track every Western Union bit of money that’s being sent to Mexico — good luck with that,” he told reporters.
While Trump’s proposal will likely never be a reality, the industry built around international remittances is very real. Money transfers sent $583 billion to developing countries in 2014, according to the World Bank, and this money goes to more than 200 countries. Here are some of the numbers around the global remittance business:
Mexico: Mexico received more than $24 billion in 2014 in the form of remittances, according to the World Bank. That meant the country was getting more for money transfers than oil revenues. Various research organizations estimate that about 12 million Mexicans live in the U.S. with some living here illegally, according to the AP. They, along with other immigrants, regularly send money via money transfer services to help their families still living in Mexico.
Asia: Mexico isn’t the county to receive a hefty sum of remittances. Some of the biggest dollar amounts go to Asian countries. India received more than $72 billion while China collected more than $62 billion in 2014.
Remittances as GDP: Sometimes remittances end up fueling the entire economies. In Nepal, remittances counted for nearly 30 percent of its Gross Domestic Product in 2014. In Tajikistan, a war-torn country located between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, that figure was more than 41 percent.
Big players: Western Union and MoneyGram, the two biggest players in the remittance business had a combined footprint of 850,000 agents in 2015. The two companies are valued at $9.6 billion and $312 billion, respectively, according to Bloomberg.
Trump’s border wall plan has us talking about the money people send back home. Let’s do the numbers on this booming business.
SHANGHAI — China has agreed to impose U.N. sanctions on its ally and neighbor North Korea. The trade restrictions come after North Korea carried out a fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket the following month. China has announced it will ban the import of gold, iron ore and other mineral imports from North Korea, as well as halt the export of jet fuel to its neighbor.
For China to actually go along with U.N. sanctions against an ally like North Korea is a big step, and it’s one that Western countries are seeing in a very positive light. China is, after all, North Korea’s most important ally and its most important trading partner. So symbolically, this is an important move from China’s government.
But, the devil is in the details. There are key exceptions to China’s sanctions on North Korea that threaten to water down any meaningful impact on North Korea’s development of a nuclear weapons program. First off, China has not banned the import of North Korean coal. Under the sanctions, China will continue to import coal from North Korea as long as the money is used for the "livelihood of North Korean citizens" and not spent on the country’s nuclear program. How China’s money is spent once it enters North Korea is nearly impossible to keep track of, though, and China spends billions on North Korean coal each year. Last year, North Korea exported 20 million metric tons of coal to China, making it China’s third-largest coal supplier.
China may be reluctant to place meaningful sanctions on North Korea due to its own flailing economy. China’s entering a slower growth reality, and the last thing it needs is an economic collapse of a neighbor that it shares a one-thousand-mile-long border with. Should North Korea collapse, the scenarios for China aren’t pretty. First off, you’ve got the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons and what would happen to them just across the border. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, if North Korea should collapse, you’re looking at a potential of millions of North Korean refugees streaming across the border into China. It's a scenario that has the potential to be worse than the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe.
Should North Korea's economy collapse, it won't be pretty for China.
Legendary fairy tale wordsmith, Hans Christian Anderson, once wrote of Barcelona, “We crossed spacious streets, with building resembling palaces, in La Rambla promenade; the shops were well illuminated and there was movement and life. I did not decide to go to sleep, even though I wished to, so I could rise early and contemplate, in daylight, this city, unknown to me.”
Although Barcelona has quickly become of the most popular tourist destinations for people throughout the globe, many would probably point to the world class food and drink, the fútbol, and the nightlife as major points of entry which drew them to the Catalonian capital in the first place.
However, once inside the city, the majestic beauty of centuries old buildings jutting from the ground – as well as more modern construction that adds to the fairy tale-like charm – certainly leaves an everlasting impression on visitors that Barcelona is truly one of the architectural gems of the world.
For those whom have never visited before, or others who are looking to go back, here are 10 destinations that should definitely be on your design bucket list.
Architect: Antoni Gaudí Opened: 1907
Antoni Gaudi’s name is synonymous with all things “architecture” when it comes to the skyline of Barcelona thanks to his distinct style which led to him being crowed the “Godfather of Catalan Modernism.”
Located in the center of Barcelona, the Casa Batlló is a remodel of a previously designed structure which was worked on and completed between 1904-1906.
A combination of stone, glass, mosaic fragments and ceramic discs – which gives the exterior a wavy shape – the ornamental top is composed of huge spherical pieces of masonry in colors which change as you move along the roof-tree from one end to the other and are inspired by reptile
skin.
Architect: Lluís Domènech i Montaner Opened: 1908
The Palau de la Música Catalana was originally built as the home for the Orfeó Català – a choral society based in Barcelona.
Designed around a central metal structure covered in glass, the nature of the construction allows the musical performers inside to bathe in natural light which radiates off other decorative attributes like sculpture, mosaic, stained glass and ironwork. It remains the only auditorium in Europe that is illuminated during daylight hours entirely by natural light.
In 1997, the Palau de la Música Catalana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site which recognizes institutions which promote peace and security.
Architect: Antoni Gaudi Opened: 2010
Antoni Gaudi worked tirelessly on La Sagrada Familia for 43 years – actually living and sleeping on site – until his untimely death on June 10, 1926 after the legendary architect was struck by a trolley car in Barcelona only a few weeks shy of his 75th birthday.
Built as an expression of his own Christian faith, each one of the 18 towers reflects various facets of the religion – including the middle and surrounding four towers dedicated to Jesus Christ and the Gospels, the tower above the apse, crowned by a star, representing his mother the Virgin Mary, and the remaining 12 towers representing the 12 Apostles.
“The temple as a whole, as well being a place for divine worship, will artistically represent the truths of religion and the glorification of God and His Saints,” Gaudi said.
La Sagrada Familia is scheduled to be completed in 2026 to mark the 100th anniversary of Antoni Gaudi’s passing.
Architect: Jean Nouvel Opened: 2005
Although most of the architectural wonders in Barcelona are steeped in centuries old traditions and hard labor, the Torre Agbar is one of the newer additions to the skyline that will certainly be talked about in a glowing manner when the structure has had time to mature and grow on people.
Housing the headquarters for Aguas de Barcelona (Agbar), the municipal water company, those that witness the structure in person will notice a multicolored facade of transparent and translucent aluminum panels, behind glass louvers, in 25 different colors.
Architect Jean Nouvel said of the project, “This is not a tower. It is not a skyscraper in the American sense of the expression: it is a unique growth in the middle of this rather calm city. But it is not the slender, nervous verticality of the spires and bell towers that often punctuate horizontal cities. Instead, it is a fluid mass that has perforated the ground – a geyser under a permanent calculated pressure.”
Architect: Josep Puig Opened: 1900
Along with the aforementioned Casa Battló as well as Casa Lleó-Morera, Josep Puig’s Casa Amatller makes up the legendary Illa de la Discòrdia (“Block of Discord”) which got its name because the three structures were built in sharply contrasting styles.
As the first to be built and be refurbished, Puig’s Casa Amatller was forged during the architect’s “rose” or modernista period – which included buildings like the Casa Macaya and the Casa de les Punxes.
Aesthetically, the structure fuses Catalan influences with German and Dutch inspiration – while also incorporating whimsical medieval attributes like busts of dragons and knights.
Architect: Enric Massip-Bosch Opened: 2011
Home to Telefónica, S.A, a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider, Diagonal ZeroZero is a testament to imagination and proficiency. Although it stands 360 feet tall (the fifth tallest building in the city), the structure took only eight months to build thanks to a workforce of 450 who worked three shifts a day and seven days a week to complete the build.
The most striking attribute of Diagonal ZeroZero are the white, aluminum curtainwalls which give the structure the feeling of being a paper cutout.
Architect: Josep Miàs Opened: 2007
The Mercat de la Barcelona was rebuilt between 2005 and 2007 and is based on Antoni Rovira i Trias’s original 1884 structure which was gave Catalonian’s local goods from the fishing communities.
Combining old-world materials like steel – which contribute to the modern wing-like extensions – solar energy is also prominently harnessed to power 30 percent of the entire market.
Architect: Antoni Gaudi Opened: 1914
Antoni Gaudi’s Park Güell was to serve the interests of wealthy entrepreneur Eusebi Güell who had come to admire the architect’s work after having his own home built by him.
The intentions were to create a whimsical garden city that would be home to 60 villas. Inevitably, that project never was fully developed and abandoned for a more playful and public exhibition of Gaudi’s tastes which register like a playground for the mind – complete with gingerbread gatehouses, ceramic dragons, and a world-famous serpentine bench.
Architects: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron Opened: 2004
Designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Museu Blau de les Ciències Naturals is another relative newcomer to the Barcelona skyline. Distinct due in large part to its triangular shape which fills in the negative space formed by Avenue Diagonal, Rambla de Prim, and the Ronda Litoral, the structure itself features auditorium seating for 3,200 people while the exhibition hall covers nearly 5,000 square meters.
Architect: Toyo Ito Opened: 2010
Japanese architect Toyo Ito says of his Hotel Porta Fira, “The project consists of two differentiated towers that engage in a subtle dialogue. Despite the clear contrast between the buildings in terms of form, the relationship they establish is harmonious and complementary. The buildings (each 110 m high) play a highly symbolic role as they pay tribute to the historical Venetian towers that stand at the entrance to the exhibition centre located near Plaza España in Barcelona.”
In 2010, the building was chosen from 300 worldwide skyscrapers by a jury made up of architectural experts from 67 countries as the winner of the Emporis Skyscraper Award and was/is applauded for its aesthetic beauty and urban integration.
n a single night, Scott Disick—the runt of the Kardashian litter, the fuckup father of Kourtney's three children—makes more money doing nothing than most Americans earn in an entire year. Disick is a man routinely mocked on national television for being the one without any skills in a family of people who are famous for not really having any skills. But in 2016, he represents both the luckiest beneficiary and the most tragicomic casualty of the booming club-appearance economy. All he has to do to earn his check is walk through the door at 1OAK in Las Vegas and not leave for one hour.
And yet the club-appearance gig is a giant knot in Disick's life that seems to only tangle and tighten like a noose. He began booking these appearances a few years back, presumably so he could gain some agency beyond the grip of Kris Jenner and have something to call his “job.” For a while, this was working out nicely for him. He was gaining enough notoriety thanks to Keeping Up with the Kardashians that his appearance fee rose to impressive numbers: He could pull $70,000 or $80,000 a night in the U.S. At one high point, he scored a $250,000 deal for a series of appearances in the UK.
But in Disick's case, all that time spent in nightclubs exacerbated his already-problematic drinking and alleged drugging habits, which put him on shaky ground with his family. This made him come off like even more of a loser on the show, which in turn probably made him even more desperate for validation outside of the E! network. Hence, more club appearances, more bad behavior, more humiliation on national TV, more need for outside validation… This is the extended EDM remix of the song that never ends.
Eventually Disick's petulant shenanigans started to get old, and everyone realized that he was deeply troubled. And so the bad press has knocked his appearance fee down a notch. Although not so low that Disick is conflicted about doing the work: His new 1OAK contract requires him to appear eight times at the club in 2016.
“I'm being really real,” he says. “Without Ray J's dick, there's no Scott Disick. Without O. J. Simpson, there is no business for this family.”
I am learning all of this from Disick's on-again, off-again manager, David Weintraub, who is explaining the business to me as we sit in the back of an RV driving through Midtown Manhattan while filming a reality show starring Ray J, another of his clients. Weintraub, 37, grew up surrounded by Hollywood royalty and first made his name as an executive producer and star on the reality show Sons of Hollywood. (He is not related to the late movie producer Jerry Weintraub—but he was best friends with Aaron Spelling's son growing up.) Now he's a key intermediary in this club-appearance world, a bizarre ecosystem that has reinvented the way a famous person, not to mention Weintraub, makes a living. He wears a gaudy gold pendant with the letters DWE—for his company, David Weintraub Entertainment—around his neck. He doesn't have relationships with people in this business, he says. He just makes money with them.
About a decade ago, Weintraub says, he helped connect Scott to Kourtney, and he continues to manage both Disick and Ray J despite their obvious familial conflicts. (Back when she was just a rising star in the club-appearance game, Kim Kardashian made a video with her then boyfriend Ray J—perhaps you saw it—and after that, well, suffice it to say her fee went way up. Everyone in nightlife today has a certain nostalgic glow when you bring up Kim's club-appearance days. Nobody can afford her now.)
Today Weintraub and Disick are not in a good place, thanks to some bungled appearance deals that put both of their reputations on the line. Perhaps they would patch things up tomorrow—they usually do—but at this moment, Weintraub sounds like a disappointed stepfather who has endured one too many juvenile transgressions.
“My attitude with Scott right now is: I'll make money with you and bring you deals. But just know where you came from.” I can see he's getting more incensed with every word. He leans into my audio recorder and begins to shout: “Without [Weintraub's former business partner] Sean Stewart and David Weintraub, you would never know these motherfucking people! I grew up with them. NOT. YOU.”
Weintraub peers out the window of the RV, gesturing toward the van in which Ray J sits. “I'm being really real,” he says. “Without Ray J's dick, there's no Scott Disick. Without O. J. Simpson, there is no business for this family.”
Once upon a time, if you did well in school and worked hard in life you were pretty much assured of being able to earn a decent living. But then neoliberalism happened, and as GQ outline in this investigative piece on the celebrity club-appearance economy, you’re much better off playing a minor bit-part character in a reality TV program then charging club insane figures just to show up at their establishment for a bit.
According to GQ, “Scott Disick—the runt of the Kardashian litter, the fuckup father of Kourtney’s three children,” can make more than most Americans make in an entire year by showing up to a crappy club for an hour. Apparently, “he could pull $70,000 or $80,000 a night in the U.S. At one high point, he scored a $250,000 deal for a series of appearances in the UK.”
Many one-hit wonder rappers, flash-in-the-pan celebrity stars, and countless other show business characters make vast amounts of cash hugely disproportionate to their talents just by showing up at a club.The publication investigates some of the major players behind this bizarre aspect of the modern condition.
In Swiss Army Man, Daniel Radcliffe plays a corpse that washes up on a deserted island just as his stranded co-star, Paul Dano is about to hang himself.
It’s an artsy best friend drama representing a bizarre pairing of a semi-animated dead body and a dude who might just be hallucinating everything. It’s weird, disgusting, and oddly sentimental, and having debuted at Sundance earlier this year it’s probably pretty good too.
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Having crafted a Nintendo Entertainment System from aluminum in the past, now, Analogue is set to release a 24-karat version of the NES that looks like it was custom made for Rick Ross, the self-appointed Boss.
Created in celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda‘s release, Analogue’s “Nt” natively outputs high quality analog video and audio signals, each processed from the original Nintendo CPU and PPU. English translation: this is no emulator, the Analogue Nt features exactly the same hardware that the original Zelda was made for.
Retailing for $4,999 and limited to a mere 10 units, the drop is scheduled for April 4. Make sure you act quick before Rick Ross buys all of them.
The Late Late Show‘s James Corden is back with his latest episode of “Carpool Karaoke.” After singing along with the likes of Sia, Rod Stewart and A$AP Rocky, Adele and Justin Bieber, among others, this time around Corden welcomes Jennifer Lopez.
While on their way to CBS, JLo and James throw down on some of her biggest hits, ranging from “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” to “Booty,” “Jenny from the Block” and beyond. In between flexing their pipes, they also discuss insuring Lopez’s immaculate backside, and then even send a text message to Leonardo DiCaprio.
Both Kim Kardashian West and Emily Ratajkowski have stunned time and time again in jaw-dropping, sensual photoshoots. And with social media being as popular as ever, we often get even more intimate looks thanks to personal accounts.
While Kim’s caption read, “When we’re like…we both have nothing to wear LOL @emrata,” Ratajkowski’s stance on the imagery and subject as a whole is a little more serious and direct. In taking to Twitter, the model/actress implored,”However sexual our bodies may be, we need to have the freedom as women to choose when & how we express our sexuality.”
Rata continued to unload a few more tweets, all of which centered around the ability of women to express their sexuality more freely.
Read Emily’s additional tweets below and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments.
