Why are American citizens renouncing their citizenship? A few of the possible reasons include NSA spying, Obamacare, and the FATCA law that takes effect in July of this year.
What is FATCA, and what does it do?
The 2010 law, to be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2013,
requires financial institutions based outside the U.S. to obtain and
report information about income and interest payments accrued to the
accounts of American clients. It means additional compliance costs for
banks and fewer investment options and advisers for all U.S. citizens
living abroad, which could affect their ability to generate returns.
***
Renouncing citizenship is an option chosen by increasing numbers of
Americans. A record 1,780 gave up their U.S. passports last year
compared with 235 in 2008, the IRS reported.
Read that again. The U.S. government passed a law that requires foreign banks to comply with the U.S. government’s wishes.
Congress and FedGov now believe that they can force foreign businesses
to comply with U.S. laws. The net result is that, if you are an
American citizen and live outside of the U.S., you will be denied access
to such basic necessities as a bank account in the country you live in.
Yet again, we see the Imperial Congress
passing a law and expecting that Americans will not change their
behavior even though incentives have changed. The only peaceful
solution is to get out. Not only have U.S. corporations outsourced
their operations and their profits, now Americans have been forced to outsource themselves as well.
Citi, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, RBS to Plead Guilty to Conspiring to Manipulate FX Prices wsj
Citi, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, RBS to Plead Guilty to Conspiring to Manipulate FX Prices
Five global banks will pay more
than $5 billion in combined penalties to resolve foreign exchange and
Libor probes, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch says. Photo: Getty
WASHINGTON—Five global banks have agreed to pay more than $5
billion in combined penalties and will plead guilty to criminal charges
to resolve a long running U.S. investigation into whether traders at the
banks colluded to move foreign currency rates in directions to benefit
their own positions.
Four of the banks, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and Citigroup Inc., will plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros, authorities said.
The fifth bank, UBS AG, received immunity in the antitrust case,
but will plead guilty to manipulating the Libor benchmark after
prosecutors said the bank violated an earlier accord meant to resolve
those allegations of misconduct. UBS will also pay an additional
Libor-related fine.
Mobile search hits the tipping point, and Avengers ads get analyzed By Christopher Heine
May 11, 2015, 9:38 AM EDT
Mobile now makes up more than 50 percent of search in 10 countries, including the U.S. Photo: Getty Images
The past week has been filled with data points, as Digital Content NewFronts
presenters and researchers have been out in force to share their
statistical learnings. Here are 12 of the more intriguing numbers we've
recently come across:
1. The mobile revolution is complete. Smartphones account for more than half of searches in 10 countries—including the U.S. and Japan—according to Google, which didn't release exact percentages or a full list of countries.
2. At the NewFronts, content giant Collective Digital Studios said it had 1.5 billion video views throughout its 1,000 channels last month, and claimed it had a growing presence on Vine, with its top 15 campaigns reaching 158 million loops.
3. Via a True[X] Media video ad product,
when online viewers recently watched The Mindy Project, they were given
the option to either watch one interactive spot for 30 seconds (for
Microsoft) or five 30-second commercials throughout the show. According
to True[X],83 percent who participated chose the shorter, interactive ad option.
4. Amobee Brand Intelligence analyzed the digital consumption around
The Avengers: Age of Ultron to see how well brands were doing when
partnering with the movie. The analysis looked at more than 600,000
online/mobile websites and social media pages. Gillette is performing
the best, Amobee learned, thanks to a superhero-themed ad. The brand's
online impressions, mentions and other appearancesjumped 1,074 percent due to the Avengers association.
5. Innerscope Research ran a biometric monitoring test on 390 folks
aged between 18 and 34 to measure their responses to the video ads on
Facebook and television. The Boston-based researcher discovered that Facebook viewers were 2.5 times more likely to look away from video ads compared to TV, per an OnlineVideo.net post.
6. Google claims that YouTube video ads are viewable 91 percent of the time. It makes sense—why else are people visiting the site but to watch clips?
7. The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently worked with researcher GfK to survey 1,900 consumers and found that digital video consumption is up 13 percent since last year.
8. Whistle Sports—whose investors include former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning—reaches 78 million fans across its social media platforms. What's more, the millennial-focused publisher says it's adding about 2 million fans each week.
9. Don't count out AOL. The company'sglobal ad sales were up 12 percent year-over-year during the first quarter, at $483.5 million.
10. Reality TV and music-based programming generate 91 million social signals a month, according to tech company ShareThis.
11. Branded emoji company Snaps shared intriguing numbers with Digiday. For instance, the company said that 3.6 million emojis have been shared via the branded keyboards it has created for marketers.
12. Lifestyle publisher HealthiNation's videos average more than 1 million views per day.
Bonus stat: Richard Kosinski, U.S. president of Unruly, said Coca-Cola's "Grandpa" video ads got an 8 percent share rate in a campaign that ran last year. "Ads that are emotional are twice as likely to be shared," he explained.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said no this week to
tracking your movements using data from your mobile phone without a
warrant when it declared that this information is constitutionally
protected.
The case, United States v. Davis, is important not only because it
provides substantive and procedural protections against abuse of an
increasingly common and highly invasive surveillance method. It
also provides support for something Christopher Sprigman and I
have said before -- that the US government's other "metadata"
collection programs are unconstitutional.
The Davis decision, in effect, suggests that the US
government's collection of all kinds of business records and
transactional data -- commonly called "metadata" -- for law
enforcement and national security purposes may also be
unconstitutional.
Your phone sends signals to the nearest mobile phone towers so
that the communications network system knows where to route a call
should one come in. Many providers collect and store the location
of towers a customer connects to at the beginning and end of the
call for billing purposes. FBI agents in Davis obtained
these records without a search warrant and used them to place the
defendant, Quartavious Davis, near the scene of a number of
robberies.
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警政署發動靖黃行動，將針對KTV、酒家、酒店、指壓按摩養生館等進行臨檢掃蕩。（記者鄭淑婷攝）
