In the United States bilking people for tens of millions of dollars results in time behind bars. Just look at Nevin Shapiro, who stole tens of millions of dollars and received a 20 year sentence. In China, however, mass fraud can result in the death penalty. Lin Haiyan, a 39-year-old woman from Wenzhou, was recently sentenced to death for running a 70 million dollar Ponzi scheme. Does China have the right idea, or is...
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Steven Miller, the ousted acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) apologized on behalf of the agency for the poor service and mistakes it committed during a Congressional hearing. Miller also denied allegations that he misled Americans and partisanship motivations for the IRS officials for their inappropriate action, which is currently under investigation. “First and foremost, as acting commissioner, I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service. Partisanship or even...
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Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s approach to combating Mexican drug cartels has been a much-discussed topic since well before he was elected. Indeed, in June 2011 — more than a year before the July 2012 Mexican presidential election — I wrote an analysis discussing rumors that, if elected, Pena Nieto was going to attempt to reach some sort of accommodation with Mexico’s drug cartels in order to bring down the level of violence. Such rumors were...
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The Senate has confirmed Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Energy according to Bloomberg. Ernest Moniz, a physicist who has previously worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be the Secretary of Energy for Barack Obama’s second term as President of the United States. The news that the Senate confirmed Moniz comes amid several scandals in the White House, stemming from unethical, and possibly illegal practices at the IRS and the Department of Justice....
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Often we perceive that there is a constitution debate around whether or not the American government can limit or restrict the ability of people to bear arms. This is ironic, because after even a cursory glance at the constitution, it’s easy to see that there is no debate. Take a look at the actual wording of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right...
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Syria yet again suffers an internet outage, cutting its citizens off from the rest of the online world. According to Internet monitoring firm Renesys, internet in the country has been down since Wednesday, 7:01 UTC (12:01 a.m. PDT). Confirmation U.S. based Renesys confirmed in a tweet that BGP (border gateway patrol) is down, inbound trace routes are failing, and DNS severs and government web sites are down. Another tweet from the state-run Syrian news...
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Summary An amendment to a standing water treaty between the United States and Mexico has received publicity over the past six months as an example of progress in water sharing agreements. But the amendment, called Minute 319, is simply a glimpse into ongoing mismanagement of the Colorado River on the U.S. side of the border. Over-allocation of the river’s waters 90 years ago combined with increasing populations and economic growth in the river basin have created...
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Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) left FWD.us, the advocacy group headed by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) for immigration reform according to a report from Sarah McBride and Alina Selyukh of Reuters. Musk was one of the executives who supported Zuckerberg when he launched the advocacy group for immigration reform last month. Many leaders in the technology industry support FWD.us including Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft...
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Documents to be released this week indicate that the Internal Revenue Service is targeting tea party groups as well as others which include various statements that they “criticize how the country is run” or educate about how to “make America a better place to live.” These statements are sometimes included in the filings of conservative political groups which are filing for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4). Tea Party Group May Demand IRS Repayment CNN...
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From a reader who I appreciate: David, I am curious if you have thoughts about insurance companies (especially P&C) hedging political risk … the answer to this question obviously will carry over to healthcare quickly. Recently, my state (Corrupticut) was hit by hurricane Sandy. Many municipalities (but not all) still had extensive flood control, hurricane gates, levies, etc from the 1970s — the last time we had really active hurricanes. In an effort to...
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PML-N candidate Nawaz Sharif will be Pakistan’s next prime minster. This will be the first time in the nation’s history that a civilian government will finish a full term and turn over power through a democratic election. Sharif served as prime minister for two terms in Pakistan in the 1990s, so this will be his third term. He is credited with bringing Pakistan into the global nuclear club, and he was removed from power...
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