The signs were there, but it is now of major concern.
"World stock markets mostly drifted lower Friday ahead of Greece’s weekend austerity referendum, while China’s main stock benchmark plunged as government market stabilization measures failed to reassure panicky investors. The Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China sank 5.8 percent as measures to shore up equities failed to stop margin traders from unwinding positions at a record pace. The market rout deepened as investors dumped shares in spite of government measures this week aimed at restoring confidence, such as cutting fees and easing rules on borrowing money for trading. The China Securities Regulatory Commission, the market watchdog, said late Thursday that it’s launching an investigation into suspected stock market manipulation, state media reported, in an indication of Beijing’s increasingly frantic efforts to halt the market slide. Elsewhere, investors are awaiting the outcome of a weekend vote in Greece on whether or not to accept tough conditions in exchange for a bailout deal for the Mediterranean country’s troubled economy. Markets in Asia will get the first chance to react to the result of the vote on Sunday."
Greece is up next.
"Struggling to respond to precipitous declines on China’s stock markets over the last three weeks, the country’s biggest brokerage firms unveiled a government endorsed plan Saturday to buy shares starting Monday, in a bid to stabilize the markets. The government-controlled Securities Association of China said that 21 big brokerage firms had agreed to set up a fund worth at least $19.4 billion to buy shares in the largest, most stable companies, and would stop liquidating their own portfolios of shares. But some analysts said this might not be enough to stop the hemorrhaging of money from the stock market, particularly given that $105 billion in shares changed hands in Shanghai on Friday."
We saw the same thing in 1929 and it didn't work then.
"Volatility in China’s market may be inevitable correction; Recent declines follow big run-up" by Neil Irwin New York Times July 07, 2015
Oh, just a correction. Nothing to worry about.
NEW YORK — While the eyes of the world have been on the crisis in Greece, China, a country with 123 times the population, has faced financial troubles of its own. A free fall in the Chinese stock market could threaten the prosperity of the world’s second-largest economy and have long-term effects of its own.
But the numbers suggest China’s stock market collapse — it’s down 26 percent in four weeks — may be less a shocking turn of events and more an inevitable correction in a market that featured many of the classic signs of a financial bubble.
Stock investing has become a middle-class pastime in China, and it’s clear the Chinese government is nervous about a continued market rout wiping out its citizens’ wealth and stoking discord. The government has pulled out a series of policy measures to try to avert the collapse: interest rate cuts, using government pension funds to prop up the market, announcing plans to investigate those betting on a market drop.
Looks familiar.
The data, though, suggest the market declines thus far aren’t as outlandish as the Chinese government seems to think. After years of rising gradually, the Shanghai composite index began an upward tear in late 2014, soaring 151 percent from the start of July last year to the June 8 high.
It’s easy to frame market data in a way that sounds either scary or benign, depending on your inclination. “The Chinese stock market has dropped 26 percent in a month” is scary. “The Chinese stock market is up 83 percent over the last year” sounds great. Both are true.
In that sense, the people who have lost money in the last month are those who plowed money into Chinese stocks just in the last few months. Anyone who has been invested for more than a few months is doing just fine, so far at least.
I just turned on the radio show because I trust his analysis a lot more than this. He's saying the Chinese are saying it was hostile short sells from George Soros!
If you look at a slightly longer time horizon, the kind of volatility in Chinese stocks witnessed over the last year isn’t that uncommon. The 2010 to 2013 period was more aberration than trend in the steady, consistent rise in prices.
Yeah, NYT tells us nothing to worry about it.
Consider the Shanghai composite over the last decade, indexed to its June 2005 level and compared to an index of all global stocks. The Chinese market experienced much larger swings during its 2007 boom, 2008 bust, and 2009-10 resurgence than the rest of the world. And those swings were larger in percentage terms than the recent volatility. Big swings in the Chinese stock market may be damaging for Chinese savers, but they don’t necessarily ripple across the global economy the way problems in United States mortgage securities did in 2008 or European debt did in 2011.
Why so much volatility? The Chinese stock market is less well developed than those in countries with more advanced financial markets. Many of the strongest Chinese companies list their shares in Hong Kong or New York, with those listing within China more likely to have questionable business models, accounting, and corporate governance.
That has helped fuel wild swings. That is no salve for the pain of investors who have lost their savings in the recent market drop, but does support the idea they had reason to know the kind of risk they were taking on.
But what about fundamentals? Are Chinese stocks falling toward a fair price relative to their earnings and growth rates or overshooting with further to fall?
Just a year ago, Chinese stocks looked relatively reasonably priced, with a price-to-earnings ratio of around 10, meaning an investor paid the equivalent of about $10 for a share of stock that offered $1 per share in annual earnings. At the same time last summer, an investor in American stocks had to pay more like $17 for a share that produced $1 in income.
But the sharp rise in Chinese share prices starting in late 2014 took place without an accompanying rise in earnings. In other words, the shares weren’t worth more because the companies being traded were becoming wildly more popular. The shares rose because investors were willing to pay more for the same return.
In other words, they were buying back stock.
By early June, the price-earnings ratio of the Shanghai composite index had soared to nearly 26.
There is a case that Chinese stocks deserve a rich valuation. If you expect that the companies whose shares you are buying will become much more profitable over time it might make sense to pay $19 or $26 for a dollar of earnings. That dollar, after all, might soon be two, and then four.
But the last year has seen a rise in Chinese share prices that seems to be driven more by investor psychology than anything fundamental. It is hard to see how the prices as of a month ago are justified, and easy to see why the sell-off of the last month would occur.
I'm tired of this hypocritical, pot-hollering-kettle, crap media.
That, in turn, implies Chinese officials are fighting an uphill battle in their policy moves to try to stop the correction. The question now for China — and hence for the world economy — is how much farther the Chinese market has to fall, and, regardless of whether the drop is justified, how much pain it will cause.
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"China’s efforts do little to halt stock slump" by David Barboza New York Times July 08, 2015
SHANGHAI — As the Chinese stock market slumps, the country’s government has stepped in boldly, unveiling a raft of measures to prop up shares. But those efforts have done little to stabilize the market, with stocks continuing to slide on Wednesday.
The losses create a political and economic challenge for the nation’s leadership.
Beijing could face social unrest if the sell-off accelerates, since tens of millions of ordinary investors have plowed savings into the market. The psychological toll on investors, in turn, could erode consumer confidence, dragging down growth in the already slowing economy.
“The stock market is connected to the real economy,” says Fraser Howie, a longtime Asia banker and coauthor of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.” “When you see such violent moves, you don’t know what kinds of ripples are going to come down.”
It will make the Hong Kong protests look like child's play. Time to turn into adults while pondering the next destabilization against the authorities.
The Chinese government is moving swiftly to prevent any broader fallout.
The central bank has made extra cash available to fund share purchases.
That's the same thing the Fed did here, and all it did was enrich the 0.1%.
Brokerage houses have been ordered to pump billions of dollars into the market. And government-backed funds have earmarked billions more to prop up the shares of flagging companies.
On Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Finance even pledged to “adopt measures to safeguard the stability of capital markets,” and in particular protect state-owned financial enterprises. The move signals that this broad-based effort is being directed from the very top echelons of the state.
“There are no buyers, only sellers,” said Francis Cheung, a market analyst at CLSA, the brokerage house. “So the government is buying, and they’ll ramp up buying to stabilize the market.”
Trouble is, they haven’t found the right formula. China’s markets were battered Wednesday. In Shanghai, prices plunged 5.9 percent; in Shenzhen, fell 2.5 percent. The damage is also spreading to Hong Kong and Japan, where shares also fell sharply.
Soon to all of Asia.
Markets are still up overall for the year, but the downward spiral is creating substantial pain. Both major exchanges are off between 30 and 40 percent in six weeks, putting them in bear market territory.
The numbers don’t give the complete picture, either. In recent days, many stocks have been halted because of exchange rules that are supposed to guard against too much misery in a single trading session. At least a third of the companies listed on the major stock exchanges had trading in their shares suspended Wednesday. Those market dynamics can create a chain reaction of selling.
It looks just like the NYSE, doesn't it?
China’s major exchanges prevent a stock from falling more than 10 percent on any given day. When that happens, analysts say, many investors opt for selling other shares, broadening the sell-off. Then when the market opens the next day, they continue selling down the stock that was previously halted, effectively prolonging the turmoil.
Fear is gripping the market after a phenomenal bull run in which mainland China’s major stock indexes doubled, tripled, and even quintupled over the past few years. By the time the market peaked, in early June, share prices in China were among the most expensive in the world. Investors in mainland China, in other words, had to pay a huge premium to buy domestic shares, a sign the country’s stock market was frothy.
Do I even need type it?
The sharp decline wiped out trillions of dollars in value from a market that at one point topped $10 trillion. Still, it has not yet erased all, or even most, of the gains. China’s major exchanges remain up about 75 percent from a year ago, in part because big state-owned companies have fared better.
Nor have global markets been roiled, partly because the “Chinese financial system is largely sealed off from the global financial system,” said Derek Scissors, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
That's funny, because when the AmeriKan economy is (allegedly) strong right now because of that reason; however, when it falters we are told it's because everything is globalized, blah, blah, blah.
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The markets may not be roiled, but there was a coincidentally odd glitch that occurred at the same time:
"Tech glitches at big institutions made it a good day for paranoia" by Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff
Wednesday was a good day for digital paranoia, as three major American institutions — United Airlines, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Stock Exchange — were sideswiped by nearly simultaneous computer glitches. The stock exchange was hardest hit, as one of the world’s largest financial markets was put on hold for 3½ hours.
Oh, the stock market was shut down while China's melts down?
For Patrick Gilmore, chief technology officer of the Markley Group, operator of a major data center in downtown Boston, the day’s events were a sharp reminder that even the most advanced computer networks can fail without warning. “You can have lots and lots of redundancies,” said Gilmore, “but there’s always something that can go wrong.”
OMG! The neglect of the important systems is being explained away with a ho-hum!
President Obama was briefed about the episodes, but Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said there was no evidence that the crashes were caused by cybercriminals or terrorists.
They were awful quick to qualify that when they are hollering hackers all the time!
Officials at United and NYSE said their own technical problems were to blame, while The Wall Street Journal said it’s still investigating its outage.
This looks like a deliberate shutdown to save the market as the U.S. government is trying to say it was a software update problem!?!
The sequence began at 8 a.m. Wednesday, when the nation’s fourth largest air carrier, United Airlines, halted operations after its data network went down. United blamed a malfunction in one of its network’s routers, a device that directs billions of data packets to their proper destinations. When a router fails, vital data can’t get where it’s supposed to go.
United fixed the problem shortly before 10 a.m. By then, 61 United and United Express flights had been canceled and nearly 1,200 were delayed. Affected travelers will be allowed to rebook flights without paying change fees or higher fares.
What a pain in the ass that must have been!
Meanwhile, as the New York Stock Exchange opened for trading at 9:30 a.m., a technical problem prevented trades in a number of stocks. The problem appeared to go away soon thereafter. But by 11:30 a.m., it was back with a vengeance, and NYSE officials called a halt to further trading. However, NYSE-listed shares could still be traded on other exchanges, including the Nasdaq exchange.
“The decision was made to suspend trading as we worked to identify the cause and resolve it,” the exchange said in an e-mailed statement. “The root cause was determined to be a configuration issue” — a term that suggests that a hardware or software component in the network hadn’t been properly installed.
PFFFFFFFFT!
With all that money on the line?
The exchange resumed trading shortly after 3 p.m. It was the worst unscheduled shutdown of a US securities market since a technical failure halted trading on the Nasdaq exchange for three hours in August 2013. Stocks had already been falling before the shutdown, and they kept right on going, with the Dow Jones industrial average losing 261 points, or 1.5 percent.
At about the same time as NYSE went down, visitors to The Wall Street Journal’s website found that they couldn’t access the newspaper’s home page.
That problem lasted for less than an hour. “We are back up and running with full functionality and are investigating the cause,” a Journal spokeswoman said.
“It shows the extent to which every part of our lives has come to rely on technology,” said computer security analyst Brian Krebs, author of the book “Spam Nation.”
But Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School and a specialist in computer security issues, said that the episodes will not be too painful. Edelman said that fliers on United would suffer most, experiencing hours of travel delays. “For the whole day, people will be screwed up,” he said. But he said the impact of the stock exchange shutdown will be trivial. “The trading that couldn’t happen an hour ago will happen an hour in the future,” he said. “Anyone who wants to sell or buy will be able to do that at the prevailing price when the market opens.”
But Edelman said the episode revealed a dismaying level of vulnerability. “If the financial markets aren’t safe from all kinds of instability,” he said, “who’s to say what a hacker might do to manipulate prices, or halt trading altogether?”
Related: Stock market rigging is no longer a ‘conspiracy theory’
Yeah, whose to say?
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Time for me to fly:
"Tech glitch grounds hundreds of United flights" Associated Press July 08, 2015
United Airlines briefly grounded all US flights because of a computer fault Wednesday morning, the second such setback for the carrier in less than six weeks.
“Automation issues” triggered the move, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
United said the glitch was an internal technology issue — not an outside threat. Spokeswoman Jennifer Dohm said a router problem reduced ‘‘network connectivity’’ for several software applications. ‘‘We fixed the router issue, which is enabling us to restore normal functions,’’ she said around midday.
As everything is converted to phone apps.
A White House spokesman said President Obama was briefed on the problem and that it appeared unrelated to the outage later at the New York Stock Exchange.
United said more than 800 flights were delayed and about 60 were canceled. It said delays could linger throughout the day.
Flights at Logan Internationa Airport in Boston, where United is the fourth-largest carrier, were delayed as much as two hours between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.
“I’m a little stressed, actually. I was in line for two-and-a-half hours,” said Don Dizon, an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who was flying to Guam with four family members. He said the company wasn’t responding to passenger questions on social media. Late Wednesday, he said he was at the airport for nine hours and rebooked twice before his flight finally took off.
Lenka Safranova, who was preparing to fly to Vancouver from Logan Airport, said she was stuck in the United check-in line for about 20 minutes before the line started moving again. She was calm, though, because her flight was not scheduled to depart until about 1 p.m.
United carries 12 percent of Logan’s passengers, according to the US Department of Transportation. The company said in 2014 that up to 50 United flights per day departed from Logan Airport.
United, the second-biggest US airline, has suffered similar technology problems before, also leading to mass delays and cancellations.
And yet they are still making record profits.
On June 2, the airline briefly halted all takeoffs in the United States because of a problem in its dispatching system. At the time, United said that about 150 flights were affected. United also struggled through a series of computer outages in 2012 after switching to the passenger-information system of Continental Airlines after the carriers merged. Those outages delayed hundreds of flights. High-paying business travelers were outraged; United CEO Jeff Smisek apologized for failing to provide good service.
You know, the people that really matter.
After a 2010 merger, United elected to combine many computer systems and frequent-flier programs all at once. Executives believed that any disruptions would be short-lived. In contrast, Delta and Northwest integrated their systems in stages after a 2008 merger, and American Airlines is taking Delta’s same go-slow approach now as it absorbs US Airways.
Other airlines, have been hit by computer problems, too, however. In April, more than 50 American flights were delayed when a software glitch prevented pilots from seeing some airport maps on their tablet computers, for instance.
After Wednesday’s problems, United apologized and said customers could change travel plans without paying the usual $200 fee. In some cases, the airline said it would also waive any difference in fare for the rescheduled trip.
‘‘We don’t know everything behind this morning’s issues yet, but today’s incident underscores the sense that something is very wrong at United,’’ said Gary Leff, cofounder of the frequent-flier website MilePoint.
Yup, and not with the planes.
‘‘How could a router bring down one of the world’s largest airlines?’’ asked Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. he said it appeared that United lacked enough redundancy in its technology systems.
Good question.
Still, Harteveldt said he doubted that United would lose many business-travel customers because of technology hiccups that could happen to any carrier.
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Related:
"The State Department said Friday it has been forced to suspend the issuance of US passports and visas at its overseas diplomatic missions due to a glitch that has hit one of its computer databases. In a statement posted to its travel.state.gov website, the department said a hardware failure in its Consular Consolidated Database glitch has left overseas embassies and consulates unable to print visas, regular passports, and other travel documents. This means that people who submitted online applications for passports and visas on or after June 9 will likely experience delays in processing, it said. The failure does not affect domestic passport issuance."
I suppose you can blame the software for the state health site and RMV, too.
NDUs:
"Amid a free fall, Chinese firms halt trading in their own shares" by Kelvin Chan Associated Press July 09, 2015
HONG KONG — Faced with a wrenching slide in share prices, many Chinese companies are taking matters into their own hands with a tactic that market watchers say is bound to backfire.
About half of the 2,800 companies whose shares are traded on mainland Chinese markets have suspended trading in their stocks, in an attempt to stem further losses by sitting out the market upheaval.
The trading halts appear to be separate from the flurry of measures rolled out by the government in Beijing over the past week, as the country’s communist leaders made increasingly desperate attempts to stabilize tumbling markets.
The Shanghai Composite index has dived about 30 percent from its June 12 peak, which resulted from a spectacular rally that drove the index up 150 percent in the previous 12 months, despite slowing growth in the world’s second-biggest economy.
The pause seemed to have a calming effect Thursday, with the composite index surging 5.8 percent.
In early trading Friday, the index climbed another 5.2 percent as health care, industrial, and consumer companies advanced. Only two stocks fell on the benchmark gauge with about 49 percent of companies on mainland exchanges still halted from trading on Friday, down slightly from the previous day.
They appear to have righted the $hip after the Soros attack.
The government fanned the year-long rally by sending encouraging signals through state media that enticed the public to pile in to the market.
Look, don't down the AmeriKan government and its ma$$ media mouth piec.... oh, right.
But the ensuing downturn and Beijing’s frantic response, which includes banning major shareholders from selling stakes for six months, highlights the limits of its control over the market.
Experts said the wave of trading suspensions could have the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of stabilizing the market, they could add to the selling pressure by transferring it to other shares that remain active.
It’s a naïve strategy that shows ‘‘how immature the China market is,’’ said Jackson Wong, an associate director at United Simsen Securities.
Looks like an in$ult to me.
Ordinary Chinese investors have mixed feelings about the trading halts.
‘‘I’m worried and happy at the same time,’’ said Shanghai resident Ella Hong, who plowed $31,400 into six companies starting in May, just before the market turned.
Trading in half of those stocks is frozen, including two companies whose share prices have dropped by more than half.
Her shares of the seafood processor Shandong Oriental Ocean Sci-Tech Co. are stuck at 14.01 yuan after she bought them for 35 yuan. And her shares of the hydraulic machinery maker Fujian Haiyuan Automatic Equipments Co., which she bought for 32 yuan a share, are at 12.28 yuan. Both companies said this week they temporarily suspending trading.
Most of the companies that suspended trading are smaller businesses listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. They have been hit harder than big state firms listed in Shanghai because they don’t benefit as much from government support. Analysts say the halts will make Chinese markets more volatile in coming days. "If you hold other shares, you think: quick, sell them now before those are frozen," said Michael Every, at Rabobank.
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Look who is buying:
"Fidelity Joins Goldman Saying Buy China Stocks After Market Rout" by Ye Xie Bloomberg News July 10, 2015
NEW YORK — Fidelity Investments, which oversees the largest China funds outside of the mainland, is joining Goldman Sachs Group in saying that Chinese stocks are a buy following the worst sell-off in China in two decades.
This is what they do. They wreck an exchange, buy low and sell dear later when it rebounds.
“As far as the fundamentals are concerned, we are actually quite confident,” said Robert Bao, a Hong Kong money manager at Fidelity, which oversees more than $2 trillion globally. “We are fully invested.”
Related:
Fidelity is echoing Goldman Sachs’ bullishness, saying the four-week rout that wiped out almost $4 trillion in market value has limited impact on earnings and economic growth. Government efforts to stabilize China’s market will keep the rout from spilling over to the broader financial system, Bao said.
They are whi$pering in your ear.
Bao’s $2 billion Fidelity China Region fund, the largest in the United States that invests in the country’s stocks, has returned 8.2 percent annually over five years, beating 90 percent of its rivals, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Goldman Sachs strategist Kinger Lau predicts the large-cap CSI 300 index will rally 27 percent over the next 12 months as Chinese government support boosts confidence.
Olivier Blanchard, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, has said that China’s market slump is “very much a sideshow” that “doesn’t reflect on the fundamentals” of its economy.
(Blog editor just shakes his head)
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At least they corrected the glitches and things are looking up:
"The New York Stock Exchange said a botched technology upgrade — not a hacking attack as some feared — caused the outage on Wednesday that froze one of the world’s biggest equity markets. During a software revision, something went wrong and customers started having trouble communicating with the NYSE’s computers after 7 a.m. New York time, according to an autopsy of the event released by the exchange Thursday. The exchange tinkered with the setup, but more trouble ensued, leading to a full halt of trading at 11:32 a.m. that lasted more than three hours. The NYSE was introducing software needed for a July 11 industrywide test of improvements to something called the securities information processor, or SIP — the central database that collects US stock prices. The SIP is being upgraded so it can print prices in smaller slices of a second, reflecting the high-speed pace of modern trading."
What a crock of crap. They shut it down on purpose to figure out what to do and martial resources to prop up markets. Been doing it for a hundred years!
And those high-speed trading $y$tems? Computer programs that rig the market and allow commission collections by the banks:
"A court has again overturned the conviction of Sergey Aleynikov (left, with lawyers), the former Goldman Sachs programmer who was charged with stealing some of the confidential computer code for the Wall Street bank’s high-speed trading program. A ruling handed down Monday by Justice Daniel P. Conviser of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan sets the stage for prosecutors to either appeal or let Aleynikov’s six-year legal odyssey through the federal and state court systems come to an end. Conviser said he did not find sufficient evidence to support a jury’s conviction of Aleynikov on a single charge of unlawful use of secret scientific material, a criminal statute that predates the digital age and includes phrases and terminology that seemed to baffle both jurors and the judge at times. Aleynikov was arrested in 2009. His first conviction on federal charges was overturned in 2012. A US appeals court said prosecutors had misapplied corporate espionage laws. Congress would later amend the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Eight months after the federal appeals court ruled, Aleynikov was arrested again and charged with violating state laws — a move decried as prosecutorial overkill by critics."
Maybe IBM can fix the problem.
The irony is this guy was charged with a crime when the banks are the criminals.
Related: JPMorgan’s counsel to be vice chairman
Yeah, when you control all the levers of power....
"Engine fails as Boston-bound flight prepares to take off" by Sarah Roberts Globe Correspondent July 09, 2015
An engine failed during the attempted takeoff of a Boston-bound flight from Chicago late Wednesday, delaying travelers as firefighters attended to the Southwest Airlines plane, officials said.
Blain Thayer, who said he on board the plane, was just “goofing off” with buddies when he heard the blast, then looked out the window to see one of the plane’s engines spewing sparks and flame.
Despite the rocky start to his trip, Thayer still plans to spend his first time on the East Coast exploring Boston and watching a Red Sox game at Fenway Park with his buddies....
Yeah, hole in the engine, no problem.
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So what did you guys do while waiting?
"Man accused of airline assault was allegedly drunk on flight" by Felicia Gans Globe Correspondent July 09, 2015
A British Airways passenger who forced an unexpected landing in Boston this week was drunk on the flight before assaulting a woman and then urinating on the floor and seats of the plane, prosecutors alleged Thursday.
Darren Halliwell, 46, of Aspell, England, was ordered held in lieu of $5,000 bail after he was arraigned in East Boston Municipal Court, where he was charged with disrupting the operation of an aircraft, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery, according to the office of Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
See: Man arrested after flight diverted to Logan
Prosecutors said Halliwell began acting aggressively toward flight attendants and a 14-year-old fellow passenger aboard British Airways Flight 195 on Wednesday, Conley’s office said.
Halliwell is also accused of hitting the woman he was traveling with when she tried to calm him.
Don't you guys ever learn?
The flight from London was scheduled to land in Houston, but instead stopped at Logan International Airport to get Halliwell off the plane.
When Massachusetts State Police escorted him off the flight at about noon Wednesday, prosecutors said, Halliwell was stumbling and speaking incoherently.
If Halliwell posts bail, he would be required to remain alcohol-free and stay away from both the airport and the woman he was traveling with, Conley’s office said.
His next scheduled court hearing is on July 29.
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Time to stop serving drinks on the plane.
