Department of Justice

As expected and discussed earlier in the day, Credit Suisse appears has become the first major bank to admit to doing anything wrong (though obviously unrelated directly to the financial crisis):

• U.S. FILES CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST CREDIT SUISSE IN FEDERAL COURT
• CREDIT SUISSE AGREES TO PLEAD GUILTY IN TAX CASE SAYS U.S
• CREDIT SUISSE PLEA WOULD END THREE YEAR U.S. INVESTIGATION
• U.S. ALLEGES CREDIT SUISSE AIDED U.S. CITIZENS IN TAX EVASION

Expectations are for a $2.6 billion settlement ($1.9bn to DoJ & $0.7bn to NY) - notably more than the ~$475 million CS has reserved for the settlement - but Eric Holder's due to speak at a press conference at 6pmET to cover the details (but will anyone go to jail?)

In what is setting up to be a scorching merger Monday, moments ago we got confirmation of news that had been leaked days in advance, namely that both the boards of AT&T and DirecTV had agreed to a transaction whereby AT&T would buy DirecTV in the latest chapter of what we dubbed several months ago the "M&A bubble", for $95/share in a $67.1 billion transaction including debt, consisting of $95/share in stock, $28.50/share in cash. According to the public announcement, the DirecTV purchase represents a 7.7x multiple of its 2014E EBITDA.  Additionally, as the press release states, "AT&T expects the deal to be accretive on a free cash flow per share and adjusted EPS basis within the first 12 months after closing." In other news, almost concurrently with the AT&T announcement, Pfizer also did what many expected it to do, when it announced that as part of its "final offer" it would boost its proposed purchase price for AstraZeneca by 15%.

"The DEA doesn’t want the drug war to end,” said Nelson, when asked about a possible connection between the agency’s hatred of legal pot and its buddies in Sinaloa. “If it ends, they don’t get their toys and their budgets. Once it ends, they aren’t going to have the kind of influence in foreign government. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but where there’s smoke there’s probably fire.”

“We’ve spent 1.3 trillion since 1972 on the drug war. What have we gotten for that? Drugs are cheaper and easier to get than ever before,”

However, the Mexican drug cartels have been bailed out by America’s drug warriors who have cracked down on prescription pain killers.

There is something very, very wrong with the Albuquerque, New Mexico police department, and the citizens have just about had enough.

Bailing out banks is not hard when a nation has a sovereign currency and the banks’ debts are denominated in that currency.

6 Years After the Financial Crisis Hit, The Big Banks Are Still Committing Massive Crimes

Capture, corruption, irreparable harm--and little hope for change.   

We’ve been hearing a lot about the so-called Deep State lately. What to make of this shadowy monster? Some observers link it to the paranoid fantasy called the New World Order, a staple of political talk radio (and a hobgoblin I don’t believe in). In popular movies such as the Jason Bourne epics and Mission Impossible, the Deep State launches hyper-complex schemes that work flawlessly and never fail. That is exactly why they have such high entertainment appeal. Viewers are thrilled by the precision, by the conceit of seeming infallibility. The Deep State definitely exists; it just doesn’t work the way it is depicted in the movies. We like to say that we're allergic to conspiracy theories because human beings are generally too inept to carry out schemes at the grand scale, as well as being poor secret-keepers. Insider knowledge is almost always swapped around, even in secretive organizations, often recklessly so, because doling it out confers status, tactical advantage, and sometimes money for the doler-outer. But the Deep State isn’t a secret. It operates in plain sight.

America’s massive prison system is creating a long list of unintended consequences, some of which will effect all of us in the coming years. To help explain just how bad things have gotten, we’ve compiled this list of the most stunning facts and statistics on the America’s prison system today.

• U.S. Plans to Hit Putin Inner Circle With New Sanctions (BBG)
• Russian Billions Scattered Abroad Show Trail to Putin Circle (BBG)
• GE’s Alstom Bid Gains Steam as Hollande Said Not Opposed (BBG)
• Russia-West tensions pressure stocks, buoy oil prices (Reuters)
• Toyota Said to Plan to Move U.S. Sales Office to Texas (BBG)
• Egyptian court seeks death sentence for Brotherhood leader, 682 supporters (Reuters)
• Greece warned of 14.9 billion euro financing gap (FT)
• Comcast to shed 3.9 million subscribers to ease cable deal (Reuters)
• Big U.S. Banks Make Swaps a Foreign Affair (WSJ)

The US State Department announced the launch of its third annual "Free the Press" campaign today, which will purportedly highlight "journalists or media outlets that are censored, attacked, threatened, or otherwise oppressed because of their reporting." A noble mission for sure. But maybe they should kick off the campaign by criticizing their own Justice Department, which on the very same day, has asked the Supreme Court to help them force Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter James Risen into jail.

In yet another surprising 'loss' for the current administration, RT reports a three-judge 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a previous ruling that would have allowed the federal government to keep the rationale behind drone killings classified. The US Department of Justice must turn over important details from a key "White Paper" which the government has used to justify targeted killings across the Middle East. While the document was no secret (with parts leaked before Brennan's swearing in as CIA chief last year), the judges ruled that "whatever protection the legal analysis might once have had has been lost be virtue of public statements of public officials and official disclosure of the DOJ White Paper." As the ACLU stated, "This is a resounding rejection of the government’s effort to use secrecy, and selective disclosure, as a means of manipulating public opinion about the targeted killing program."

The wonder is that more Americans are not ticked off about the state of our country than whatever is happening ten thousand miles away. The disintegration of Ukraine would be best understood by Americans as a mirror of ourselves and our sclerotic republic, poised to sink into poverty and disorder. Everything we do and say rings hollow now. What used to be called The Establishment has run out of ways to even pretend to save itself. We have no idea what’s next, but it’s not going to be more of what’s been.

After years of being mocked by the establishment and the majority of the herd, today millions of "conspiracy theorists" can pat themselves on the back because this Pulitzer's for you. Well, technically it is for the Guardian and WaPo, since these were the media outlets that Edward Snowden picked to release his trove of whistleblowing treasures, which the Pulitzer committee decided were "worthy" of the prize for their "revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security."

The Herbalife drama - perhaps the biggest billionaire pissing contest of 2013 - just got excting again, following FT news that a criminal probe has been launched into Herbalife. "The US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating Herbalife, the multi-level marketing company that hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has alleged is a pyramid scheme, according to people familiar with the matter. The criminal investigation by the FBI and US attorney’s office in Manhattan raises the stakes for Herbalife, which is already facing civil inquiries from multiple government agencies that are looking into the Los Angeles-based company and its associated network of independent distributors."