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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: bull_dozer who wrote (190751)8/10/2022 5:55:51 PM
From: bull_dozer2 Recommendations

Recommended By
Julius Wong
Roads End

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218913
 
JPMorgan Gold Traders Found Guilty in Chicago Spoofing Trial

The former head of the JPMorgan Chase & Co. precious-metals business and his top gold trader were convicted by a federal jury in Chicago on charges they manipulated markets for years, handing the US government a win in its long crackdown on bogus “spoofing” orders.

Michael Nowak and Gregg Smith were found guilty on Wednesday after a three-week trial. A salesman on the desk, Jeffrey Ruffo, was acquitted. Prosecutors presented evidence that included detailed trading records, chat logs and testimony by former co-workers who “pulled back the curtain” on how Nowak and Smith moved precious-metals prices up and down for profit.

The case was the biggest yet by the US Justice Department, which alleged the precious-metals business at JPMorgan was run as a criminal enterprise. Nowak, the managing director in charge of the desk, and Smith, its top trader, were convicted of fraud, spoofing, market manipulation. Ruffo, a salesman, had been accused of participating in the conspiracy.

“They had the power to move the market, the power to manipulate the worldwide price of gold,” prosecutor Avi Perry said during closing arguments.

JPMorgan, the largest US bank, agreed in 2020 to pay $920 million to settle Justice Department spoofing allegations against it, by far the biggest fine by any financial institution accused of market manipulation since the financial crisis.

The star witnesses at the criminal trial were former co-workers who said they participated in the spoofing activity over years. Traders John Edmonds and Christian Trunz testified about market manipulation by all three defendants at JPMorgan, while trader Corey Flaum described similar behavior when he worked with Smith and Ruffo at Bear Stearns, before it was acquired by JPMorgan in 2008.

All three defendants were acquitted of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. By invoking a law more commonly used against gangs or mafias, prosecutors alleged the desk was run as a criminal enterprise. Previous convictions of former precious-metals traders at Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit involved only spoofing-related crimes.

Racketeering charges also are part of the federal government’s case against Bill Hwang, whose Archegos Capital Management collapsed last year and cost banks billions.

bloomberg.com



To: bull_dozer who wrote (190751)11/25/2022 9:14:57 PM
From: TobagoJack  Respond to of 218913
 
Re <<silver>>

imperative use-case reveal, but I do not intuitively understand why silver has role in heat shielding
The thermal shield, which is lined with 5 tons of pure silver and designed to contain heat 10 times hotter than the sun, showed cracks along cooling pipes, ITER reported. The vacuum vessel sectors, each weighing the equivalent of 300 cars and as tall as a telephone pole, show slight differences in manufacturing that complicates the welding process used to put them together.

bloomberg.com

World’s Biggest Nuclear-Fusion Project Faces Delays as Component Cracks

The $23 billion ITER project in France faces new delays Delay could give billionaire-backed startups time to catch up

Jonathan Tirone
25 November 2022 at 22:59 GMT+8



A poloidal field coil number 1, one of in the magnetic system that will serve to confine plasma in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

Photographer: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

Cracks in a key silver-lined component are creating new delays and cost overruns in the $23 billion project to prove whether nuclear fusion can generate limitless clean energy.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, under construction in southern France is being funded by the European Union and countries including China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The world’s biggest experiment aims to show that mimicking the power that makes stars shine can produce clean energy that could help slow global warming on Earth.

But new ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi warned members this week the project faces problems that are potentially “extensive,” along with new requirements for time and money that “will not be insignificant.”



The project has been plagued by unexpected challenges over the past 12 months. Just as it started sorting out logistics disrupted by the pandemic, Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine complicated the supply of critical components manufactured in Russia. In May, the project’s long-time chief Bernard Bigot died. The first task of his replacement, the Italian engineer Barabaschi, has been to investigate problems that will prevent the reactor from starting up in 2025.





At issue are two South Korean-made components: thermal shields built by SFA Engineering Corp. and vacuum vessel sectors made by Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Neither company responded to Bloomberg requests for comment outside of business hours.

The thermal shield, which is lined with 5 tons of pure silver and designed to contain heat 10 times hotter than the sun, showed cracks along cooling pipes, ITER reported. The vacuum vessel sectors, each weighing the equivalent of 300 cars and as tall as a telephone pole, show slight differences in manufacturing that complicates the welding process used to put them together.

So far, ITER’s governing board has taken the setbacks in its stride. At an extraordinary meeting convened this month, it ordered Barabaschi to come up with a new budget and time line to be presented next year.

“What was remarkable at the ITER council was the lack of finger pointing,” ITER spokesman Laban Coblentz said Friday in an interview. “It has been a very solutions-oriented discussion.”

More than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of pipe will need to be ripped out and reassembled on site, with engineers forced to figure out new ways of putting together the dizzyingly complex reactor. More than a million individual pieces have been commissioned to go into the project, which ITER figured was close to 70% complete before the defects were discovered.



The delay at ITER will give a new generation of closely held fusion startups time to catch up. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel are among a group of billionaires pursuing fusion privately. The National Academies of Science this year called on the US to accelerate plans to build a pilot fusion reactor capable of generating electricity by 2035.

How Fusion’s Newbies Are Trying to Speed the Burn: QuickTake

“Companies have been learning enormously from this first-of-its kind project,” said ITER’s Coblentz, dismissing suggestions that the delays could dampen enthusiasm. “The goal here isn’t to build just a single machine but to show that fusion power is feasible and to make that happen.”