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Analysis: How Exxon Is Being Forced To Accept The Reality Of Bad Fossil Fuel Investments

February 28, 2021

Analysis: How Exxon Is Being Forced To Accept The Reality Of Bad Fossil Fuel Investments

ExxonMobil
Last August, ExxonMobil warned that it may need to remove 20 percent of its oil and gas proved reserves from its books. While that was a shocking number from the oil major, reality proved to be even more of a shock to the company. On February 24, Exxon reported that it would actually remove over 30 percent of its proved reserves from its books — essentially wiping out the value of its Canadian tar sands holdings from its books.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), proved reserves are “the estimated quantities of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids which geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be recoverable in future years from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.”

Proved reserves are the concept on which the whole oil business is based. It is a main factor in how oil and gas companies are valued and in determining how much money banks will loan companies. Much of oil and gas lending is known as reserved-based lending.

Exxon’s latest move is even more remarkable, however, because it has a reputation for being resistant to properly valuing reserves, often lagging behind the other oil major companies in making these downward adjustments.

In this case, the market — and the SEC— forced Exxon’s hand on the matter. SEC rules require that oil and gas companies value reserves based on the average price of oil from the previous 12 months.

In its latest SEC filing released this week, Exxon explains that this requirement essentially meant removing all of the value for its Canadian tar sands investments from its reserves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Pension / Retirement Crisis Is Becoming An Underfunded ‘Tsunami’ According to The SEC

October 21, 2018

Pension / Retirement Crisis Is Becoming An Underfunded ‘Tsunami’ According to The SEC

We have detailed this problem over the past 3-4 years warning people about how bad the pensions around the nation have become nothing more than another ponzi scheme. Most, if not all, state, local and federal pension programs are underfunded by 40% or more.

What we stated a mere two months ago, in September 2018!

The steam that is building began in earnest in 2012 and has been picking up speed ever since. Look no further than some of the recent events we have documented time and again – Detroit, CALPers, Jeremy Stein, Teamsters and Dallas Pension Fund. All of these events have taken place in less than five years. What will the next four-plus years bring? How much longer should one sit on their hands and watch as thousands upon thousands of people either have retirement stolen or placed on lock-down as is the case with the Dallas Police Pension fund?

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We have studied, researched and written about this for well over four years. Harry Markopolous, in 2011, tried to warn us about the ongoing theft, within the pension funds, on a daily basis by the banking cabal – link. CALPers pension program is north of 50% underfunded and losing a little more each and every quarter. – link. These are merely two of the articles that paint a picture of a tsunami of pension bankruptcies in the near future.

That’s a lot of people around the country that are directly impacted by unfunded, underfunded or otherwise completely insolvent pension funds.

It appears either the Forbes writer Elizabeth Bauer or SEC Commissioner Kara Stein read the article we published in September as they are now using the exact same language we used in September – ‘tsunami’ of pension failures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How HFT Destroys Markets: 50 Pages Of Evidence

March 21, 2015

How HFT Destroys Markets: 50 Pages Of Evidence

Back in 2009, when aside from a few insiders, nobody had heard of HFT, Zero Hedge launched its crusade to expose the algorithmic scourge that has since then caused an equity, treasury and now US Dollar flash crash, and has been the subject of a Michael Lewis bestseller and resulted in countless market halts and failures.

More importantly, there is now roughly 50 pages of just bibliography citing the evidence-based, academic research that has shown just how pervasively, maliciously and premeditatedly HFTs manipulate, destabilize, impair and otherwise destroy every single market in which they participate, and what’s worse: result in incremental costs to investors, debunking the biggest lie HFTs spread about themselves – that they, being the gregarious humanist vacuum tubes they are, make trading cheaper and more accessible for the small investor.

And the biggest paradox: despite all this proof – which we urge every readers to sent to their favorite SEC regulator – America’s corrupt enforcers of securities laws continue to turn a blind eye to all the crime that takes place every single day. Why? Because they collect a portion of the proceeds, of course, and because they need a scapegoat to blame once the market crashes.

We are grateful to “R. T. Leuchtkafer” who put it all together.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Former SEC Director Admits The Truth: The Market Is Rigged

March 10, 2015

Former SEC Director Admits The Truth: The Market Is Rigged

For more than a decade, John Ramsay kept his mouth shut about how rigged the US equity market was.

As SEC Director of Trading & Markets, Ramsay tells Bloomberg her “had red tape over his mouth,” but now he is “uncorked.”

“I’ve been able to find my voice on these issues in a way I couldn’t have done when I was in the government, because you’re always limited by internal politics and not wanting to get too far out in front of the agency,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been a little bit uncorked.”

Having joined Brad Katayama’s IEX Group (infamous for the Flash Boys’ exposure), Ramsay  is calling out the “convoluted” and “illogical” pricing rules of major stock exchanges and compared the $25 trillion U.S. stock market’s structure to the Death Star of “Star Wars.”

It will be hard for current regulators to shrug off Ramsay’s comments,

“He’s a guy who accomplished a lot and doesn’t have anything to prove,” said James Burns, who worked with Ramsay at the SEC and is now a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.

Ramsay helped the SEC hammer out the post-crisis Volcker Rule, which bans government-insured banks from gambling with depositors’ money. The rule has an exemption — it allows banks to continue “making markets,” or standing ready to buy or sell stocks and bonds from customers. Financial regulators initially clashed over that exemption, with banking agencies fretting that the language would open loopholes for Wall Street to exploit.

Ramsay helped ease the tension with clear language and humor, bank regulators said. Ramsay was the voice at the table “making us understand how market making is done, and what kind of parameters are around it,” said Scott Alvarez, the Federal Reserve’s general counsel.

And so when he uncorks a nasty reality check on the market, perhaps it is time to listen…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

US Taxpayers Pay For SEC to Arrange Early Release of Data to High Speed Trading Firms

October 29, 2014

US Taxpayers Pay For SEC to Arrange Early Release of Data to High Speed Trading Firms.

The SEC reportedly does not like trading on information that is not yet public. Just ask SAC Capital, or if you prefer, watch the plethora of insider trading SEC news conferences in general.

Why, even this morning there is a WSJ story about the SEC’s investigation into the early leak and release of Medicare cancer related funding data , which is an investigation into a different government agency!

And remember last year, when the SEC began investigating Thompson Reuter’s early release of ISM data to certain high speed subscribers. While the SEC brought no charges against Thompson Reuters, the data firm did subsequently suspend its “tiered release” practice:

On Monday, Thomson Reuters announced that it was suspending a so-called “tiered release” of market moving data to elite clients. The data and news service had been selling the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment numbers to paying clients at 9:54:58 on release days—two seconds before the information went to a broader set of clients at 9:55 am. That created an opportunity for high speed trading firms to rake in profits before the rest of the market knew which direction the impending news would propel trading.

 

– See more at: http://blog.themistrading.com/us-taxpayers-pay-for-sec-to-arrange-early-release-of-data-to-high-speed-trading-firms/#sthash.Q5Ovnhx5.dpuf

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