DIPLOMATIC, INFORMATION, MILITARY, ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL, INTELLIGENCE, LAW-ENFORCEMENT  (DIMEFIL)

Strategy:   “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Governors in Panic?

This is the possible report Mike Pompeo made all the Governors panic when he mentioned to them at the NGA on 2/8/20, bribed governors who sold PPE to China. The reports title is "PRC Think Tank Study on US Governors Attitudes Toward China June 22 2019"

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6779094-PRC-Think-Tank-Study-on-US-Governors-Attitudes.html (In Chinese)

https://chinatechthreat.com/thinktank/panoramic-view-of-the-us-attitude-towards-china-governors/ (Overview)

From the above link.....

How was the study conducted?

The Minzhi study includes two main components. First, the research cites very basic data about the governors (age, gender, party, and previous offices held) paired with economic information about the states they represent, such as GDP, the role of trade generally, and trade with China specifically.

More interestingly, the study ranks governors based on cryptic, subjective standards explaining only that, “The criteria for friendly judgment is whether any pro-Chinese speech has been published publicly. Taxes, launching trade wars and other events that clearly target China have shown dissatisfaction, we will summarize them as vague; obviously anti-China speech, critical speech, or explicit support for trade war speech, we classify it as tough.”

The report then provides three examples of friendly, ambiguous, and tough governors without further clarification:

• Friendly: “For example, Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts, said at an event in December 2018: “The U.S. should see China as a valued partner not only in our economic growth but in solving problems around the world “, so we regard him as friendly to China.”
• Ambiguous: “Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said in an interview with CNBC on June 9, 2019: “I continue to support the president … But we feel it is appropriate to say there is a point that you should not squeeze us further “, so we classify it as a vague attitude toward China. And publicly said “he supports whatever decision the president makes on delicate trade negotiations.”
• Tough: “Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp was classified as tough.”

How are governors classified?

Ultimately, the report assesses 17 governors as friendly, 14 as ambiguous, and 6 as tough. About the half dozen tough governors, Minzi explains, “Among them, 4 have very close personal relations with Trump, and 3 have questions about human rights and accuse China of human rights violations. In terms of parties, there are 5 Republicans and 1 Democrat, ranging in age from 41 to 70 years old. In terms of gender, they are all male.”

Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) claims 'market data issues' in trade pause

A software issue limited to the trading of multiple securities in a single order created inaccurate market data, forcing the exchange to pause trade.

The go-live of the refreshed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) trade system was on Monday interrupted by "market data issues", later revealed as a software issue, causing the ASX to pause trade.

The ASX's status page showed its ultra-latency cash equity market trading platform, ASX Trade, was paused. The trading services ASX TradeMatch and ASX Centre Point both operate on ASX Trade.

Impacted services include equities, exchange-traded funds, exchange-traded options, warrants, index options, interest rate securities, and Australian government bonds.

"The ASX equity market is currently paused and there is no trading while we investigate market data issues," a spokesperson for the exchange told ZDNet, repeating what was provided in a tweet shortly after reports of an outage started surfacing.

"ASX apologises for the disruption and is working to rectify the issue as soon as possible."

It updated users via Twitter, saying it was continuing to investigate the issue causing today's market outage.

The exchange later said ASX equity markets would not open for the remainder of today. 

It also said the underlying cause of the issue had been identified, however, and a resolution path would be in place to allow trading to commence on Tuesday at 10am AEDT.

The issue was shortly after revealed as being a software issue.

"ASX and its technology provider Nasdaq have identified the root cause and a resolution path to fix it. A software issue limited to the trading of multiple securities in a single order (combination trading) created inaccurate market data," the exchange said.

With Monday being the go-live date for the refreshed ASX Trade system, the exchange said Nasdaq, customers, and independent specialist third parties conducted extensive testing for over a year, including four dress rehearsals, in preparation for sending it out in the wild. ASX said the refresh is the latest generation of a Nasdaq-developed trading system used around the world.

"ASX is very disappointed with today's outage … the outage falls short of the high standards we set ourselves and the standards others expect of us," ASX managing director and CEO Dominic Stevens said.

"Notwithstanding the extensive testing and rehearsals, and the involvement of our technology provider, ASX accepts responsibility. The obligation to get this right and provide a reliable and resilient trading system for the market rests with us.

"While I am disappointed with today's outage, we are determined to continue our program of contemporising ASX's technology stack from top to bottom. This initiative is critical to ASX building an exchange for the future and ensuring we best serve the needs of our customers and the Australian market."

In delivering its results for the 2020 financial year, the ASX said it experienced its highest ever trading volume. It also boasted 100% up time of its key trading and post-trade systems.

The exchange in 2018 was asked to up its risk management practices following an "unprecedented" hardware failure in September 2016 that resulted in the outage of its equity market.

https://www.zdnet.com/index.php/category/2381/index.php/article/asx-claims-market-data-issues-in-trade-pause/

Paragon dig - checked qresear.ch and shocked to learn that this hasn't been dug on...

Creditors give the green light to the sale of Scytl to the Irish Paragon

October 1, 2020 by archyde

https://www.archyde.com/creditors-give-the-green-light-to-the-sale-of-scytl-to-the-irish-paragon/

Highlights from article:

• Paragon bought Scytl in October - Ireland (well known tax haven)
• The bankruptcy of Scytl attracted five banks (Sabadell, Santander, BBVA, Bankinter and Deutsche Bank) and a public financial institution, the Catalan Institute of Finance, which had lent funds to the company.
• Future buyer intends to give continuity to the company and therefore maintain the hundred employees who still work in the Barcelona offices and subsidiaries in the US, Canada and France.
• Paragon is an Irish communications group (Paragon has a) division dedicated to identification services to which could be added the encryption software that Scytl uses for electronic voting processes.
• Scytl filed for bankruptcy in late 2019
• Paragon tried (failed) to force the sale to the American fund Sandton Capital