EU-DIGEST

The family of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi announced Friday they have forgiven his Saudi killers, giving legal reprieve to the five government agents convicted of his murder who'd been sentenced to execution.

"We, the sons of the martyr Jamal Khashoggi, announce that we forgive those who killed our father as we seek reward from God Almighty," wrote one of his sons, Salah Khashoggi, on Twitter.

Salah Khashoggi, who lives in Saudi Arabia and has received financial compensation from the royal court over the killing, explained that forgiveness was extended to the killers during the last nights of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in line with Islamic tradition to offer pardons in cases allowed by Islamic law.

Read more at:
Khashoggi's sons forgive Saudi killers, sparing 5 execution | CBC News

Before getting carried away with any rallies, remember when the stock market started going up on the news of coronavirus. The reasoning of Wall Street was that the virus would cause central banks to print more money. (The stock market is addicted to easy money.) Subsequently, Wall Street twisted the news of the coronavirus to claim that it was easing, and the stock market went higher than it was before the news of coronavirus. At that time, I wrote “How an external event could stunt U.S. stocks.”

All prudent stock market investors should consider reading “Prudent investors should look at these four stock charts as coronavirus spreads” and “Stock market investors’ motto — ‘in central banks we trust’ — is still working.”


Read more at: Head-fake’ stock market rally may become real with interest-rate cuts - MarketWatch

I wasn’t going to comment on Trump’s lie-filled State of the Union message but the whoppers were so big—especially on the economy—that I feel compelled. Here, for the record, is the real state of the union:


Read more: Forget Trump's Lies, Here's the Real Economic State of the Union | Common Dreams Views

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump highlighted economic gains and his reelection bid in a sweeping State of the Union address Tuesday, but his impeachment overshadowed the text as the traditional address to a joint session of Congress devolved into theatrical outbursts and unmasked partisan disdain. Republican lawmakers loudly chanted “four more years!” before Trump began speaking, setting an intensely political tone for an address that offered few major policy proposals

Read more at:
https://www.registerguard.com/news/20200205/partisan-passions-overtake-trumps-state-of-union-speech

In a commentary for MSNBC, contributor Steve Benen echoed former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake who made the case that history will not look kindly upon Republican senators who are planning to give Donald Trump a pass in his impeachment trial, saying they are all on trial now.

Read more at:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/mitch-mcconnells-latest-bid-to-save-trump-is-about-to-blow-up-in-his-gop-colleagues-faces-report/

 Read more at:
You call this a trade deal? - MarketWatch

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a possible mutual defense treaty between the two nations, a move that could bolster Netanyahu's re-election bid just days before Israelis go to the polls.

"I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries," Trump said on Twitter.

He added that he looked forward to continuing those discussions later this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York.

Netanyahu thanked Trump, saying in a tweet that Israel "has never had a greater friend in the White House," and adding that he looked forward to meeting at the U.N. "to advance a historic Defense Treaty between the United States and Israel."

The timing of Trump's tweet, just days before Israel's election on Tuesday, appeared aimed at buttressing Netanyahu's bid to remain in power by showcasing his close ties to Trump.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully the Jewish voters won't swallow this Trump nonsense, which is a clear move to try and help a desperate and "soon to be jailbird" Nethanyahu win the upcoming elections  

Read more at: Trump floats possible defense treaty days ahead of Israeli elections

“Salvator Mun"

Rhett Jones reports in Gizmodo that  on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, auction records were shattered when an anonymous buyer spent $450.3 million to be the proud owner of a “long lost” painting “by” Leonardo da Vinci. The thing is, it may not have even been painted by Leonardo, it’s in terrible shape, it’s not especially good, but in the financial world of art, none of that matters.

Christie’s auction house has been hyping the emergence of Salvator Mundi (“Savior of the World”) as “the greatest and most unexpected artistic rediscovery of the 21st century.” It’s believed to be the only Leonardo in private hands. According to Artnet, it was once part of the collection of King Charles I and has since bounced around less prestigious homes. In 1958, it was auctioned at Sotheby’s London for £45 and attributed to Boltraffio, a painter who worked in Leonardo da Vinci’s studio. It was then picked up at an estate sale for around $10,000 back in 2005. In the last decade, researchers and authenticators have studied its history and deemed it an authentic Leonardo.

The opening bid was set at $100 million and Christie’s reportedly wondered aloud if some collector could conceivably drop $2 billion on it. If the auction house truly thought that was a possibility, I guess they were a little disappointed by the final hammer price. But that $450.3 million is by far the highest price paid for a painting at auction. The previous record holder was Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold for $179,364,992 in 2015. The Guardian claims Salvator Mundi is also the highest priced artwork ever sold privately, but that record is a lot harder to definitively establish because artworks change hands without public records all the time.

Not everyone, however, is sure that this record-breaking painting is by Leonardo da Vinci. Authentication is a subjective trade, and a buyer’s confidence in an authenticator’s assessment is mostly based on that authenticator’s reputation. In the case of Salvator Mundi, it was being restored by Dianne Dwyer Modestini, a professor of paintings conservation at New York University, in 2007 when she started having a feeling that something was different about this piece. She was commissioned to clean up what she thought was a copy of the famous Florentine’s work but began to see details that were very Leonardo-like. A subsequent X-ray revealed traces of changes being made to the composition over time. Someone making a copy wouldn’t be making these drastic changes. Since then, many top scholars have concluded that it is, in fact, a Leonardo based on numerous factors including the technique, materials, and outside historical data.

Other experts have their doubts. Charles Hope, an emeritus professor at the Warburg Institute at the University of London, wrote in the New York Review of Books, “even making allowances for its extremely poor state of preservation, it is a curiously unimpressive composition and it is hard to believe that Leonardo himself was responsible for anything so dull.”

Most critics seem to agree that the painting is far below Leonardo da Vinci’s typical standards, especially considering that Salvator Mundi has been dated to 1500. That would place its composition directly between The Last Supper (1498) and the Mona Lisa (1502). Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York Magazine, wrote:
 The painting is absolutely dead. Its surface is inert, varnished, lurid, scrubbed over, and repainted so many times that it looks simultaneously new and old.

Experts estimate that there are only 15 to 20 existing da Vinci paintings. Not a single one of them pictures a person straight on like this one. There is also not a single painting picturing an individual Jesus either. All of his paintings, even single portraits, depict figures in far more complex poses. Even the figure that comes remotely close to this painting, Saint John the Baptist, also from 1500, gives us a turning, young, randy-looking man with hair utterly different from and much more developed in terms of painting than the few curls Christie’s is raving about in their picture.

Writing for the New York Times, art critic Jason Farago agrees that this is not the “Male Mona Lisa” it’s been advertised to be.

Authentication is a serious but subjective business. I’m not the man to affirm or reject its attribution; it is accepted as a Leonardo by many serious scholars, though not all. I can say, however, what I felt I was looking at when I took my place among the crowds who’d queued an hour or more to behold and endlessly photograph “Salvator Mundi”: a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.

Most assessments repeat similar criticisms: the composition is totally wrong; the details don’t say Leonardo; if it came from his studio, it was probably done by an assistant; and, on top of it all, the thing is a shadow of its former self because it’s been so heavily repainted. One expert cracked a joke to Saltz at the viewing: “Why is a Leonardo in a Modern and Contemporary auction? Because 90 percent of it was painted in the last 50 years.”
So why would this subpar and possibly misattributed Leonardo fetch so much money? Because quality and authenticity don’t really matter in art sales as long as a few top gatekeepers can get on the same page about the value of a work. As art critic Blake Gopnik told Marketplace:

I’m not saying that this isn’t Leonardo. I’m also not saying that it is a Leonardo. I’m actually saying that it’s a kind of incoherent question to ask. It’s kind of like asking, “Is the moon Jewish, or is the sun gay?” Pictures, even today (let alone in the 16th century), can be all sorts of things between being by a great master and being by some assortment of assistance.

Art brings in huge prices because it carries cultural cachet, looks good in your home, offers access to high society, and above all, is a very convenient way to park some money. High-priced art is often used for money laundering, but even in legitimate circumstances, it’s just another way to diversify the ways in which your money is being stored if you’re an extremely rich person. And hey, it goes up in value all the time.

Speaking of extremely rich people, who paid for this? We don’t know, and if the buyer doesn’t want to say, we may never know. Liu Yiqian, a Chinese billionaire, was rumored to be the buyer, but he told The New York Times it wasn’t him. Another possibility is Bill Gates. He did pay $30 million for Leonardo’s journals back in 1994.

But that’s the story with this piece. We don’t know for sure that it’s authentic, we don’t know that it’s any good, and we don’t know who bought it. We just know that some people decided it was worth a buttload of money. And so it is.

Note EU-Digest: This report really shines a direct light on how decadent our so-called "Western Values" have become, when someone can spent close to half a billion dollars on a possibly fake da Vinci painting,  and  this while millions of children are dying as a result of famine, wars and other calamities, many of which the direct results of those same "Western Values". 

Read more: Someone Spent Almost Half a Billion Dollars on a Possibly Inauthentic da Vinci Painting 

The Spanish region of Catalonia is set to hold a referendum on independence on October 1.

The single question facing voters, "Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?", has generated many more.

Catalonia, an area in northeastern Spain of 7.5 million people, accounts for 15 percent of Spain's population and 20 percent of its economic output.

About 1.6 million people live in Barcelona, Catalonia's capital, which is a major tourist destination.

Sunday's vote will be the region's second referendum on independence in three years.

The previous ballot, a non-binding vote in November 2014, returned an 80 percent result in favour of an independent Catalan state.

However, less than half of the 5.4 million eligible voters participated.

The Spanish government rejected the Generalitat's, Catalonia's regional government, proposal to hold a binding ballot on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. They take the same position on Sunday's vote.

Only Catalan residents of voting age are entitled to participate in the referendum.

Up to 85 percent are in favour of holding the referendum, according to a poll conducted by El Periodico de Catalunya, a regional daily newspaper.

However, only about 41 percent said they intend to vote "Yes" to independence when asked in June of this year by the Centre for Opinion Studies, the regional government's polling body.

A number of pro-union Catalans are expected to boycott the vote, on the grounds that the referendum is illegal.

Support for independence among Catalans isn't universal.

"It's a false referendum and many think if there's no legal guarantee then it's better not to vote," Jorge Amado, president of Catalyanu Somos Todos, a pro-union organisation for Catalans living outside the region (who aren't eligible to vote), told Al Jazeera.

"It's a manipulation. Manipulation of history, of the media, and of the Catalan people to promote this sense that Catalonia can't be united with Spain."

Read more: Catalonia independence referendum: All you need to know | News | Al Jazeera

"Oh! What a tangled web we weave,  when first we practice to deceive"

In blocking the administration’s second attempt at a travel ban from terror-prone countries, a federal judge in Hawaii laid the blame squarely on President Trump and his advisers, who had suggested the policy was aimed at barring Muslims.

A different politician might have expressed disappointment and moved on. But Trump, taking the stage barely an hour later at a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, let loose on the “terrible ruling” — and doubled down on the sentiments that got the policy into trouble in the first place.

“The order blocked was a ­watered-down version of the first order,” Trump thundered, adding later: “Let me tell you something. I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way.”

The episode was just one of numerous examples of Trump and his advisers pushing incendiary language and unfounded claims, even in the face of opposition from federal judges and top lawmakers of both parties.

On Thursday — for the 12th day in a row — the White House defended Trump’s unfounded claim that his predecessor, Barack Obama, ordered wiretaps of Trump’s New York City offices during the presidential campaign, despite a growing chorus of declarations from intelligence officials and members of Congress that nothing of the sort happened.

 President Trump and his aides have made some very clear public statements about his two travel ban orders — and sometimes, those statements are later used against them in federal court cases about the bans. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

“Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” the Democratic and Republican chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday in a statement.

“He stands by it,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said of Trump’s original claim.

Trump boosters say his freewheeling rhetoric, in person and on social media, is a large part of his appeal and has kept him in good stead with his political base. But it is also making governing more challenging.

In recent weeks, Trump has pledged that he would provide “insurance for everybody” at a lower cost, setting an impossible standard for congressional Republicans as they seek to craft a bill to scale back Obama’s signature health-care law.

But perhaps nowhere have Trump’s words been as damaging as his attempts to implement the travel ban — which may have been damaged further by Trump’s remarks at his Nashville rally. Trump inflamed controversy during the campaign by calling for a temporary ban on all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, then later shifted to vague pledges to ban people from countries with a history of Islamist terrorism.

Read more: Trump and his advisers can’t keep quiet — and it’s becoming a real problem - The Washington Post

Swedes have been scratching their heads and ridiculing U.S. President Donald Trump's remarks that suggested a major incident had happened in the Scandinavian country.

During a rally in Florida on Saturday, Trump said "look what's happening last night in Sweden" as he alluded to past terror attacks in Europe. It wasn't clear what he was referring to and there were no high-profile situations reported in Sweden on Friday night.

Trump said in a tweet Sunday afternoon that his statement was in reference to a story that was broadcast on Fox News concerning immigrants and Sweden.

Read more: 'What has he been smoking?': Swedes scratch heads at Trump's suggestion of major incident - World - CBC News

Xenophobia is growing in Europe

Xenophobia is growing in Europe, with France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Greece, Denmark and Sweden all electing far-right nationalist candidates.

Like Trump did, they unite voters with a platform of blocking migrants from the Middle East and Africa. More blatant demonstrations of anti-Semitism flared up in Greece, with its Golden Dawn party donning Nazi-like uniforms and symbolism.

Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, commented on the parallels between European and American politics. “I see the phenomena as very similar. Trump is the functional equivalent of the far right in Europe; he performs the same functions in the political system, and attracts the same kind of support… white, nativist, lower-educated and those very unhappy with the establishment.”

Looking at Europe we see that also there a narcissists group of populist political personalities have benefited from the great disparity between the "have and have's not" and distrust by  the people of political parties who are not serving the people, but rather corporate interest.

Following focus is on three countries which will be  holding national elections this year where ultra-right narcissist  politicians have made major inroads. 

In the Netherlands: Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who founded the right-wing Freedom Party, also endorsed Trump, tweeting, “Make the Netherlands Great Again.”

Wilders, who also bears a weird physical resemblance to Donald Trump, applies similar nationalistic rhetoric with confusing undocumented statements, sprinkled with vague plans.

France: French Jews who also hold Israeli citizenship will have to give up one of their nationalities if Marine Le Pen, the far-Right French Presidential candidate, wins the presidential election this spring.

The leader of the anti-immigration Front National said she would bar the French from holding the citizenship of countries outside the European Union, except for Russia, which she described as part of “the Europe of nations.”

Germany: You can tell well in advance when Frauke Petry, the leader of Alternative für Deutschland, a burgeoning new right-wing party, is going to give a speech. AfD members put up posters all over a town’s main streets declaring, “Frauke Petry Is Coming.” As the appointed hour approaches, police assemble, and usually demonstrators, too, protesting against a woman known to her enemies as “Adolfina” and “die Führerin.”

More than a century ago, philosopher George Santayana reminded us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

His words ring true today.  The growing rise of Nationalism on virtually every continent should give cause for great concern.

Following World War II, the global goal was to create political and economic structures and forge alliances like the UN, EU, IMF, WTO, NAFTA and the recently signed Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. More people than ever now have the means to travel outside their native countries.  Global investments have given rise to vastly improved living conditions in poorer countries.  Political structures like the EU have led to the creation of powerful new markets for global commerce.  Modern communications now transcend borders in Nano-seconds, bringing the world ever closer together.

But, achievements like these have come with a price: The re-emergence of Nationalism throughout the world was also caused by the disruptions brought about by globalization.

Global Trade must become Fair Trade again, not one controlled by large corporations who get unfair tax breaks and special favors from the local governments where they operate.

Nationalism is a powerful force and can at times work positively. It can be the glue that holds people together especially in challenging times.  It celebrates a country’s culture, history and religion.  It instills national pride and a sense of strength, but also, unfortunately, at times, creating scapegoats, real or imagined. The latter is happening today

Don't be fooled by the "nationalistic talk" of Wilders, Le Pen, Petry, and many other so-called nationalists - they definitely are not true nationalists and will sink all of us in Europe into a deep hole if they ever are elected and allowed to rule by you the voter. Worse of all, if you do elect them, you might never again get the power to vote them out of office.  Just look at Turkey today and see what  has happened there. 

Or see how Donald Trump has performed the first weeks of his Presidency. Scary stuff.

For example, the common US belief today exposed by Donald Trump that China has claimed the bulk of jobs lost in America since 2000 is not true. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, roughly 700,000 of the six million US manufacturing jobs lost in the first decade of this century went to China. The rest disappeared because of decreased consumer demand after the 2008 global financial crisis and technological advances that made many jobs obsolete.

Job losses aside, perhaps the biggest impact of the 2008 global financial crisis is that it intensified a worldwide backlash against globalization and the ever increasing disparity between poor and rich that had been festering for decades, further bolstering the steady global tilt toward Nationalism.

But not all is lost - if you get involved. Staying at home and complaining will not work. Go to local government, city and town meetings, ask questions, protest if you don't like what you hear.

Don't vote for politicians and parties who have not delivered what they promised.

Support parties which focus on your needs: more jobs, better education, health care, a clean environment, alternative energy  and cutting military spending' 

For it to succeed, real European integration—of which much more will be needed if Europeans want to retain stability and current levels of economic well-being—needs to learn a crucial trick from the nation. In much the same way that the power of the nation made people look beyond the blood bonds of family and tribe and elevate solidarity to a higher level, so European integration needs to surpass citizens’ attachment to the nation and raise it by one level. 

The trick is not to dismiss the lower-level identity and try to make it superfluous. The way to go is to leave the nation undamaged by adding another layer that can become politically and emotionally meaningful.

This rising nationalism in Europe also demands that leaders on the left look beyond austerity to a more robust economic policy built on investments in infrastructure, jobs, and education.

EU-Digest

 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan planned to purge opposition forces in the military before July’s attempted coup, according to a secret EU intelligence report.

The European intelligence contradicts the Turkish government’s claim that exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen was behind the plot to overthrow the Turkish government. Ankara is seeking Mr Gulen’s extradition from the US.

The report by the EU intelligence centre Intcen found the coup was mounted by a range of opponents to Mr Erdogan and his ruling AK Party.

“The decision to launch the coup resulted from the fears of an incoming purge. It is likely that a group of officers comprising Gulenists, Kemalists (secularists), opponents of the AKP and opportunists was behind the coup. It is unlikely that Gulen himself played a role in the attempt,” said the report, dated August 24.

“The coup was just a catalyst for the crackdown prepared in ­advance.”

Mr Gulen’s followers spent decades placing their supporters in senior positions in the police, judiciary and other institutions, building a network that enabled him to “influence the situation in the country and control the activities of President Erdogan”, according to EU intelligence sources

That situation “changed” after Mr Erdogan began purges of the police and state administration in 2014, weakening the Gulenists as well as targeting other opposition tendencies such as Kemalists and civil activists.

In a blow to Turkey’s claims that Mr Gulen masterminded the coup, the European intelligence report noted that his Islamist followers were weak in the Turkish army, which until last July remained a bastion of secularism.

Read more: Erdogan plotted Turkey purge before coup, say Brussels spies

A geological statistician Mr. Srivastava living in Toronto, was working in his office in June 2003, waiting for some files to download onto his computer, when he discovered a couple of old lottery tickets buried under some paper on his desk. The tickets were cheap scratchers—a gag gift from his squash partner—and Srivastava found himself wondering if any of them were winners. He fished a coin out of a drawer and began scratching off the latex coating. “The first was a loser, and I felt pretty smug,” Srivastava says. “I thought, ‘This is exactly why I never play these dumb games.'”

The second ticket was a tic-tac-toe game. Its design was straightforward: On the right were eight tic-tac-toe boards, dense with different numbers. On the left was a box headlined “Your Numbers,” covered with a scratchable latex coating. The goal was to scrape off the latex and compare the numbers under it to the digits on the boards. If three of “Your Numbers” appeared on a board in a straight line, you’d won. Srivastava matched up each of his numbers with the digits on the boards, and much to his surprise, the ticket had a tic-tac-toe. Srivastava had won $3. “This is the smallest amount you can win, but I can’t tell you how excited it made me,” he says. “I felt like the king of the world.”

Delighted, he decided to take a lunchtime walk to the gas station to cash in his ticket. “On my way, I start looking at the tic-tac-toe game, and I begin to wonder how they make these things,” Srivastava says. “The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets. The game can’t be truly random. Instead, it has to generate the illusion of randomness while actually being carefully determined.”

As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground. “My job is to make sense of those results,” he says. “The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they’re actually not random at all. There are fundamental geologic forces that created those numbers. If I know the forces, I can decipher the samples. I can figure out how much gold is underground.”

While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20 percent of the population. These high-frequency players tend to be poor and uneducated, which is why critics refer to lotteries as a regressive tax. (In a 2006 survey, 30 percent of people without a high school degree said that playing the lottery was a wealth-building strategy.) On average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5 percent of their income on lotteries—a source of hope for just a few bucks a throw.

The tic-tac-toe lottery is seriously flawed. It took Srivastava  a few hours of studying his tickets and some statistical sleuthing, but he discovered a defect in the game: The visible numbers turned out to reveal essential information about the digits hidden under the latex coating. Nothing needed to be scratched off—the ticket could be cracked if you knew the secret code.

The trick itself is ridiculously simple. (Srivastava would later teach it to his 8-year-old daughter.) Each ticket contained eight tic-tac-toe boards, and each space on those boards—72 in all—contained an exposed number from 1 to 39.

As a result, some of these numbers were repeated multiple times. Perhaps the number 17 was repeated three times, and the number 38 was repeated twice. And a few numbers appeared only once on the entire card. Srivastava’s startling insight was that he could separate the winning tickets from the losing tickets by looking at the number of times each of the digits occurred on the tic-tac-toe boards. In other words, he didn’t look at the ticket as a sequence of 72 random digits.

Instead, he categorized each number according to its frequency, counting how many times a given number showed up on a given ticket. “The numbers themselves couldn’t have been more meaningless,” he says. “But whether or not they were repeated told me nearly everything I needed to know.” Srivastava was looking for singletons, numbers that appear only a single time on the visible tic-tac-toe boards. He realized that the singletons were almost always repeated under the latex coating. If three singletons appeared in a row on one of the eight boards, that ticket was probably a winner.

The next day, on his way into work, he stopped at the gas station and bought a few more tickets. Sure enough, all of these tickets contained the telltale pattern. The day after that he picked up even more tickets from different stores. These were also breakable. After analyzing his results, Srivastava realized that the singleton trick worked about 90 percent of the time, allowing him to pick the winning tickets before they were scratched.

His next thought was utterly predictable: “I remember thinking, I’m gonna be rich! I’m gonna plunder the lottery!” he says. However, these grandiose dreams soon gave way to more practical concerns. “Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited,” Srivastava says. “I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That’s not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.”

What’s most disturbing, perhaps, is that even though Srivastava first brought these flaws to the attention of the authorities in 2003, they continue to appear. A few months ago, Srivastava bought some scratch tickets at convenience stores in Toronto.

\He started out with a Bingo ticket, which featured an elaborate hook. After a day of statistical analysis, Srivastava was able to double his chances of choosing a winning ticket. (Normally, 30 percent of the tickets feature a payout—he was able to select winners approximately 60 percent of the time.) “That might not sound very impressive, since I’m still going to buy plenty of losers,” Srivastava says. “But it’s a high enough percentage that one could launder money effectively.”

In one of his most recent trials, conducted at the request of Wired, Srivastava identified six unscratched tickets as probable winners out of a set of 20 cards. If the tickets were uncrackable, approximately two of them should have been winners. Instead, Srivastava ended up with four. The odds of this happening by chance are approximately one in 50. And yet he’s done it multiple times with a variety of Bingo and Super Bingo games. 

EU-Digest

The United States could soon become a large-scale Spain or Greece, teetering on the edge of financial ruin.

That’s according to Donald Trump, who painted a very ugly picture of where this country is headed. Trump made the comments during a recent appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”

According to Trump, the United States is no longer a rich country. “When you’re not rich, you have to go out and borrow money. We’re borrowing from the Chinese and others. We’re up to $16 trillion in debt.”

He goes on to point out that the downgrade of U.S. debt is inevitable.

“We are going up to $16 trillion [in debt] very soon, and it’s going to be a lot higher than that before he gets finished. When you have [debt] in the $21-$22 trillion, you are talking about a downgrade no matter how you cut it.”

Ballooning debt and a credit downgrade aren’t Trump’s only worries for this country. He says that the official unemployment rate “isn’t a real number” and that the real figure is closer to 15 percent to 16 percent. He even mentioned that some believe the unemployment rate to be as high as 21 percent.

“Right now, frankly, the country isn’t doing well,” Trump added, “Recession may be a nice word.”

While 15 percent to 16 percent unemployment, a looming credit downgrade, and ballooning debt are a bleak outlook for the United States, they are hardly as alarming as the scenario laid out by another economist.

Without earning celebrity status or having his own television show, Robert Wiedemer did something else that grabbed headlines across the country: He accurately predicted the economic collapse that almost sank the United States.

In 2006, Wiedemer and a team of economists foresaw the coming collapse of the U.S. housing market, equity markets, private debt, and consumer spending, and published their findings in the book America’s Bubble Economy.

Where Trump sees ballooning debt and a credit downgrade, Wiedemer sees much more widespread economic destruction.

In a recent interview for his newest book Aftershock, Wiedemer says, “The data is clear, 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market drop, and 100% annual inflation . . . starting in 2012.”

When the host questioned such wild claims, Wiedemer unapologetically displayed shocking charts backing up his allegations, and then ended his argument with, “You see, the medicine will become the poison.”

The interview has become a wake-up call for those unprepared (or unwilling) to acknowledge an ugly truth: The country’s financial “rescue” devised in Washington has failed miserably.

The blame lies squarely on those whose job it was to avoid the exact situation we find ourselves in, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Chairman Alan Greenspan, tasked with preventing financial meltdowns and keeping the nation’s economy strong through monetary and credit policies.

At one point, Wiedemer even calls out a Bernanke saying that his “money from heaven will be the path to hell.”

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), sometimes known as the central bankers’ bank, warned in its quarterly review that the present lack of volatility in global financial markets was not a sign of strength, but rather a herald of new dangers.

As BIS chief economist Claudio Borio told reporters in a briefing on the review: “It all looks rather familiar.

"The dance continues until the music eventually stops. And the longer the music plays and the louder it gets, the more deafening is the silence that follows,” when markets become illiquid precisely at the moment “when liquidity is needed most.”

Fortune Magazine writes:  "In early 2014, investment buzz over the great promise of social media, e-commerce, and biotechnology stocks had investors pouring money into both domestic and foreign social media and e-commerce stocks (e.g., Alibaba) and small biotechnology stocks (e.g., Intercept Technologies).

Like individuals, collective overconfidence is usually aggravated by mental accounting, as investors end up
chasing one class of assets (rather than diversifying) and end up buying when valuations are high.

That was the case in the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s. Investors who invested in the technology-heavy NASDAQ during the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s- early 2000s made big gains as the bubble expanded, but lost a great deal of money as the bubble burst in the early 2000s.

The fear of losing is another emotional button that is turned on by a string of losing bets. Overconfidence is succeeded by over-pessimism — negative WOM succeeds positive WOM, and the bubble busts.

The market correction that began in 1929, for instance, took the price of US stocks down by 86 percent. T
he October 1987 correction drove US equities down 20 percent over three days.Investors panicked over a collapse of the dollar and rising interest rates, which made stocks less appealing than alternative investments.

In 2007-08, major indices lost more than 50 percent of their value, as investors fled equity markets, fearing a collapse of the financial system. This means that emotional investors are rushing to buy at a time when valuations are high, blowing the bubble bigger faster; and rushing to sell at time when valuations are low, busting the bubble faster.

That may prove to be the case in 2014. Wall Street may finally be exposed what it really is: a "financial Casino" which has seen its best days.

 EU-Digest