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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (47713)	9/16/2025 8:20:32 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49019

Macron's Failed Gambit: The Leaked Call That Backfired Spectacularly In a desperate bid to salvage his crumbling legacy amid France's deepening domestic turmoil, Macron authorized the release of secret telephone conversations with Russian President V. Putin in July 2022. The… pic.twitter.com/ndLtdYAQAS — 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐙 🇷🇺 🇷🇺 (@SMO_VZ) September 15, 2025 Macron is oblivious to the fact that Putin got his training as a lawyer, earning his degree in law. He's going to meticulously build a case before he takes action, which seems to frustrate many of the hard-line observers on the sidelines. Given Ukraine's intensified shelling of the Donbas, the evacuation of civilians from the Donbas to Russia, and the declaration of secession from Ukraine by the oblasts, Putin has a much stronger case for invoking UN's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine than the U.S.'s R2P application in Libya in 2011, especially given the US coalition was recruiting and training foreign fighters to stage a 'civil war' and the 'victims' were primarily mercenaries and not civilians.

To: Les H who wrote (47713)	9/16/2025 8:39:00 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49019

Bill Pulte's Looking for Mortgage Fraud in the Wrong Place posted by Adam Levitin Reuters is reporting that Lisa Cook scheduled her Atlanta property as a vacation home on a loan estimate from her lender. That indicates that the lender was aware that the property was not going to be used as Cook's principal residence. It's going to be pretty hard to sustain a mortgage fraud prosecution in the face of the loan estimate. Consistent with the indication that the Atlanta property was a vacation home, Cook didn't claim a primary residence tax deduction for it (unlike what Pulte's own parents did for their properties!). If Reuters was able to unearth the Cook loan application materials, surely Pulte should have been able to do so. Either Pulte was wildly reckless by making the referral without pulling the loan file, including the application materials, or he proceeded despite having the loan file, which suggests that he acted maliciously. Regardless of whether Pulte acted recklessly or maliciously, his actions here are more than cause for his removal. The Cook's declaration of the property as a second home also suggests that if there was fraud—and it's far from clear that there was—that it wasn't by Cook, but by either the loan officer or her credit union. The loan officer might have wanted to facilitate the loan closing, while the credit union would have gotten a better price from Fannie/Freddie for a principal residence mortgage than for a second home mortgage. We'd need a lot more information to know if there was fraud and by whom, but if Cook had alerted the credit union that the property was a second home, I can't see how this could rise to a criminal issue for her. creditslips.org