Shame Boy posted:

Actual unemployment went up to infinity percent so yeah it's not that surprising that a country where the average person's life savings is like negative four hundred dollars is suddenly finding out that nobody can pay rent if they miss even one paycheck.

Anyway, murder landlords:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wITB0oexVGQ

Thanatosian posted:

Holy gently caress, really?

Orange Devil posted:

Stop being friends with radicalizing neo-confederates op

Dreylad posted:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/32-...y.PostToTwitter

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/io9/status/1280535262137901056
https://mobile.twitter.com/travisakers/status/1280562964681175043
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSun/status/1280927127202742273
https://mobile.twitter.com/DisneyFoodBlog/status/1280613636805984257






Same thing happening at Disney Land

Shame Boy posted:

Actual unemployment went up to infinity percent so yeah it's not that surprising that a country where the average person's life savings is like negative four hundred dollars is suddenly finding out that nobody can pay rent if they miss even one paycheck.

Anyway, murder landlords:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wITB0oexVGQ

ozza posted:

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1280974958202630149

The Bloop posted:

What the hell

I've never seen a plane crew care about anything like that. No one in the air knows what you paid or cares


I mean aside from sneaking into first class cabin, but even then sometimes they don't care

ikanreed posted:

You probably last flew more than 2 years ago. Making sure passengers suffer if they don't shell out is increasingly actual policy

Doggles posted:

Marenghi posted:

Who started the trend of goofy mouth open expressions on clickbait thumbnails.

I'm sure there's some marketing company somewhere tells everyone to do it.

What's annoying is even technical/science youtubers I follow are now doing the shocked/surprised face in their thumbnails. It feels cheap but I'm sure someone told them it would increase their engagement.

Marenghi posted:

What's annoying is even technical/science youtubers I follow are now doing the shocked/surprised face in their thumbnails. It feels cheap but I'm sure someone told them it would increase their engagement.

Shame Boy posted:

It always makes me think of the creepy-rear end mascot of Coney Island:

World War Mammories posted:

okay, flanking that face with the words "SCREAM ZONE" is really on the nose

Mameluke posted:

Haha I always thought they made that creepy thing up for Mr. Robot. Then again Mr. Robot ended by faceplanting on its portrayal of the rich so whatever

quote:

To enquiring friends: I have troubles today that I had not yesterday. I had troubles yesterday which I have not today. On this site will be built a bigger, better, Steeplechase Park. Admission to the burning ruins — Ten cents.

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

quote:

[Fred] Trump demolished Steeplechase Park's Pavilion of Fun during a highly publicized ceremony in September 1966. At the demolition, he was said to have sold bricks to ceremony guests to smash the remaining glass windows on the Pavilion of Fun.

Marenghi posted:

Who started the trend of goofy mouth open expressions on clickbait thumbnails.

I'm sure there's some marketing company somewhere tells everyone to do it.

What's annoying is even technical/science youtubers I follow are now doing the shocked/surprised face in their thumbnails. It feels cheap but I'm sure someone told them it would increase their engagement.

quote:

Italian mafia bonds sold to global investors

Instruments were backed by front companies charged with working for the ’Ndrangheta organised crime group


International investors bought bonds backed by the crime proceeds of Italy’s most powerful mafia, according to financial and legal documents seen by the Financial Times.

In one case, the bonds — backed in part by front companies charged with working for the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta mafia group — were purchased by one of Europe’s largest private banks, Banca Generali, in a transaction where consulting services were provided by accountancy group EY.

About €1bn of these private bonds were sold to international investors between 2015 and 2019, according to market participants. Some of the bonds were linked to assets later revealed to be created by front companies for the ’Ndrangheta.

The ’Ndrangheta is less well-known outside Italy than the Sicilian mafia but has risen over the past two decades to become one of the wealthiest and most feared criminal groups in the western world, engaging in crimes ranging from industrial-scale cocaine trafficking to money laundering, extortion and arms smuggling.

Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, has estimated that the activities of the ’Ndrangheta, which is not made up of a centralised organisation but hundreds of autonomous clans, generate a combined turnover of €44bn a year.

Other investors in the bonds included pension funds, hedge funds and family offices, all looking for exotic ways of earning high returns at a time of record-low interest rates, according to people involved in the deals.

The bonds were created out of unpaid invoices to Italian public health authorities from companies providing them with medical services.

Under EU law, overdue invoices owed by state-connected entities incur a guaranteed penalty interest rate. This makes them attractive for special purpose vehicles, which place them into a large pool of assets and issue bonds backed by the expected cash flows from the future settlement of the invoices.

Most of the assets securitised in the deals were legitimate but some were from companies later revealed to be controlled by certain ’Ndrangheta clans, which had managed to evade anti-money laundering checks to take advantage of international investor demand for exotic debt instruments.

One bond deal purchased by institutional investors contained assets sold by a refugee camp in Calabria that had been taken over by organised criminals. They were later convicted for stealing tens of millions of euros of EU funds.

Almost all were private deals not rated by any credit rating agency or traded in financial markets. CFE, a Geneva-based boutique investment bank, constructed the vehicle that sold bonds to investors including Banca Generali.

When contacted by the FT, Banca Generali said it was unaware of any problems with the underlying assets that backed the bonds it had purchased for its clients and that it had relied on other intermediaries to conduct anti-money laundering checks on the underlying portfolios.

“Banca Generali and Banca Generali Fund Management Luxembourg are getting to know right now of the mentioned bad news,” the company said. It “rel[ied] on the notion that the transaction was eligible when [they] entered the securitised portfolio”, it added in an emailed statement.

CFE said it had never knowingly purchased any assets linked to criminal activity. It added that it conducted significant due diligence on all the healthcare assets that it handled as a financial intermediary, and that it also relied on the checks of other regulated professionals who handled the invoices after their creation in Calabria.

Both companies said that any legal issues that emerged after the invoices had been acquired were immediately reported to the Italian authorities. CFE said that the total amount of invoices later revealed to be linked to organised crime made up a very small proportion of the total amount of assets it had handled connected to the Italian health systems.

EY, which was not required to conduct due diligence on the assets in the securitisation when providing consulting services for the structuring for one of the vehicles purchased by Banca Generali, declined to comment.

double nine posted:

One bond deal purchased by institutional investors contained assets sold by a refugee camp in Calabria that had been taken over by organised criminals. They were later convicted for stealing tens of millions of euros of EU funds.

Plank Walker posted:

i had a random thought the other day that it would be pretty funny if ADHD was the result of a learned response to ignoring advertising gone too far. it's a constant arms race between the viewer, to develop techniques to filter garbage ad content out from "real" content, and the advertiser, to make ad content that is more focus-worthy than "real" content

like in order to accomplish any task or even enjoy most forms of media, you have to filter out reams of information that is actively trying to get in your way. the brain has got to be developing long term strategies to facilitate that, but no filtering system will be foolproof, and an overactive one will be detrimental

Plank Walker posted:

i had a random thought the other day that it would be pretty funny if ADHD was the result of a learned response to ignoring advertising gone too far. it's a constant arms race between the viewer, to develop techniques to filter garbage ad content out from "real" content, and the advertiser, to make ad content that is more focus-worthy than "real" content

like in order to accomplish any task or even enjoy most forms of media, you have to filter out reams of information that is actively trying to get in your way. the brain has got to be developing long term strategies to facilitate that, but no filtering system will be foolproof, and an overactive one will be detrimental

Shame Boy posted:

Uhhhh


Why is a refugee camp even capable of selling financial instruments?

quote:

Over the past two decades, the leading families of the ’Ndrangheta — pronounced “en-dran-ghet-ah” — have expanded operations far outside their small home region. Today they control a large part of cocaine importation into Europe, as well as arms smuggling, extortion and cross-border money laundering. Several hundred autonomous clans have been transformed into one of Italy’s most successful businesses, with some studies estimating their combined annual turnover to be as high as €44bn — believed by law-enforcement agencies to be more than all the Mexican drug ­cartels combined.

Yet even among such lucrative criminal activities, the riches on offer from plundering Italy’s public health system stood out as a golden opportunity. By corrupting local officials, organised criminals have been able to make vast profits from contracts given to their own front companies, establishing monopolies on services ranging from delivering patients in faulty ambulances to transporting blood to taking away the dead.

All these services were billed to the Italian taxpayer through the country’s centrally funded yet regionally administered health service, which distributes an annual budget of billions of euros — an unrivalled prize for criminal gangs. So tight was the clans’ grip that doctors in Lamezia Terme reported having to wait outside a hospital ward for men from the ’Ndrangheta to open the locked door with their keys.


An investigation by the Financial Times has established how the trail of money from these crimes washed into the financial centres of London and Milan. Over the past five years, profits gained from the misery of patients in Calabrian hospitals were packaged up into debt instruments using the kind of financial engineering typically favoured by hedge funds and investment banks. Hundreds of millions of euros of these bonds, many containing dubious invoices signed off by parts of the health system later found to have been infiltrated by organised crime, were sold to international investors ranging from Italian private banks to a pension fund in South Korea.

The previously unreported use of capital ­markets by Mafia clans profiting from Calabria’s health crisis shows how far a criminal subculture once derided as mountain-dwelling goat farmers has metastasised into a globalised crime syndicate that is as comfortable operating in the world of high finance as it is extorting local businesses.

How the ’Ndrangheta emerged as one of the world’s most successful criminal enterprises can only be understood by realising how well-suited its agile and entrepreneurial organisational structure, based on blood ties, is to maintaining a stranglehold on Calabrian public life.

Calabria is not only the poorest region in Italy, but one of the most deprived in the EU. With a population of two million, its gross domestic product per head is €17,200, almost half the European average. A US diplomatic cable in 2008 noted: “If it were not part of Italy, Calabria would be a failed state.” The ’Ndrangheta, it said, “controls vast portions of its territory and economy, and accounts for at least three per cent of Italy’s GDP (probably much more) through drug trafficking, extortion and usury”.

A decade — and three Italian recessions — later the local economy has got worse, with the region consistently ranking in last place nationally in almost every category. Unemployment has increased from 12.9 per cent in 2010 to more than 20 per cent today.

quote:

The story of how money looted from Calabria’s hospitals ended up being routed into the global financial system illustrates the sophisticated ways in which the ’Ndrangheta launders the proceeds of its crimes. Through interviews and the analysis of financial documents and Italian legal filings, the Financial Times has found how the clans made use of a vast financial conveyor belt. The ­proceeds of the horrors of the corrupted hospitals were ­unwittingly bundled up by intermediaries and mixed with other assets into debt products. These then flowed through the City of London, Luxembourg and Milan, eventually ending up in the investment portfolios of the clients of private banks and hedge funds.

From 2015 to 2018, hundreds of millions of euros of invoices signed off by officials in Calabria’s cash-strapped municipal health authorities were purchased by intermediaries. These middlemen bought the unpaid invoices from suppliers at a steep discount because they were, in effect, guaranteed by the Italian state. They were then sold on to specialist financial companies, who merged them into pools of assets and sold investor bonds backed by the unpaid bills.

While many legitimate companies in Italy have used this process to offload debts owed to them by regional health authorities, the complex chain of intermediaries leaves it vulnerable to exploitation by organised criminals. Indeed, some of these same authorities were subsequently placed under emergency administration by the Italian state for full-scale Mafia infiltration. Several years after the invoices were sold, a number of the companies that had issued them were raided by anti-Mafia investigators for being fronts for ’Ndrangheta clans.

Front companies for organised crime working in the Italian healthcare sector managed to offload invoices owed to them by regional health authorities to unwitting intermediaries, who then sold them on again to legitimate financial companies. They then packaged them into specialised debt products marketed to investors hungry for exotic higher-yielding bonds at a time of record-low interest rates. Other investors in debt instruments connected to the Calabrian health system included hedge funds and ­various family offices, according to people involved in the deals.

None of these bonds was rated or assessed by major credit rating agencies or traded on financial markets. Instead, some were privately placed by boutique investment banks, several of which have offices in Mayfair or the City of London.

One example of how money tainted by ’Ndrangheta activity ended up in the legitimate international financial sector is a so-called ­special purpose vehicle called Chiron. In May 2017, ­this was one of numerous such entities established by companies specialising in healthcare financing in Italy.

The Chiron vehicle bought up close to €50m of unpaid healthcare invoices, including bills originating from Calabria and other parts of southern Italy. The ultimate buyer of the resulting bonds was the Luxembourg arm of the private bank of Generali, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, which was seeking to offer its clients higher-interest alternative investment products. The company that constructed the Chiron vehicle was CFE, a boutique investment bank with offices in London, Geneva, Luxembourg and Monaco. The Italian branch of EY, the global professional services firm, acted as a consultant on the deal.

One of the companies that contributed to ­Chiron’s invoices was Croce Rosa Putrino SRL, an ambulance and funeral company servicing the hospital in Lamezia Terme. In late 2018, police arrested 28 people, after an investigation by the public prosecution office of Catanzaro alleged that various front companies for local ’Ndrangheta families, including Croce Rosa Putrino, had seized control of the hospital’s funeral, ambulance and other health services. The case is still being prosecuted.

Banca Generali and CFE told the Financial Times that neither company had ever knowingly purchased any assets linked to the Calabrian healthcare system that had been connected to organised criminal activity. CFE said that it conducted significant due diligence on all the healthcare assets that it handled as a financial intermediary, and that it also relied on the checks of other regulated professionals who handled the invoices after their creation in Calabria. All the assets were deemed to be legal when acquired. CFE said that any invoices connected to organised crime it inadvertently handled made up a tiny amount of its business. Both companies said that any legal issues that emerged after the invoices had been acquired were immediately reported to the Italian authorities.



Regular health service companies working for Italian hospitals are owed money by hospitals. Instead of waiting to be paid, they sell on the invoices at a discount. This helps them get cash upfront, but they lose a bit on what they are owed due to the discount.

The buyers of these invoices package them up into a big pool of invoices inside a special purpose vehicle, SPV, and then sell bonds to investors backed by the invoices.

The investors get paid interest on the bonds as the invoices are gradually paid off by the Italian health authorities. Intermediaries work to ensure the bills are paid, and the money flows from the health authority to the investor.

Another privately sold bond analysed by the FT included invoices issued by a Calabrian religious charity caring for African refugees. This was later raided in an anti-Mafia operation for diverting EU funds into the hands of a powerful ’Ndrangheta clan. Gratteri, who led the investigation, described the food being provided to the refugees as “food that is usually given to pigs”. Twenty-two people were convicted.

Last year, Italy’s central government took drastic action. Rome dissolved the regional health authorities of Catanzaro and Reggio Calabria for Mafia infiltration, having discovered widespread fraud and double billing of invoices, as well as officials working inside them who had been banned from public office. They remain under special administration. But about €1bn of these private Italian healthcare bonds had been bought and sold between 2015 and 2019, according to market participants, with significant numbers of invoices originating from the two health authorities under emergency administration. The full scale of how much dirty money entered into the global financial system in this way is impossible to quantify.

“Large banks have stayed away from these sorts of healthcare-related deals in Italy,” says one financial professional who has worked on similar transactions. “It is a difficult sector, and particularly in certain regions there are risks that anyone getting involved is going to have to face.”

quote:

The human cost of years of looting Calabria’s health system has been devastating. Italy has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, but the region’s health statistics are among the worst in Europe. The average number of years that Calabrians enjoy good health stands at 52.9, according to Italy’s statistical office, lower than both Romania and Bulgaria. A resident in the wealthy northern Italian region of Bolzano, by comparison, enjoys on ­average 70 years of good health. Calabria also has the highest rate of infant mortality in Italy, while tens of thousands of “health refugees” leave the region each year to get treatment in better hospitals in the north.

Local doctors describe some of Calabria’s ­hospitals, which are suffocating under mountains of debt built up through corruption, mismanagement and embezzlement, as on a par with the developing world.

In the corrupt hospital in Lamezia Terme, anti-Mafia investigators found evidence of widespread malpractice. Some employees were recorded joking as they discussed putting a newborn baby into a faulty incubator. “This time prepare ­yourself, in case they arrest us,” one said as he laughed. “That incubator with the melted wires is disgusting. God bless us all tonight. I’ll be at home praying [for the infant] with rosary beads.” His colleague laughs again: “I hope it works.”

In another recording, an employee tells how a patient in a critical condition was dropped from a stretcher in an ambulance: “Let’s hope he doesn’t die because if he does, there will be trouble.”

The impact of organised crime’s infiltration of the health system has left many of the region’s ­hospitals deeply vulnerable to coronavirus. “Calabria does not have the capacity to deal with [it]. There are not enough intensive care beds to take in patients in a serious condition,” says Scura. (The region’s decision to impose a strict lockdown seems to be working: Calabria has so far suffered fewer than 100 deaths from Covid-19, ­compared with almost 17,000 in Lombardy.)

The vast levels of debt built up by hospitals over the years have left the emergency administrators sent by Rome with few options. Many fear that organised criminal activity in the health service has become an entrenched feature of Calabrian life. “Calabrian healthcare has been in a permanent state of emergency for decades,” says Sergi. “Every two or three years, there are anti-Mafia operations linked to healthcare, and maybe Rome parachutes people in, but soon after another clan comes in and starts it all over again.”

Shame Boy posted:

Speaking as a person who has it, no that's dumb.

T-man posted:

Please stop thinking you're bad at it.

Plank Walker posted:

fair enough, my apologies

Shame Boy posted:

There's a lot of like "gosh what if ADHD is just [thing]" going around that both completely ignores the actual experience of ADHD people and history and science done regarding it and trivializes the whole thing in the eyes of the public, ultimately resulting in making it harder for people like me to get meds or be taken seriously, so I kinda react a bit hard about stuff like this. I'm sure you didn't intend to do that or anything though so it's all good, and I really appreciate you taking a step back to reconsider and not just doubling down on it, thanks for that

Inceltown posted:

Weatherman posted:

Looks just like the level from Left for Dead 2 where you have to fill the racing car with petrol.