"Blocking licenses is a more aggressive weapon, and states are using it on behalf of themselves and the federal government. Proponents of the little-known state licensing laws say they are in taxpayers’ interest. But critics from both parties say the laws shove some borrowers off a financial cliff."
"The world’s biggest businesses, heads of state and global figures in politics, entertainment and sport who have sheltered their wealth in secretive tax havens are being revealed this week in a major new investigation into Britain’s offshore empires. The material, which has come from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens, was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with partners including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times."
"State and local taxes on marijuana could surpass 45% in some parts of California, jeopardizing efforts to bring all growers and sellers into a state-licensed market in January, according to the global credit ratings firm Fitch Ratings. The report said that increased enforcement may blunt the illegal market, 'but high taxes may complicate such efforts by diverting in-state sales to the black market.'"
"Thousands of pages of newly unsealed records reveal a widespread scheme — a highly unorthodox merger of an undercover law enforcement operation and a legitimate business. What began as a way to catch black-market cigarette dealers quickly transformed into a nearly untraceable A.T.F. slush fund that agents from around the country could tap."
"There are numerous reasons why police tend to focus on certain types of law enforcement. Not all of them originate with the police agencies themselves." Continue reading →
"A new form of insurance that this law may create: A policy that would pay for health insurance premiums if the user ever got sick enough to need them. Such insurance would be very cheap, as the maximum exposure to the insurance company is only 130% of the premium for a standard health insurance policy. In the end, the only people buying health insurance would be those who can buy it for free using their tax credits and really sick people for whom insurance premiums are cheaper than their medical bills. But as insurance companies lose money on the latter group, they will be forced to raise their premiums on the former. This puts us right back in the box we are stuck in with Obamacare." Continue reading →
"For investors with $12 trillion of negative-rate bonds worldwide, U.S. junk securities and their 6.9 percent average yield look like a gold mine. But with so many investors streaming into the market, the debt is now yielding almost 3 percentage points less than the average of the past two decades, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. And they’re buying it up at the same time that junk-rated borrowers default at the fastest pace in six years." Continue reading →
"Because junk bond ETFs appear liquid, most investors don’t see the danger. They think they can sell their junk bonds ETFs just as easily as they could sell shares of Apple. But if too many people decide to sell junk bonds at once, it could overwhelm the market and cause prices to crash. None of this has been a problem yet because junk bonds have been in a bull market. According to Bank of America, junk bonds have gained 149% since 2009. But all bull markets eventually end. And when this one ends, junk bonds could cause massive losses to investors who don’t know about these risks." Continue reading →
"Michael Milken, the creator of junk bonds, once remarked: 'Liquidity is an illusion.....It’s always there when you don’t need it, and rarely there when you do'. The problems with liquidity underscore the distorting effects of central bank intervention in financial markets. Official policies in the aftermath of the financial crisis have forced excessive risk taking in search of returns. Yet regulatory changes have contributed to a reduction in trading liquidity. Over time, investors can become increasingly exposed to ever more risky financial assets that in a crisis would be difficult to trade — triggering a major collapse in prices." Continue reading →
"Regulators’ efforts to rein in Wall Street’s biggest banks are in danger of backfiring. Guidelines aimed at strengthening lending standards are shifting the market for high-yield credit to less-supervised loan funds, raising alarm this week from the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Because the funds don’t have depositors, some of their money comes from Wall Street banks, leaving systemically important institutions exposed to risks regulators hoped to avoid. BDCs and private credit funds [are called] 'Dodd-Frank banks' because they’ve grown in the wake of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act’s heightened supervisory scrutiny of regulated lenders." Continue reading →