Brazil Senate President was just removed from his position by a Supreme Court judge. Should help stop a lot of the nonsense
Temporary until the entire court votes but I'd say this is as good as final because -The court was voting 6-0 when Tofolli asked for the vote to be suspended on the grounds that he wasn't ready (Total voters is 11) -His term ends Feb 1. Should take quite a while for the court to vote, until then he is out
Even though the Judiciary and the Legislative are in a quasi-war right now, this doesnt seem to be a forced decision. By the Constitution the President of the country loses their post immediatly after becoming a criminal defendant, until the trial happens. So people in the sucession line could be held to the same standard. And thats what the judge thought, that criminal defendants cannot be on the sucession line. The guy will still be a Senator and have his immunities, he just wont get to be president of the senate
You say the President vacates office upon being charged, but in an earlier post you mentioned members of congress losing legal privileges upon leaving office, implying they are safe as long as they are in office. Are there different standards, or is this just a matter of being able to influence the process?
The president has less privilegues I guess, senators and deputies can continue to in their posts even though they are waiting for trial but the president cant. But the biggest privilege that they all have is that they can only be charged by the Surpreme Court and they are slow as hell. It always takes forever for them to do anything. The ex-Senate president for instance, was charged for a case that was from IIRC 9 years ago. He did a lot worse stuff since then
The bad thing about this is that the guy who is assuming the Senate presidency is from the left, from the same party as the Rouseff and Lula. And he might try to pull some chicanaries to delay votes. But I doubt he can do anything about the important fiscal vote that is set to take place on Dec 13. That bill is a constitutional change that was already approved in 2 rounds in the lower house and one round in the Senate, it would be an outrage if he tried to delay the vote. Last time something like this happened (in the lower house the president was also removed from his position by the Supreme court), the guy who took over decided to have some fun 'annuling' the impeachment session that had a 2/3 majority. A few hours later he was reversing his decision when the entire world turned against him and he could even have been charged of abuse of power. In any event, this guy will be gone by Feb when new senate presidency elections will take place
You cant make this shit up, now the Supreme court will rule on this temporary order on Wednesday. Presumably Toffolli agreed with this when he saw that his charade was up. I suspect it will be a 11-0 vote, with Tofolli voting for it just to try to pretend he wasn't doing out of personal interest
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-06/greece-deserves-credit-for-its-reform-efforts good things are happening in Greece
I took advantage of the FNMA/FMCC dip to buy more. I got a ~4% position there. I got no illusions this wont be a bumpy ride though. The Trump adm might even talk some shit about shareholders in order to gain leverage for a settlement. Because of that I will be selling some into strength and buying back on weakness as an overall strategy