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Toshiba inflated profits by £780 m with bosses' knowledge investigation finds
Disclosure of Japan’s biggest corporate scandal in years could lead to restatement of earnings at computers-to-nuclear firm, plus a board overhaul and big fines.
Toshiba overstated its operating profit by 151.8 bn yen (£780m) over several years in accounting irregularities involving top management of the Japanese technology company, independent investigators said.
The disclosure of the country’s biggest corporate scandal in years could lead to the restatement of earnings plus a board overhaul and potentially hefty fines at the computers-to-nuclear conglomerate.
Toshiba president and chief executive Hisao Tanaka and his predecessor, vice chairman Norio Sasaki, were aware of the overstatement of profits and delay in reporting losses in a corporate culture that “avoided going against superiors’ wishes”, the investigating committee said in a report filed by Toshiba to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The overstatement was roughly triple Toshiba’s initial estimate. Sources have said Tanaka and Sasaki would resign in the coming months and most of the board would be replaced.
How Low Can Gold And Silver Go?
On Sunday afternoon, I published a viral piece called “Did A Major Gold And Silver Breakdown Just Begin?” in which I explained that gold and silver may be on the verge of an imminent sell-off if key technical levels were broken. I showed that wedge patterns had formed in gold and silver for the past two years, and these patterns may indicate the resumption of the 2011 to 2013 bear market when broken. Amazingly, when gold and silver opened for trading on Sunday night, they experienced stunning flash crashes that caused them to slice clearly below the $1,130 and $15 technical levels I showed in the piece.
A $2.7 billion notional sell-order in gold futures caused the yellow metal to plunge 4.2 percent or $50 to nearly $1,086 per ounce in just a few minutes, dragging down other precious metals with it. The sell-off originated in the New York and Shanghai markets and was exacerbated by the lower-liquidity conditions due to Japan’s market holiday.
The weekly gold chart below shows the wedge pattern that formed in the past two years. The key $1,130 level formed the bottom of the wedge, and is now a resistance level since gold fell beneath it on Sunday. The technical breakdown is valid as long as gold is under this level.
Machina economicus might better fit the typical economic theories of rational behavior, but we don't believe that the AI will be fully rational or have unbounded abilities to solve problems. At some point you hit the intractability limit—things we know cannot be solved optimally—and at that point, there will be questions about the right way to model deviations from truly rational behavior.
With the robots, instead of hats, the roboticists programmed the three humanoid robots to "believe" that two of them have been given a "dumbing pill" causing them to become mute, but they did not "know" which of them it was. In actuality, two of them were made mute by pressing a button on their head. The three robots were then asked which of them had not received the dumbing pill. All three robots attempted to respond with an answer of "I don't know" but only one was able to do so, which meant it was the one that had not been muted. Upon hearing itself audibilize a reply, it changed its answer, declaring that it was the one that had not received the dumbing pill.
In short: America is facing a fiscal crisis at the state and local government level and it appears as though at least one ratings agency is no longer willing to suspend disbelief by allowing officials to utilize profoundly unrealistic return assumptions in the calculation of liabilities.
Gold remains a large part of many central banks’ reserves, decades after they stopped using it to back paper money. Stockpiles of the metal help China to diversify its foreign-exchange holdings as the world’s second-largest economy seeks to raise the international profile of its own currency. The disclosure on gold reserves also assists in that goal.
“China is still pushing for a greater role for its currency globally by having full transparency,” Fu said.
![“[State officials] are far too comfortable with the status quo. They made the pension system unsustainable. They [force] school districts to raise taxes locally. We get the blame. And they think they will live happily ever after," says Paul Stepanoff, board president of Quakertown Community School District, which announced it will delay making pension payments in protest. (CLEM MURRAY/Staff Photographer)](http://media.philly.com/images/600*450/pension19z-600717.jpg)
What Money?
And the Quakertown Community School District said in June that it would go on a payment strike, of sorts, delaying its next $1.25 million quarterly contribution to the state school retirement system. The goal is to force the state to stop what the board president called an "unjust" rise in districts' pension payments. Pennsylvania school pension payments quadrupled from 2010 to 2014, and are scheduled to double again by 2019, under a law designed to make up for years of underpayment.
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