Business

Authored by Jordan A. Thomas, chair of the whistleblower practice at the law firm of Labaton Sucharow

Crafted by an ad agency immediately following 9/11, the slogan “if you see something, say something” took hold with astonishing speed. The tagline reflected a tectonic cultural shift; the serious and growing need for public participation in the nation’s enforcement paradigm. In many ways, those six words have come to define a change in guard in which government has effectively deputized everyday citizens to be its eyes and ears.

We've spent a lot of time of late discussing the inevitable public pension crisis that will eventually wreak havoc on global financial markets.  And while the scale of the public pension underfunding is unprecedented, with estimates ranging from $3 - $8 trillion, there is another taxpayer-funded retirement benefit that has been promised to union workers over the years that puts pensions to shame...at least on a percentage funded basis.

Since its current world-beating bull run began in late 2015, bitcoin has surmounted a series of pitfalls that were supposed to kill the market.  The list is remarkably long. The DAO hack. The PBOC crackdown. The ICO craze. The SEC’s rejection in March of two proposed bitcoin ETFs. And, most recently, the network split that spawned bitcoin cash. All were supposed to burst the roaring valuation bubble, yet in almost every example, a temporary pullback was followed by another leg higher.

In the aftermath of a surreal Janet Yellen press conference, in which the Fed chair admitted that Fed "no longer understands" the "mystery" that is inflation, we did our best to explain to Yellen that the reason why the Fed's search for inflation has been fruitless, is because for nearly a decade it has been looking in the wrong place: the "real economy" where the Fed's impact has been negligible, as opposed to "asset prices" where the Fed has unleashed near hyperinflation.

Sadly, we doubt the Fed will understand what the above chart means.

Every year the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) comes out with a report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure. We got a D+ this year. According to them, “Deteriorating infrastructure is impeding our ability to compete in the thriving global economy, and improvements are necessary to ensure our country is built for the future.”