Free Republic

House lawmakers want the Trump administration to investigate reports that a wealthy foundation used an offshore shell company to give millions of dollars to environmental activists opposed to U.S. energy development. “If you connect the dots, it is clear that Russia is funding U.S. environmental groups in an effort to suppress our domestic oil and gas industry, specifically hydraulic fracking,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday. Smith and Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to investigate whether or not environmentalists were funneling money to U.S. environmental groups through a Bermuda-based shell company. Republicans are pitching...

..Over seven years, Payless went through a wringer of private equity and hedge fund stewardship that left it with inadequate technology, run-down stores and no financial cushion to survive an era of upheaval in retail. .. Financial managers exert greater control over nearly all American companies than they once did. Their willingness to cause some pain — to close factories, lay people off, renegotiate arrangements with longtime suppliers — is, many economists argue, a feature, not a bug .. The American economy has become markedly less dynamic. Fewer businesses are being started, and the newcomers are having less success unseating...

Larry Fink’s recent letters to CEOs and investors were certain to press buttons, because they dealt with BlackRock’s plans to address climate change. Yet the reactions, Fink tells Barron’s, have been positive even as climate change has become a political football. “I received one of the great letters of my career from a client in a red state,” says the CEO of BlackRock (ticker: BLK). “This client was very thankful. This client said, ‘We have a 10- to 20-year investment horizon. We now need to look at how we think about investing.’ ” BlackRock puts climate-risk analysis at the heart...

Fox News Host Tucker Carlson dedicated a segment of his show Tuesday night to torching the Wall Street billionaire Paul Singer. Carlson’s show featured an investigation into how hedge funds, like the the one Singer manages, have destroyed American towns and economies for the sake of lining their pockets. Carlson described how Singer and his hedge fund Elliott Management has made billions of dollars from their style of “vulture capitalism,” exploiting financially distressed countries and American companies. “Elliott Management has made billions by buying large stakes in American companies, then firing workings, driving up short-term share prices, and in some...

Here is the first look at the monster in his lair. Newly surfaced photos obtained by The Post reveal for the first time how Jeffrey Epstein — and a horde of girls — spent time at his now-notorious Caribbean hideaway, nicknamed “Pedophile Island’’ by locals. The multimillionaire convicted pedophile is dressed casually in the creepy snapshots, including one in which he chats on the phone — while getting a massage from a grinning young blonde who appears to be his assistant, Sarah Kellen. Some of the snaps feature intimate glimpses into the late fiend’s luxurious digs, including a white-drenched bedroom...

Has a trade war started? The stock market doesn’t suggest that a full-scale trade fight between China and the U.S. has erupted, but a tweet from Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, implies otherwise. Friday afternoon, Dalio tweeted: “Today is the first day of the war with China.” Today is the first day of the war with China. — Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) July 6, 2018 The tweet from the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, which manages some $160 billion, comes after the U.S. slapped levies on $34 billion of 25% on China’s exports at midnight, and...

FULL TITLE: FBI launches an investigation and AG Barr announces a DOJ probe after pedophile Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide by hanging himself in prison ahead of his sex trafficking trial Jeffrey Epstein has hanged himself inside his New York City jail cell. The billionaire pedophile was found in cardiac arrest shortly before 7am on Saturday at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. He was rushed to nearby New York Downtown Hospital where he was pronounced dead. In a statement, Metropolitan Correctional Center told DailyMail.com that the FBI is now launching an investigation into Epstein's death. The former financier, 66,...

If what you already know about the FBI’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia has you wondering what can come next, “make sure you are sitting down because it’s about to get worse,” said Patrick Byrne, the philanthropist and CEO of the mega online retail chain Overstock.com. Byrne revealed never published details about his intimate relationship with the Russian gun right’s activist and libertarian, Maria Butina, who is now serving out her sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to working as a foreign agent in the U.S. without registering. In an interview several weeks ago, Byrne recanted first...

The federal investigation into allegations of pay to play in one state agency may be over, but that doesn’t mean Gov. Bill Richardson is in the clear, a top New Mexico political analyst said today.In an interview with NMI, Albuquerque pollster and analyst Brian Sanderoff pointed out that federal and state investigators are still looking into allegations in the investment scandal that began in New York and has since spread to New Mexico and other states. That case, which is separate from the probe that has ended, involves some prominent Richardson friends and donors.The probe that we learned today...

A strange thing happened when Jeffrey Epstein came back to New York City after being branded a sex offender: His reputation appeared to rise. In 2010, the year after he got out of a Florida prison, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos dined at his Manhattan mansion with a British royal. The next year, Mr. Epstein was photographed at a “billionaire’s dinner” attended by tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. A page popped up on Harvard University’s website lauding his accomplishments, and superlative-filled news releases described his lofty ambitions as he dedicated $10 million to charitable causes.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former Wall Street mentor says the financier’s coziness with former President Bill Clinton “absolutely” led to his ruin. “The Clinton relationship destroyed Jeffrey Epstein and did not help Clinton. Because that was his first major high-profile relationship, and he enjoyed the media pizzazz, not understanding it and letting his ego be inflated by being put in articles next to a former president of the United States,” Steven Hoffenberg told Observer. “That raised his pridefulness enormously. It inflated his ego… That changed him.”

Former President Bill Clinton dined with financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 1995, records show—years before the interactions detailed in a statement from his office earlier this week. That statement condemned the wealthy hedge fund manager after his indictment for alleged sex trafficking crimes was unsealed Monday. The statement said Clinton "knows nothing" about Epstein's alleged crimes and included a timeline of Clinton's interactions with him starting in 2002. But according to a story published back in March 1995 by the Palm Beach Post, then-President Clinton attended a “three-hour dinner” at the time with a “very select group of...

  A liberal financier at the center of two congressional ethics controversies may also be involved in some questionable business dealings, according to the New York Times. S. Donald Sussman, a billionaire hedge-fund titan, made news after his fiancé, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), was accused of traveling on his private jet to campaign events.Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has also been scrutinized for traveling to Sussman's Virgin Islands mansion on the billionaire's plane. Republicans have said the trip had the appearance of impropriety, since Frank serves as chair of the House Finance Committee and a company owned by Sussman has...

President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a "wacky" and "crazed & stumbling lunatic" on Sunday, after Steyer -- who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week -- said he "absolutely was blaming" Trump for creating an atmosphere in which "anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up." Steyer fired back quickly, writing that Trump's comment was "unthinkable ... in the midst of the horrible political violence." The Twitter conflagration erupted after Steyer's wide-ranging interview with CNN's "State of the Union," in which the hedge fund manager called Trump "corrupt," and...

Agency's $325 Million Mistake Means Vi No Longer Owes Over $128 Million. The IRS disclosure, made in a recent federal tax court filing, appears to end the agency's effort to collect over $128 million in back taxes and penalties from the company. The agency's reversal came even though it continued to defend its underlying position: that so-called "entrance fees" paid by incoming retirement-community residents can be treated as taxable income. Vi was founded in 1987 by Penny Pritzker, who remains its chairman. She is a leading member of the Chicago-based Pritzker business dynasty.

U.S.-based custody bank Northern Trust is helping traditional "mainstream" hedge funds expand into cryptocurrencies, Forbes reported Tuesday. Northern Trust's president, Pete Cherecwich, told the news organization that the financial services firm is working with three hedge funds – whose names he declined to provide – to add cryptocurrency investments to their portfolios. To that end, Northern Trust has reportedly created new administrative tools and services specifically for cryptocurrency assets. These include tools to price and trade cryptocurrencies, according to the report. Cherecwich said: "You can take anything today. You can take movie rights, you can take all sorts of entities,...

Just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a vault, and Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires now have a way to keep their cryptocurrency safe from the criminals: Underground bunkers packed with encrypted computer servers storing cryptographic keys for billions in bitcoin. This is cold storage, with a major security twist. It’s a new kind of vault for a new age and one Argentine pioneer has finally convinced the wealthy that this is where their digital currency will be safe. The brainchild of entrepreneur Wences Casares, a startup called Xapo has built crypto bunkers on five continents—including one in...

WASHINGTON — Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist and Democratic political donor, announced Monday that his advocacy group, NextGen America, will spend $30 million to help Democrats retake the House in 2018, with the aim of eventually impeaching President Trump. Mr. Steyer also announced that he would not run for Senate or governor in California, as had been speculated. Mr. Steyer, who was a major donor to President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, emerged as the largest single political donor of the 2014 midterm election. His group spent $74 million to back Democrats that year, and $87 million in the 2016 elections....

We hear a lot about “vested interests” in America these days. Here in California – it is the cry of Global Warming alarmists who are opposed to proposition 23 that is to be voted on in the November election. Prop 23 will suspend a “Global Warming solutions” act that will push up energy prices and drive even more jobs out of the state during one the biggest recessions in living memory. Understandably there is a lot of opposition to the Global Warming Act and Prop 23 is proving surprisingly popular in a state that practically invented the Green movement. Two...

France’s finance minister unveiled Friday a decree that would make it the first nation in Europe to allow the trading of some non-listed securities using the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. The decree, presented by Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to the government, should enter into force by July at the latest and will apply to non-listed financial securities that EU law doesn’t require to be traded via an intermediary, a market worth potentially more than €3 trillion. In particular, this includes shares in mutual and hedge funds, negotiable debt securities, and unlisted stocks and bonds. Blockchain technology debuted in...