Why has #Tether had 6 DIFFERENT accountants/auditors in the past 5 years? Why doesn't a $66 billion institution hire a Big Four accountant? This is some serious AUDITOR INSTABILITY for a supposed 'StableCoin'. How is Tether linked to SBF's fraud? 1/4 #WTF#SBF_FTX#Tether
Deltec Bank Bahamas doesn't look like a $66 billion dollar institution to me. #B-SIFI
Tether's bank in the Bahamas is a quick hop, skip, and a jump from Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud. SBF has been regularly seen with the Bahamian political elite. It is a simple coincidence that they can jog over to each other? If Tether has $66 billion of real assets...
Shouldn't they be earning close to $2.75 billion annually on the asset base? Or did Tether mint USDT without having the corresponding dollars wired in? Something is extremely fishy here. #UnTethered@AlderLaneEggs@Hedgeye@KeithMcCullough@davidfaber
Why would any 'Stablecoin' management team ever invest their reserve assets in anything other than US Govt bonds, repos, and money markets? #Tether 's recent (September 2022) BDO Italy (Italy?!) attestation shows approx $12B of their $68B in assets invested in risk assets: 1/6
Even if there is no fraud at Tether (given the Tether General Counsel and FTX Chief Compliance Officer were present together at the Ultimate Bet fraud), the asset/liability mismatch doesn't appear to allow for all redemption requests to be honored given the fact that 2/6
some of their investments are invested in illiquid digital assets (like what?), commodity trading accounts in the Virgin Islands (sounding familiar), and secured loans (to who and with what collateral?). The qualifier below also got my attention when reading this report: 3/6
The Virus from the Wuhan Virology Institute solved two of China’s existential crises simultaneously. 1. The precipitous fall in their current account that was caused by sending Chinese students to the U.S. and Europe to be educated (440,000 students in the U.S. alone), 1/4
traveling abroad (spending dollars as the world doesn’t accept RMB), and limited investing abroad caused $450 billion to be drained from their reserve coffers annually. COVID and Zero COVID have temporarily ‘fixed’ the draining of the current account. 2. Protests in HK 2/4
were at their worst in December 2019. Beijing couldn’t execute a Tiananmen Square massacre on democratic HKers because there were too many cameras and too much connectivity in the former Asian hub. They couldn’t roll tanks in to squash dissent…the virus 🦠 sent everyone home 3/4
Xi’s wartime cabinet is in place. His 20th Party Congress purge not only installed loyalists, but two spy chiefs, and military leaders responsible for China’s ‘reunification’ with Taiwan. He sacked the only three men with markets experience (the heads of the PBOC, the CSRC,
And finance minister). Xi also added the Ministry of State Security head to the Politburo and the Central Committee (Chen Wenqing). These moves send a clear message to the world that conflict and ‘Great Struggle’ are coming soon. Not since Mao has a Chinese leader stacked his
cabinet with men (all men…no women, no blacks, no Hispanics, or anyone else but Han Chinese) with aerospace, weapons, surveillance, and military expertise. Conflict with Taiwan is now around the corner. The Great Chinese Liquidation of public and private equity is in full
The Xi-Putin ‘face-to-face” meeting is the first time Xi has left China in almost 3 years. Putin’s forces are losing ground and running out of munitions. China’s worst nightmare is a NATO-led defeat of Putin in Ukraine (as it relates to the CPC’s future invasion of Taiwan). 1/6
The failure of communism in the former USSR was a seminal event in the halls of Beijing and one in which China was loath to accept. Xi will further China’s ‘limitless partnership’ with a failing Russia and will emerge from this summit of miscreants as the primal power in 2/6
Central Asia. While China and Russia will tout additional partnership on the energy front, China is being asked to supply weapons and logistical help to Russia in its failing invasion of Ukraine. China will likely oblige to deepen their military partnership but won’t be 3/6
The troublesome slippery slope of forgiving debts without understanding the dire consequences of doing so is upon us. Sadly, we are headed down the road to South American populism. Venezuela 🇻🇪, Bolivia 🇧🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨, and Argentina 🇦🇷 have caught this disease in the past..
and it’s ruined them all. Designed to generate additional votes from jobless or economically challenged voters, it has proven, time and time again, to be the road to perdition. How will this message change the behavior of student loan borrowers in the future? How do the
students that obtained jobs and dutifully repay their debts feel about this cancellation? Should we also forgive mortgages for the same income cohort? Why stop at student loans? I think the powers that be are about to learn what ‘moral hazard’ actually means. 😞
China can’t afford to have a renminbi meltdown. Contrary to popular belief, the Communist Party needs a strong RMB to purchase the oil, gas, food, and basic materials that it desperately needs EACH AND EVERY DAY. They use USD but the artificial RMB/USD rate that’s carefully 1/5
Manipulated by the PBOC each day is very important to China Inc. The fact that they have charged a key propaganda outlet @ChinaDaily with delivering this message to the market evidences China’s fear of a meltdown.They must be very worried given the fact that despite rare cuts 2/5
The consumer credit impulse continues to plummet. Household debt to discretionary income now exceeds US levels just before the global financial crisis. Chinese GDP is currently plummeting due to sales volumes and price declines of real estate (which represents the core 3/5