wall-street Archives

Turkey sentences Wall Street Journal reporter to more than two years in prison

October 11, 2017 by administrator

A court in Turkey has sentenced a Wall Street Journal reporter to more than two years in prison on terrorism charges over an article, the newspaper said in a statement Tuesday, in a case that highlighted the Turkish government’s escalating clampdown on press freedoms, The Washington Post reported.

The reporter, Ayla Albayrak, was in New York at the time of the sentencing and planned to appeal the decision, the Journal said.

The charges against Albayrak, a dual citizen of Turkey and Finland, stemmed from an article that she wrote two years ago on Turkey’s ongoing war with Kurdish militants, the Journal statement said.

“The sole purpose of the article was to provide objective and independent reporting on events in Turkey, and it succeeded,” said Gerard Baker, editor in chief of the Journal, according to the statement. “This was an unfounded criminal charge and wildly inappropriate conviction that wrongly singled out a balanced Wall Street Journal report.”

The source reminds that the sentence appeared certain to aggravate the ongoing dispute between Turkey and the United States. The feud burst into public view Sunday, when the U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced that it was suspending the issuing of nonimmigrant visas at its missions in Turkey. The move was taken in response to Turkey’s arrest this month of the consulate employee, Metin Topuz, on espionage charges.

Turkey retaliated by quickly announcing an almost identical visa suspension. Erdogan, speaking in Belgrade, Serbia, weighed in on the dispute Tuesday, saying that “the offender in this problem is the United States of America itself.”

Wikileaks releases transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s closed-doors Wall Street speeches – in which she admits being ‘kind of far removed’ from the middle class

October 9, 2016 by administrator

Wikileaks published campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails Friday
One, sent by research director Tony Carrk, contains ‘flags’ from speeches
Excerpts include Clinton‘s positions on Wall Street and electronic security
Carrk seems to imagine potential damaging headlines based on the ‘flags’
One of these possible headlines reads: ‘Clinton admits she is out of touch’

By CLEMENCE MICHALLON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Hillary Clinton admitted to being ‘kind of far removed’ from the middle class, according to a leaked transcript of a speech she gave on Wall Street.

Wikileaks on Friday published emails from campaign chairman John Podesta. One of them, sent by campaign research director Tony Carrk in January this year, points out ‘flags’ in Clinton’s paid speeches.

The email, titled ‘HRC paid speeches’, lists excerpts from several of Clinton’s speeches in front of audiences such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.

Carrk seems to have written potential damaging headlines, as if to imagine how her comments could be perceived. One of these possible headlines states: ‘Clinton admits she is out of touch.’

The next paragraph includes the following excerpt, from a speech Clinton gave in 2014.

‘And I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. Never.

‘I mean, were there really rich people, of course there were. My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing.

‘And now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it.’

Wikileaks (editor Julian Assange is pictured) published emails from campaign chairman John Podesta. One, sent by research director Tony Carrk, points out ‘flags’ in Clinton’s speeches.

Julian Assange, who has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, had planned to give a speech marking Wikileaks’ 10th anniversary on Monday.

The speech, which could have been damaging to Clinton, could have been an ‘October Surprise’ released in time to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

But he cancelled it and instead spoke by video link in Berlin on Tuesday.

In his email, Clarrk warns his team that they should ‘give an extra scrub’ to a lot of the policy positions expressed in Clinton’s speech.

Clinton once said it is necessary to have both a public and a private position on policy, according to the transcript of a 2013 speech included in Clarrk’s email.

‘I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be.

‘But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.’

Clinton’s campaign wouldn’t confirm to BuzzFeed whether the emails published by Wikileaks were authentic.

But spokesman Glen Caplin said administration officials have ‘removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized Wikileaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy’.

Black Monday: Wall Street plummets 1000 points at opening bell

August 24, 2015 by administrator

At the opening bell on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted as much as 1,000 points in the first minutes of trading. Later it corrected to 485 points down or around three percent. The Nasdaq dropped eight percent at the start of trading, but is now down three percent. The S&P 500 had initially sunk five percent and is now down three percent.

The grim data was predictable, as before the opening the Nasdaq 100 Index contract dropped 5 percent reaching its daily loss limit. Companies like Apple and Netflix also suffered from a massive sell-off, sinking at least 5.7 percent amid the panic triggered by Chinese stock markets collapse.

Dow futures plummeting more than 800 points has allowed The New York Stock Exchange to apply Rule 48 for the Monday stock market open, according to Dow Jones.

The rule was last invoked during the financial crisis, and allows the NYSE to open stocks without indication. “It was set up for situations like this,” Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderich Securities told CNBC.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1000 points or 6%, to 15,441.

The collapse in the US markets was triggered by China where a brutal sell-off saw indexes down 8.5 percent on Monday. Beijing’s failure created a domino effect dragging down markets around the world.

“Until we have some sign that China and the emerging markets aren’t being sucked into some vortex from which they can’t recover … it is unlikely this sell-off will stem,” Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia told Reuters.

London’s FTSE finished the day down 288 points, or 4.67 percent, at 5898. Major markets in France and Germany ended the day down 5.5 percent and 4.96 percent, respectively.

Market turmoil has also had in impact on commodity prices. Brent crude briefly dipped below $43 per barrel falling to $42.57 at 13:40 GMT, at the opening bell on Wall Street, but is now trading above $43. Meanwhile, the price of gold is on the up, trading 0.28 percent higher at $1,162.80 per troy ounce as investors look for a safe haven. Agriculture commodities are also being dragged down by the market collapse, as orange juice, cotton and lumber have lost more than three percent.

Turkey’s Wall Street is in ‘panic mode’ Davutoglu made a surprise visit to New York.

March 7, 2015 by administrator

By Linette Lopez,

On Thursday Citigroup announced that it would pull up and leave Turkey’s second largest bank, selling its almost 10% stake in Akbank TAS at an $800 million loss.That tells you something about how quickly the bank wanted to leave. It had held the investment for 7 years.

“It has been a rough year or two for Turkey’s financial sector,” Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former counterterrorism analyst for the US Treasury Department, told Business Insider in an email. “This explains why Davutoglu made a surprise visit to New York. He was trying to placate nervous bankers and investors. He didn’t even tell the State Department he was coming. The Turks appear to be in panic mode.”

Deltec International Group, an investment firm, now considers Turkey one of the emerging economies most at risk because of its high current account deficit, low foreign exchange reserves, short term external debt, and weak domestic demand.

That means it’s filing Turkey in the same catastrophe cabinet as Russia and Venezuela. From the start of 2015, the Turkish lira is down over 10% and slid to a fresh record low this week.

“The fact that Citi wanted to sell earlier than planned could be a bad indication for the markets,” Cagdas Dogan of BGC Partners told Bloomberg. “It sort of implies that they expect them to keep on falling.”

A large part of the problem with Turkey is its politics.

Once upon a time, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to be a democratic, market-friendly leader. No longer. Many analysts are concerned that he’s dictating Central Bank policy. As the lira fell this week, members of his cabinet took to television to remain calm, insisting that the lira would “find its own balance.”

In the same breath, Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci blamed the Central Bank for the lira’s woes, saying that it had not raised interest rates enough.

The lira, year to date down 10.56%

If these problems aren’t enough, consider also that Turkey is still in the midst of a massive corruption scandal involving some nasty alleged financial crimes, including a gold-for-oil exchange with sanctioned Iran.

Additionally, the head of the country’s state owned bank, Halkbank, was forced to resign for this scandal back in 2013, and a report in March of 2014 showed that Halkbank processed cash transfers to Iran.

Around the same time, the US Federal Reserve shut down the US retail accounts of another Turkish state-owned bank, Ziraat Bank, for unexplainable irregularities.

Last, but certainly not least, of all these things is the impact of Syria’s ongoing civil war.

“…multiple reports suggest that extremist financiers may be operating on Turkish soil, with the goal of bankrolling groups like JN [Jabat al Nusra] and IS [the Islamic State], among others,” said a report by the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance. “The financial facilitators hail primarily from Gulf countries, notably Qatar and Kuwait, and meet with radical groups in Turkey and support their efforts. One financial network of Kuwaiti donors was described by the Treasury Department in an October 2012 designation. The Treasury noted that funds were transferred to jihadists through intermediaries in Turkey.”

Source: Business insider