High Jinx in the Land of Offshore Tax Havens

Jeffrey Tucker writes:

Charles Adams is a legendary tax specialist and historian. His book For Good and Evil ranks as among the most influential policy works of the late 20th century. It revealed the largely unknown history of how high taxation has wrecked peace and prosperity from the ancient world to the present, and how tax revolts have been the hidden motivation behind many great political upheavals. 

Taxation has been Adam’s journalistic and academic beat for his entire life. This is why Laissez Faire Books is honored to be the publisher of another wonderful book by Adams. In Tax Haven Tales, Adams reveals his first-hand knowledge of life in the tax-haven world throughout the 1970s and 1980s... 

Adam’s extremely valuable book is the most thorough, most authoritative, and certainly the most entertaining account of life in tax havens to ever appear in print. You will be intrigued at the financial high jinx common in this secret world, and how the very rich navigate its dangerous but profitable waters.

More here.

Krugman as a Blind Astrologer

Société Générale's strategist Dylan Grice writes:

[H]ow can any sane person even question the solvency of government when yields are so low, snort financial ‘astrologers’ like Paul Krugman from their ivory towers. Maybe one reason is that governments have more tricks up their sleeves than the rest of us, like monopoly control of the seniorage industry.

Of course, the monopoly central bank money printing eventually leads to accelerated price inflation, something else the astrologer Krugman is blind about.

Krugman in response to Grice posts this.

Which, btw, I can top, since in a very unique way I am the seventh son of a seventh son.





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A Greek Has Figured Out Greece is in Control!

The head of Greece's radical left party is throwing down a gauntlet that could increase tensions between Greece and its European creditors, reports WSJ.

Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, known as Syriza, and potentially the country's next prime minister says he sees little chance Europe will cut off funding to the country but that if it does, Greece will stop paying its debts.

He's right!! At this point, its hard to see the EZ cutting Greece off. The EZ is run by the banksters and Greece owes the money to the banksters. On a more long-term basis, Greece will likely get tossed from the EZ. Greek demands are just over the top.

 Tsipras said, Europe must consider a more growth-oriented policy  [Translation: More ECB money printing, with the printed money going to Greece] to arrest Greece's spiraling recession and address what he called a growing "humanitarian crisis" facing the country.

The Germans won't stand for this. The banksters may have German Chancellor Angela Merkel under control, but she will be bounced out of office next year, if the Greeks are bailed out once again and given newly printed euros "to get their economy going."

Jesse Benton's $586,616 Take as a Result of the Ron Paul Campaign

We make not get liberty because of  the Ron Paul campaign run, but it sure looks like Ron Paul campaign manager, Jesse Benton, got the big bucks.

Benton's total income from the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign and PACs, in the 2012 election cycle, is at least $586,616, EPJ has learned.

According to Open Secrets,  he has been paid $322, 577 in the 2012 election cycle, by Liberty PAC. His total income directly from the Ron Paul  presidential campaign 2012 is, to date, $264,039.

Benton is married to Ron Paul's granddaughter Valerie Pyeatt.

Many Ron Paul supporters have become unhappy with Benton because of his suspected contacts with the Romney campaign and his overall handling of the Ron Paul campaign. Supporters are so frustrated that they are  calling for Benton to be fired,

According to Who Is Jesse Benton, Benton is now owner of various consulting firms, including,C.I.C Solutions based in Wahington D.C., where he is president of the firm.

He is also owner of Performance Institute, where he is Director of Policy and External Affairs.

According to Who Is Jesse Benton, these firms have contracts with various candidates, some of whom have been endorsed by Rand Paul and Ron Paul.

Here's a take by Tom Woods on Benton. Woods is one of the most savvy communicators of libertarian ideas out there.  He is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University



Bottom line, I personally have questions with how parts of the campaign have been run. Ron Paul deserved better. It is remarkable the following that Dr Paul has been able to generate, given what I consider major blunders in the way the campaign was handled. It will be something of a "last hurrah" for Dr. Paul when he goes down to Tampa for the Republican Convention. He doesn't need handlers who are concerned with their long term careers in politics. He needs people around him, who are advocates of liberty, who will slam the convention with calls for liberty.

Jesse, it's time to go. You got the cash. You have established your cred as political operative, your career is safe. Now, let your wife's grandfather go out in style, not kowtowing to the statist, establishment, warmonger Romney.

In fact, to protect your career, just go outright over to the Romney camp, now. We'll understand. It's a good career move. When you get over there, tell Romney that we over here are all crazy for liberty and can't be controlled and that the only way to handle things is to give Ron Paul respect, lots of it and to give Ron Paul supporters equal respect and lots of space. Tell him the times are changing and the Ron Paul supporters are going to be around, and growing in size, for as long as you can see.

The Man Who Took on JPMorgan's Whale Trader

Business Insider's Julia La Roche, reports that a key trader who took the opposite side of the trade conducted by JPMorgan's whale, revealed his trade at, of all places, at JPMorgan's headquarters, during a conference .Here's LaRoche with the details:

Everyone has been talking about how legendary derivatives trader Boaz Weinstein, the founder of Saba Capital and former co-head of credit trading at Deutsche Bank, is the man on the other side of the disastrous JPMorgan trade.

I was there on February 3 when Weinstein recommended buying the Investment Grade Series 9 10-Year Index CDS, which is reportedly the same security the JPMorgan desk was short.

Weinstein, who started Saba in 2005, revealed this huge trade idea that would ultimately cream the bank during the Harbor Investment Conference at JPMorgan's Park Avenue offices in New York (how ironic). Here are some more highlights from my notes...

Weinstein asked the audience a question about whether "credit is more volatile than equities?" He said there are much bigger, extreme moves in credit than equities.  He then provided some examples of credit to equity on a historical basis.

He revealed that he bought "protection" on Investment Grade Index IG9 10 Year Index on the day before the conference.   He said it could be bought at below NAV (net asset value) 

His trade idea was to buy IG Series 9 10 Year Index CDS (maturing on 12/20/2017) because they are "very attractive" and already at a 21% discount so investors could have a "head start."  He emphasized that the trade could be bought at a "very good discount."  

He said the topic of credit is "very much misunderstood" adding that there's "much better liquidity in CDS."  He added that IG investors need to use "incredible leverage."

 You can follow Julia on Twitter@JuliaLaRoche
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Krugman Gets Something Right then Shows His Ignorance of Finance

Paul Krugman correctly writes:

Is it possible that I have misjudged Mitt Romney? 

My take has always been that he’s a smart guy who also happens to be both ambitious and completely amoral; he decided that his career can best be advanced by pandering to the crazies of the right, and will say anything to that end. 

More and more, however, he has been coming out with statements suggesting that he is, in fact, a dangerous fool.

But then, to prove his point, Krugman displays his ignorance of finance. He writes:

The latest [from Romney] JPMorgan’s loss was no biggie:  

This was a loss to shareholders and owners of JPMorgan and that’s the way America works Some people experienced a loss in this case because of a bad decision. By the way, there was someone who made a gain. The $2 billion JPMorgan lost someone else gained.

Hey, when Lehman Brothers lost a lot of money, that was money someone else gained. No problem, right?

This was a loss to shareholders and owners of JPMorgan and that’s the way America works Some people experienced a loss in this case because of a bad decision. By the way, there was someone who made a gain. The $2 billion JPMorgan lost someone else gained.

Romney is actually correct here. Because of the financial instruments used in the JPM trade (the best way to think about it is that it was a bet) , there is a winner and loser.

However, that wasn't the case with Lehman Brothers. There was real net loss to the system. Think of it this way. I Lehman owed you money and they didn't pay you, you lost. But Lehman also lost because no one wanted to trade with Lehman because they didn't pay you. You lost, Lehman lost. (Note: It's possible some who shorted Lehman stock made money, but this is not integral to Lehman going down., Lehman going down happened at the debt level, where their were losers far beyond Lehman)

The JPM trade is completely different in that a loss by JPM means a direct gain to the party on the other side of the trade.

Understanding of finance Romney +1, Krugman -1

What I Learned about Life Years after Taking the SATs in My Pajamas

By James Altucher

I showed up at the SATs in my pajamas. I had woken up late for the most important test of my life – the one test that determines what college you get into, which then determines how happy you are, who will marry you, how much money you make, and how many people you can legally kill or maim before they jail you in a minimum security prison while your money rests in Swiss bank accounts.  I rushed out of bed, got two number 2 pencils and went off to the school on that Saturday morning.


About 200 kids from all over  the county were waiting to take the test and were crowding up the hallway. I am not exaggerating: when I arrived they parted down the middle like I was Moses. I was in my pajamas: glasses, acne, my hair uncombed and in every direction and grasping those two number two pencils. I was like the God of the SATs.

I clearly looked like someone who was going to kick ass on the SATs. I was 17 but I had been taking the SATs every year, as practice, since I was 12. I remember crying at age 12 begging my mom to teach me the quadratic formula, “just in case”.

What a joke. I can’t even remember the quadratic formula now or what it’s used for.

Read the rest here.

NYC Condo Sold for Record $90 Million

Yesterday, I reported on the strong luxury housing market in and around Beverly Hills, the same goes for the super luxury Manhattan real estate market.

A mystery buyer has agreed to pay a record price in New York of more than $90 million for a duplex penthouse at a Midtown tower, reports NYT.

The undisclosed purchaser bought the 10,923-square-foot penthouse on the 89th and 90th floors of One57, the building currently under construction at 157 West 57th Street.

Reports are that foreign buyers, including Brazilians, Chinese and Russians, have been on a buying spree in New York and Miami in recent months, developers and brokers say, according to NYT. In other words, the Brazilians, Chinese and Russians are starting to spend the dollars they have accumulated, outbidding Americans for super luxury properties in the U.S.

Crowd Control Techniques Expected to Be Used by Chicago Police During the NATO Summit

PoliceOne.com reports:

 Chicago police are planning a range of tactics — some old, some new — to control protests outside the NATO summit scheduled for May 20 and 21. A look at some crowd-control techniques and the department's position on them:

EXTRACTION: Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says officers will attempt to extract individual lawbreakers from crowds to keep problems from escalating. He says the department does not want to disperse crowds.

CUT TEAMS: These teams will be dispatched to separate protesters who have chained themselves to each other in so-called "sleeping dragon" maneuvers to block vehicle or pedestrian traffic.

SOUND CANNONS: Long-range acoustical devices (LRADs) emit ear-piercing noise to paralyze or disperse crowds. McCarthy says he intends to use the devices only to get protesters' attention so police can better communicate with them.


TEAR GAS/PEPPER SPRAY: McCarthy has publicly raised doubts about the effectiveness of tear gas as a crowd control tool. Each officer will be equipped with pepper spray, but McCarthy says it should be used only to thwart assaults on officers.

CORRALING: Police sometimes surround a crowd so no one can move, a method known as "kettling." Chicago officers detained hundreds of people this way during an Iraq war protest in 2003 and recently paid more than $6 million to settle resulting lawsuits.

BICYCLES: Officers use their bikes for mobility but also to create a barrier to crowd movements. Chicago police used this tactic during a recent May Day march.

WARNINGS: During an Occupy protest last year, police methodically issued warnings to individuals and groups of protesters before making arrests. McCarthy says that method again will be used, if possible.

SHIFTS: Police will rotate officers off the front lines to guard against frayed nerves and fatigue that might contribute to confrontations with protesters.

Government Education: No Child Allowed to Advance Too Much

An EPJ reader emails:

Today, I was told some news about how state education works. Our son is in kindergarten. If it were possible, we'd surely send him to a private school, but at this time, we can't.

Fortunately, as far as public schools go, he does attend the best grade school in the state...and it's noticeable. They really do put a lot of effort into educating the kids.It doesn't change my view (in the least bit) that the whole thing should be privatized. We just happen to be geographically lucky I guess.

Anyway, today we found out that, because his school is so far ahead of others in the state, they have to *pull back* the curriculum. In other words, they have to slow down & teach the kids less. As would be expected, parents around here are upset, but it's to no avail. Supposedly, if the school wants the federal cheese, they have to comply.

And yet, the cries never cease on how "we" have to "invest" more in education.

The whole thing is an absolute joke.

The Internet and Virtual Education cannot replace this monstrosity soon enough.

Who Are the People Leaving the Workforce?

There has been a lot of talk about the number of people leaving the workforce. Who are these people?

Julie Hotchkiss at the Atlanta Fed explains:

 Using the latest survey data we have available (November 2011), we find that most nonparticipants are retired (48 percent); the share who are in school, disabled, or taking care of household members are 18 percent, 16 percent, and 15 percent, respectively; and the share in the category termed "Other" comes in at about 2 percent. 

For purposes of better understanding the decline in labor force participation, however, we look at the reasons for absence given by people who leave the labor force. Those who have left the labor force are arguably more likely to return (depending on the reason, of course) than those who have never been in the labor force. A feature of the CPS allows us to track certain individuals from one year to the next, so we are able to identify people who leave the labor force. Chart 1 illustrates how individuals who are not in the labor force—but who were employed or unemployed the previous year—are distributed across the reasons for nonparticipation. The raw data are not seasonally adjusted, of course, so we plot the numbers as a 12-month moving average—this approach does not affect the overall observed trends in the data. In addition, we restrict our analysis here to those between the ages of 25 and 54, since retirement overwhelmingly dominates the nonparticipation decisions of older workers, and schooling dominates the nonparticipation decisions of younger workers.

Chart 1 illustrates what the labor force participation rates have been telling us. For every reason given for absence, except perhaps "Retired," the number of people leaving the labor force has increased during or after the recession of 2008. The most dramatic increases are seen among those people giving "School" and "Other" as a reason.

Hotchkiss takes the optimistic view about those leaving the workforce to go to college:

The implication for the rise in "School" is unmistakable, however. With reasonable expectations, these individuals should re-enter the labor force with enhanced—or at least better-aligned—skills that will be able to make a positive contribution to overall economic growth.

I view the climb in those going to school as part of the education bubble that is a result of government backed student loans. These students aren't learning skills that they can use in the workplace, as is clearly evidenced by the number of students "underemployed" after recent graduation.

So what we have is high unemployment caused by Federal Reserve money manipulation, with the government then guaranteeing school loans for useless education to those trapped by the downturn in the business cycle. They will graduate with thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt with little prospect of getting a job that will help them payoff the debt. It's the vicious central planning cycle. Instead of allowing individuals to find their own way, they are herded off in a direction that will cause even more pain.

In other words, the data showing the number leaving the workforce indicates great future pain thanks to mad government centrally planned policies. First it was housing, now its worthless education.

Is Ed Crane Counting His Days at Cato?

Sources tell me that Cato president Ed Crane thinks he may not survive at Cato and is contemplating setting up his own think tank.

Will money really follow Crane?

Bidding Wars for Luxury Homes are Back in Beverly Hills

Bidding wars are breaking out for luxury homes in such wealthy Los Angeles enclaves as Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Bel Air as an increasing number of buyers bet on rising home prices and investors return to the market. Even properties in need of extensive renovation are being fought over by shoppers who expect to resell them for more after a remodel or rebuild, reports Bloomberg.

“The percentage of people who think prices are only going to go up is the greatest I have ever seen in my career,” said Syd Leibovitch, president of Rodeo Realty Inc. in Beverly Hills, according to B.

The number of sales of Beverly Hills homes priced at $2 million and higher climbed 11 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 39, according to DataQuick. In Brentwood,  they increased 56 percent to 25 , and in Malibu they gained 64 percent to 23.

Bottom line: Bernanke's money printing is sluggish (at 6% annualized versus an earlier 20%) and the overall economy is sluggish, but there are pockets of money. Silicon Valley is one pocket for sure and it appears that Obama Country, i.e., Beverly Hills, is another.

Who Does Debra Katz Represent and What Does She Have to Say About Cato?

Details of the inside Cato drama continue to develop.

EPJ has learned that a former female Cato employee retained Washington D.C.  lawyer Debra Katz to represent her in matters concerning Cato and a certain high level Cato employee.

According to the Katz web site, Katz is:

Recognized as one of the “toughest” employment lawyers in Washington, D.C. by Washingtonian magazine, and recognized as an expert in sexual harassment and employment law by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME magazine and others.

I spoke with Katz last week by phone and asked her if she represented a certain former Cato employee and if some kind of settlement had been reached between the former Cato employee and Cato, itself, and a senior Cato employee. She responded that she could not discuss who her clients are and said she could neither confirm nor deny any settlements.

She then told me: "I am going to hang up the phone now." And proceeded to do just that.

I also contacted Chris Kennedy, Director of Media Relations at Cato. I provided him with the name of a specific female and asked if any settlement was made by Cato with this woman. He told me that responses to these kinds of questions are answered by email. He then asked for my email address and told me that he would email me if Cato chose to respond. Cato has not responded.

But beyond any settlement with any Katz client by Cato, EPJ has learned that Katz set off  a bombshell in the Cato board room, charging that a certain Cato employee has acted in a "serial"  improper fashion and questioned how the board in the past has responded to the alleged serial misconduct.

EPJ has learned that a high powered attorney, Barbra Brown of Paul Hastings, has been hired by Cato board chairman, Bob Levy, to investigate the matter. The Paul Hastings web site says about Brown:

Barbara Brown is the office chair and senior employment lawyer in Paul Hastings’ Washington, D.C., office. She represents employers in the entire range of employment law matters, particularly employment discrimination class actions challenging pay, promotion, hiring and other personnel decisions, and wage and hour class actions. In these suits, she has been successful in defeating class certification or winning summary judgment. She also is frequently called upon to defend sexual harassment and retaliation suits or to perform investigations of such allegations, often in the executive suite.

From what other sources tell me, Brown is going to be very busy and that a thorough investigation will require talking to many females, including one now in Phoenix and another at a  university-based research center in Virginia.

The IMF Reports on the Slow Motion Bank Run in Greece

In a newly released report, the IMF says:

The steady outflows – a major deposit run has been avoided – appear driven by private sector dissaving as well as by capital flight to safe-havens outside of Greece (the latter representing about a quarter of total withdrawals).... 

The Eurosystem has stepped into the breach and by end-2011 had provided nearly €130bn (or 60 per cent of GDP) in support. Initial heavy reliance on Eurosystem liquidity support (with Eurosystem exposure peaking at €103bn in mid-2011) is gradually being replaced by Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from the Bank of Greece (BoG). The switch to ELA is imposing additional costs on banks, as the interest rate and fees are higher than under the ECB window, but this remains an inexpensive form of financing for banks.

If this slow motion run continues, the European Central Bank and eurozone lender swill have to either pump in more money , even without a new government in place, or stop the money printing, which would force Greece to leave the eurozone and start printing drachma. Of course, if things occur too suddenly, before Greece is prepared to print, there is a chance a free market money could develop alongside the euros left in Greece, at least for the short-term. It would be anybody's guess as to what that money would be. The free market can get pretty creative.

Rules of Trading in a POW Camp

By Tim Harford

Robert A. Radford had, in some ways, a perfectly conventional career as an economist. He studied the subject at Cambridge in the late 1930s, before war interrupted, and his civilian working life was spent at the International Monetary Fund. But he also spent half the war in a German prison camp, and on his release wrote an article in the LSE journal Economica.

The “Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp” is a remarkable piece of writing, in which Radford analyses the economic institutions that arose in tough circumstances. Students should read it to learn about monetary economics, and their professors should read it to learn how to write. But Radford himself thought his experiences constituted more than a teachable moment: “the principal significance is sociological.”

First, a word about the basic economic building blocks. Prisoners received some rations from the Germans, but were mostly sustained by parcels of food and cigarettes from the Red Cross. The parcels were standardised – everyone got the same. Occasionally the Red Cross received bumper supplies, or ran short; in those instances everybody enjoyed a surplus or a shortage.

Radford’s first sociological observation was that there was no gift economy in the camp. Everybody started with the same, so what was the point? But trading quickly developed, because while prisoners had equal means they did not have identical preferences – the Sikhs sold their beef rations, the French were desperate for coffee. So middlemen who could speak Urdu or bribe a guard to let them visit the French quarters had the chance to make “small fortunes” in biscuits or cigarettes. In rare circumstances, the camp’s economy interacted with the outside world: coffee rations apparently went “over the wire” and traded at high prices in black market cafés in Munich.

Read the rest here.

A Shrewd Greek Lefty is Holding the Eurozone Hostage

Below is a fascinating interview by CNN's Christiane Amanpour with Alexis Tsipris, leader of Greece's Syriza party.

Tsipris gets it. If the eurozone lets Greece exit the EZ, Spain, Portugal and Italy are not far behind.

Tsipris doesn't want Greece to leave the EZ, he wants a "growth" plan from the EZ, not an austerity program. By growth program he means more money printing by the ECB with the money going to Greece.

Bottom line: Either the ECB prints, stoking price inflation in the EZ or the EZ breaks up.

Short-term the money printing is the likely "solution". But once the price inflation starts to heat up, the Germans are likely to balk and the eurozone breaks up. That way the EZ countries will each be able to inflate themselves into price inflationary madness at their own pace.

Important: Be sure to catch the tail end of Amanpour's report, where she briefly mentions potato farmers selling potatoes directly to the people versus through a grocery store. I suspect this is some way of getting around government regulations and taxes. In other words, the signs of a part of the oppressive Greek state  breaking down.

Are Some Ron Paul Supporters Going Rogue?

Lew Rockwell points to a column appearing in the Christian Science Monitor that says:

Are some Ron Paul supporters going rogue and confronting the Republican Party in a manner of which Mr. Paul himself would not approve?

That question arises due to what went down on the evening of May 15 at a meeting of the Clark County GOP in Nevada. At the confab, Paul supporters pushed through a resolution rebuking Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus and calling on him to resign his post due to his decision to merge some RNC fundraising with that of presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney...


Call us sensitive, but insisting that that head of your party resign for helping the person who is the virtually certain nominee does not seem very decorous to us. And that’s what some analysts have pointed out: Paul’s supporters may not yet have given up on the campaign, despite the fact that the man they support has indicated that Mr. Romney is going to win the nomination.

“Interesting to see how this sort of thing develops in coming months ... Paul and Paul supporter divergence,” tweeted Josh Putnam, delegate-counting expert and Davidson College political scientist, on Wednesday.

Lew adds this comment about the column:

Or is their reaction a normal one to being stepped on by Power?

Can You Qualify for a Job as an Asteroid Miner Robot Builder?

Planetary Resources was founded by private spaceflight pioneers Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson. Its investors include Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively. Filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron, former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager are advisers.

Less than three weeks after officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans, Planetary Resources has already received thousands of job applications.


On April 24, the company announced that it was looking to hire a few qualified people as engineers who would help design and build a fleet of asteroid-mining robotic probes. So  many resumes have flowed into Planetary Resources that it has stopped taking new applications.

"We have received over 2,000 applications since our April 24th press event, and we are not currently accepting applications for full-time employees, summer internships or student co-ops," reads an update on the company's website.

Are You in the Koch Brothers Database?

From Reuters:


In 2008, Catalist helped the left win the technology battle. The database allowed unions and the  Obama campaign to manage volunteers without stepping on each other's toes. Meanwhile, analysts could look for patterns in oceans of data that had been held in small pools by separate groups.

Now, Charles and David Koch, who have quietly bankrolled libertarian organizations such as the Cato Institute and the influential Mercatus Center at George Mason University, are behind an effort that aims to do for the right what Catalist did for the left.

Called Themis, the independent group is the most ambitious of the many conservative political technology projects now in development. People with direct knowledge of the group as well as political technology industry veterans say it is backed by the Koch brothers, although their names do not appear on an annual regulatory filing and Koch Industries spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

The Kochs own Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kansas-based natural resources conglomerate that refines oil, produces chemicals and owns the paper products company Georgia-Pacific. Chief Executive Officer Charles Koch and his brother David are worth $25 billion each, according to Forbes.

Themis staffers in their twenties and thirties, clad in jeans and checked shirts, work out of a suite in a nondescript office building in Alexandria, Virginia. City records indicate that the company expanded recently, and a federal filing shows millions of dollars in the bank.

Themis operates like many other Koch projects - in secrecy. A reporter retrieving a federal filing from the company was not allowed inside the unmarked front door, and Themis executives declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Themis raised $7.7 million in its first year, according to its 2010 return to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt 501 c(4) organization, which it released this year after successfully petitioning for the maximum possible delay. As a 501 c(4), Themis can work with advocacy groups but cannot coordinate with candidates.

The federal filing does not list financial backers, but people with direct knowledge of the group say it is backed by the Kochs. Ben Pratt, the chief operating officer, describes himself on LinkedIn as a former Koch Industries executive who is now a management consultant and executive coach teaching the business theories developed by Charles Koch.

Themis's ambition to become an analytical powerhouse for the right is clear from its list of business partners, including several heavy hitters in the computer analytics world. Its top contractor in 2010, paid $1.1 million, was voter database company Intell360, which employed former Republican National Committee Network and Online Services Director Steve Ellis at the time, according to LinkedIn.

Intell360's website describes services ranging from finding email and phone numbers for voters to "data mining" for voters likely to respond to tailored messages to targeting ads "down to the zip code, census block or individual level." Neither the company nor Koch Industries responded to requests for comment. Pratt declined to speak when reached by phone.

Despite the vast resources behind it, Themis may find it difficult to reach its goal this year. One person close to the group predicts it will not catch up to the left in the current campaign cycle; the Obama campaign is engaged in complex modeling and scouring social media data for information, people in the industry say. Another conservative data industry person said there is no sign of high-end modeling by Themis.

Themis does not have to catch up to make an impact, though. It is building its database and signing up advocacy groups to use its services and contribute data. The person close to Themis said its work focuses on identifying active supporters - those with a propensity to attend rallies or engage their representatives, for instance - and discovering the "cream of the crop" - persons active in several allied groups.

Report: Japanese Pension Fund Buying Gold

This is coming from, of all people, gold-hater Nouriel Roubini in a tweet:

Reports a Japanese pension fund is buying gold to escape sov risk go against trend of USD beating gold as a safe haven.