Authored by Valentin Schmid via The Epoch Times,
Whenever someone gets too big and too important, the other players who can’t compete by themselves call for a challenger. This is true in sports, business, and even for currencies.
Because the dollar is so big and important, smaller countries were happy when the euro was launched to provide a counterbalance, if not to challenge the dollar’s position outright.
A long, long time ago, back in 2008 when most of today's hedge fund analysts were still stressing over what to wear to prom, a man named Bernard Madoff was arrested for bilking unsuspecting investors out of $65 billion. Madoff ran what is traditionally referred to as a ponzi scheme in which new investments were solicited as a means to fund massive redemptions that otherwise would have resulted in a collapse of his fund long before the FBI finally caught up with his scheme.
But, Madoff was eventually caught and in 2009 he was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his scheme.
The largest solar-energy company in the U.S. has been called out by The Wall Street Journal for manipulating a key sales metric shortly to try and boost the company's share price ahead of its IPO.
While tense trade negotiations between the US and Mexico over the price and quota for U.S. imports of Mexican sugar continue (a happy ending appears unlikely, especially after a Mexican sugar company on Friday called on the government to take action against American fructose producers and protect the local industry from US deals), a new protectionist measure involving sugar half way around the globe was unveiled on Monday when China - the world's biggest importer of the sweet substance - said it will impose significant penalties on sugar imports following lobbying by domestic mills.
We first introduced readers to the "New Century of auto finance" (aka "Santander Consumer USA") several years ago when we first took note of their aggressive auto ABS facilities. In fact, here is a quick look at one of their ABS deals from 2015 which sported an average FICO of 595, LTV of 110%, APR of 16.2% and a term of 70 months.