it has yet to pay for its other significant outstanding legal case, relating to “mirror trades” in Russia, in which around ten billion dollars were spirited out of Russia between 2011 and 2015, using simultaneous stock transactions in Moscow and London.
.. If it emerged that, Deutsche Bank had in fact executed mirror trades with parties on the U.S. Sanctions list relating to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, then the fine could be large. (BNP Paribas was fined nearly nine billion dollars for breaking sanctions in 2014.) This outcome, Schenck told investors, would be “nicht lustig”: not funny.
.. If, after a Brobdingnagian fine for mortgage-backed securities, Deutsche Bank also faces a huge settlement for mirror trades, the bank may need to recapitalize with German government money. As I wrote in August, this prospect should frighten even those who derive pleasure from seeing the bank, and its freewheeling culture, effectively policed:
.. Deutsche Bank, it said, was not only “one of the most important net contributors to systemic risks in the global banking system”; it was also a contagious agent, because of heavy financial “spillover” between Deutsche Bank and other lenders and insurers. Any kind of failure at Deutsche Bank, the I.M.F. suggested, would be extremely bad news for everybody.
.. Deutsche Bank shares were down seven per cent on the London Stock Exchange, to 12.16 euros, slightly more than the bank’s all-time low, which occurred after the Brexit vote. That left Deutsche Bank’s market capitalization at 16.77 billion euros, or about $18.6 billion—$4.6 billion more than the proposed R.M.B.S. fine.
Why Do Famous People Get Paid $250,000 to Give a Speech?
As Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. This means, to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
.. Lucrative speaking appearances, however, are not a modern invention. They’re 150 years old.
.. The practice arose in pre-Civil War New England in response to Bostonians’ clamor to hear lectures by abolitionists like Henry Ward Beecher. A literary man named James Redpath began acting as matchmaker between anti-slavery orators and interested audiences; soon he was a de facto agent, organizing speaking tours for famous Americans.
The result was America’s “Lyceum Movement.” The speakers broadened their scope to address the arts, politics, and science, and the Lyceum Movement became known as “the people’s college.” Mark Twain read his literary work; Abraham Lincoln warned of the corrupting influences of slavery; and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lectured on the importance of women’s suffrage.
.. The lecture circuit became the primary way intellectuals supported themselves. Susan B. Anthony gave up to 100 speeches a year to fund her activism, and Mark Twain organized lecture tours with entrepreneurial zeal.
.. A $40,000 speech is a lot less puzzling when you think of it like a concert. If an event organizer sells out a 6,000-seat auditorium, a $10 ticket should more than cover the costs.
.. “Everyone wants to say, ‘I had lunch with Michael Lewis yesterday,’” Don Epstein, who represented the best-selling author, told Bloomberg in 2014. “It might be you and 500 other people, but it still happened.”
“For some organizations, the speech is almost secondary,” says Jim Keppler, the president and founder of Keppler Speakers. “They are looking to bring in a VIP to schmooze at receptions, pose for pictures, and sign autographs.”
.. if just one client “decides to invest $10 million… the firm will snag a 2 percent management fee—which works out to $200,000” per year.
.. As a professional association, ISRI not only wants to sell tickets to its annual conference. It wants good attendance from recycling professionals so they benefit from the networking opportunities. And people like Stanley McChrystal and Bill Clinton help them do that.
.. The current trend, Keppler says, is speakers who can talk about how to create a better company culture, improve an organization’s leadership, or stand out in a crowded market.
.. Instead, certain organizations likely view paying a politician’s speaking fee the same way they view contributing money to his or her campaign: part of a larger lobbying effort.
Hillary Clinton Gets Gored
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
.. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
.. But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.
.. the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.
Manafort’s man in Kiev
The Trump campaign chairman’s closeness to a Russian Army-trained linguist turned Ukrainian political operative is raising questions, concerns.
In an effort to collect previously undisclosed millions of dollars he’s owed by an oligarch-backed Ukrainian political party, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been relying on a trusted protégé whose links to Russia and its Ukrainian allies have prompted concerns among Manafort associates, according to people who worked with both men.
.. The protégé, Konstantin Kilimnik, has had conversations with fellow operatives in Kiev about collecting unpaid fees owed to Manafort’s company by a Russia-friendly political party called Opposition Bloc
.. A Russian Army-trained linguist who has told a previous employer of a background with Russian intelligence, Kilimnik started working for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine.
.. Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy.
.. It soon became an article of faith in IRI circles that Kilimnik had been in the intelligence service, according to five people who worked in and around the group in Moscow, who said Kilimnik never sought to correct that impression.
.. “It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him,”
.. The lifestyle was sort of a JV version of the jet-setting existence of his boss, Manafort.
.. A former trucking official who had been convicted and incarcerated as a teenager for serious crimes, Yanukovych had become a popular symbol of the corruption that plagues Ukraine after his team tried to rig the 2004 presidential election.
.. the “Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party. Tapping the deep pockets of [Akhmetov], Regions has hired veteran K Street political help for its ‘extreme makeover’ effort … [Manafort’s firm] is among the political consultants that have been hired to do the nipping and tucking.”
.. “And because Paul doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, he always had to have someone like that with him in meetings, so KK was with him all the time. He was very close to Paul and very trusted.”
.. And, in a Cayman Islands legal filing to recoup Deripaska’s cash, lawyers named Kilimnik as one of seven “key individuals” involved in the partnership along with Manafort, Gates, and a handful of then-associates.
.. Manafort entered into other ventures with other oligarchs, as well. And the operative who worked with Manafort’s team said, “These guys had a lot of stuff going on outside the campaign context, and KK was involved in all of that as well.”
.. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency obtained documents showing that from 2007 through 2012, Yanukovych’s party had earmarked $12.7 million in off-books cash payments for Manafort, The New York Times revealed this week.
Manafort, who’s been criticized by some former colleagues for prioritizing cash over principles, rejected the report. He asserted in a statement that “the suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical.”
.. when Manafort traveled to Kiev in 2015 to try to secure the cash he was owed, he was “ambushed” in the lobby of the city’s Hyatt hotel by the landlord for his office demanding back rent.
.. “I always understood that he was in the Russian Army intelligence for a couple years,” said an international political consultant, who has worked with Kilimnik, and who stressed that, at the time, all Russian men were required to serve in the military. But the consultant added, “I don’t think it was as big a deal as people made it out to be.”
.. It’s not like you can say, ‘I used to work for [Russian intelligence].’ It’s a permanent affiliation. There is no such thing as a former [Russian intelligence] officer.”