Business

Submitted by Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

Showdown! In Leaked Letter IMF Tells Germany “Debt Relief For Greece Or IMF Drops Out”

It’s showdown time.

The IMF has threatened it will pull out of the Greek bailout program unless Greece gets debt relief.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Austria, Finland, and the other Eurozone creditors will not like today’s development one bit.

Showdown!

Please consider IMF Tells Eurozone to Start Greek Debt Talks.

With blue lights flashing and a SWAT team in front of the warehouse, a black sedan pulled up. A man got out, popped the trunk, grabbed a briefcase and headed for Natalie Jewelry. Once there, the man was heard to say "I just need to drop off this gold and get a receipt. I need a receipt."

That's a first hand account of how gold was delivered to a Miami jewelry store by drug cartels, to later be melted down and sold for cash.

A spending survey done by MasterCard shows that March retail sales in Hong Kong declined at the worst rate in the history of the survey. According to the latest MasterCard SpendingPulse Hong Kong Report, "Overall retail sales in Hong Kong contracted 18.5% year-on-year, reflecting the deepest decline since 2014."

A few years back I wrote an article comparing buy-one-suit-get-three-free sales by Jos. A. Bank to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program. Then Jos. A. Bank’s management did something absolutely brilliant: In March 2014 it sold the company for $1.8 billion to Men’s Wearhouse, its closest competitor (and twice its outfit’s size).

In the wake of the Panama Papers being released, the U.S.Treasury announced that it will use existing powers in order to make two rule changes that are intended to stop tax evasion.

First, in a rule which amends the US Bank Secrecy Act, the Treasury said it will require financial institutions to verify the identity of the real people, or "beneficial owners", who control companies opening accounts with them. The aim is to prevent true owners of the account from being masked by the names of lawyers or other representatives.