Monday, April 03, 2017

Banking secrecy is not over


Blimey, did you know? Last Fiday was The  World Backup Day. But... surely every day is world backup day?


“However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth … steps in and does something."  
Hearty project - Opening an empty Sydney building to the homeless
The challenge we face today is not a “world without work” but a world with rapidly changing work
“People have no limits either in love or in hatred. But is it their fault? They despise us because they are afraid, for we remind them that getting crippled or sick might happen to anyone; or, perhaps, the true reason for their hatred lies much deeper inside, stemming from a hidden ugliness in their souls?”

Staying in Switzerland, lets hope the country is taking sports corruption a little more seriously. Inside World Football reports that the investigators from a US law firm hired by the organisation have now concluded their probe into FIFA, with evidence now being handed over to Swiss authorities. It is understood that the files will also be made available to US investigators, aka, the only people who have actually done anything about FIFA.

The $767 Billion Money Pot Driving US Tax Reform


Whilst tax inspectors are uncovering gold bars and works or art in Credit Suisse, more serious money launderers deal in much larger units of currency, high value property.

Transparency International, which has been spending a lot of time recently focusing on the issue, has recently released a new report highlighting weaknesses in the anti-money laundering controls in the property market in several countries.

The report looks at the controls in the property market in several countries and finds precious little accountability for professionals working in the real estate market.
All of this makes it easy for them to help out the kleptocrats of the world buy their fifth, sixth or seventh property. As this documentary from a couple of years back showed





If I were the kind of person who recklessly intellectualized pop culture, I’d contend that Chuck Palahniuk’s novel “Fight Club” was the coda to GenXers’ disaffection with the 1970s and ’80s, a distillation of angst and confusion created by assaults on masculinity. “We’re a generation of men raised by women,” the nameless narrator famously explains. That echoes a familiar complaint these days.
Independence of Federal Financial Regulators: Structure, Funding, and Other Issues:  “Conventional wisdom regarding regulators is that the structure and design of the organization matters for policy outcomes. Financial regulators conduct rulemaking and enforcement to implement law and supervise financial institutions. These agencies have been given certain characteristics that enhance their day-to-day independence from the President and Congress, which may make policymaking more technical and less “political” or “partisan,” for better or worse.





Did Russian Hackers Plant A Fake Adult Coloring Book On Amazon?



“Publishers believe that Russian individuals are behind the creation of an fake book parodying a self-styled manual for resisting US president Donald Trump and other populist leaders, with the author, historian Timothy Snyder, claiming the listing to be the latest attack in a series of efforts by Russians to undermine his work.” 

Among the winners is a stunning photo of the Stuttgart Library, in Germany – all the photos from around the world, above and below land and sea and water, merit a view. To fix 'fragmented', 'inadequate' developer experience.


An off-the-record White House meeting with roughly two dozen conservative leaders Wednesday included explicit calls for President Trump to fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, according to a source in the room.

White House conservative liaison Paul Teller organized the meeting Wednesday between Trump staffers and leaders of conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Judicial Watch.

Talk of Koskinen’s firing was part of a larger discussion on clearing out Obama-era personnel from the executive branch where possible, the source said. The broad consensus among attendees was that Trump needs to clean out Obama-era bureaucrats if he is going to be successful in pushing through his agenda.


ATO to build whole-of-govt SBR API portal:
The Australian Taxation Office wants to build a single, simple API portal where software developers can access all the standards and procedures the government is promoting under its standard business reporting scheme
The SBR program became official government policy in 2010. Under the program the ATO released a series of business reporting standards that software developers could use in accounting and other regulatory tools to allow them to transmit data directly into tax office systems.
Despite a slow start, SBR has gathered velocity in recent years and the ATO is expecting it to save the business sector $1.1 billion in compliance costs in 2015-16


"What I love about our home is the past that's revealed itself along the way and its warm invitation to create new memories and add to its already rich history." -- April Lawrence





NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Thrive And Survive In A World of AI Disruption


© Maximilian Conrad, Germany, Shortlist, Open, Nature, 2017 Sony World Photography Awards

News from the Profession. We Finally Found a Service That a Big 4 Firm Won’t Provide (Caleb Newquist, Going Concern)





My War With Language (Why Romanticize It?)



“Some writers swoon over language: ‘It’s my muse, my lover’, and so on. Well, it’s my enemy, and I seem to spend all my life arguing and battling with it. Also, sitting down at a desk aggravates my sacroiliac joint, so by the end of a week of solid writing I’m pretty much bed-bound or crawling around on all fours. What else? Writing is static, unsocial, and restricts opportunities for the uptake of vitamin D via dermal synthesis.”


IF YOU’RE LIVING THE LIFE YOU WANT, IT’S NOT MEDIOCRE: What If All I Want Is A Mediocre Life?

When Americans emotionally spend, they buy toilet paper and Clorox MarketWatch


Parrots flying high on drugs are annoying farmers by plundering poppy fields to feed their opium addiction Daily Mirror. I know, I know it’s the Mirror. But who could resist this headline? Or the subhead: “Drug-addled birds sit perched in wait before swooping down behind workers’ backs for a nibble before retreating to high branches – where some then fall to their death passed out”.



Physicists find that as clocks get more precise, time gets more fuzzyScienceAlert From earlier this month, still interesting
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