Could we see governments around the globe ‘dip in‘ to private bank accounts as was witnessed with the tiny nation of Cyprus? The reality is that the precedent has already been set. If you were a citizen of Cyprus just a few days ago, chances are you have completely lost any trust in the same banking system that attempted to withdraw up to 10% of your private finances under a Cyprus government deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And for that matter, any real trust in the European government of Cyprus. It had all been structured to disable the ability of citizens to do just about anything.
Banks shut down for famed ‘bank holidays’ as ATMs went out of service — all as the digits on the computer screen began to decline by around 6.75 to 10% depending on the figures in the account. Anything above 100,000 Euros was subject to around a 9.9% ‘reduction’.
Surely it makes sense for these citizens to now seek cash-based holding systems and perhaps precious metal investments to hold their wealth. But did it rattle the cage for others around the world? What about United States citizens? The fact of the matter is that a serious and troubling precedent was set in more than just one way regarding the Cyprus banking scandal, which has been dubbed the ‘great EU bank robbery’ by the Daily Mail. First and foremost we see a precedent with the Cyprus government colluding with the IMF to literally steal finances from private citizens in order to secure a bailout from Germany of 8.7 billion Euros. A bailout that Germany agreed to provide if Cyprus robbed all citizens who had bank holdings. Ultimately, the terms were shot down as the story went international and was met with revolt.
Cyprus ‘Bank Heist’ Opens Door to Fragile Banking Reality
The incident should have and could have led to international withdraws from banks worldwide as citizens realize that their dollars are extremely fragile inside the banking system that can close down at a moments notice before withdrawing private funds and siphoning them to the government. We could have even just small withdraws from citizens, perhaps leaving in ‘just enough’ to utilize for a while while preventing a 100% withdraw from the government. However, we did not.
In fact, it looks like the reality behind how simple it is for the government to ‘dip in’ to private banks accounts is not even fully realized.
The fact of the matter is that, just as the citizens of Cyprus, the large majority of citizens with banking investments will not act until it’s too late to do so. It is absolutely concerning to think that overnight private banks could give up a fraction or the entirety of your private wealth, but that is what we are seeing — and to think that this is an isolated incident that will not happen again is quite elementary. There were people who literally were about to lose portions their life savings to the government and private banks. Individuals like as Stella Steward, who explained her situation after she learned she had lost 2,000 Euros:
“There was no warning that this was about to happen and we are all in shock…”
In addition to the outraged citizens there was actually more than one banking official who was willing to speak out on the issue and how it affects the trust in banks around the entire globe. In a telling statement that properly sums up the events from the perspective of someone who knows what’s going on, the CEO of Saxo Bank (Lars Seier Christensen) explained on his blog The Trading Floor:
“I believe it could be the beginning of the end for the Eurozone…If you can confiscate 10 percent of a bank customer’s money, you can confiscate 25, 50 or even 100 percent. I now believe we will see worse as the panic increases, with politicians desperately trying to keep the EUR alive.”
Christensen makes an excellent point, and it really comes down to whatever the government or private banks feel that they can get away with. In the case of Cyprus, we saw the highest being around 9.9%, but in more dire circumstances it could easily be higher.
But the good news is, and this is something no one is mentioning in the reports on this within the mainstream media, is that there’s a bulletproof defense against such a scenario: physically investing your cash and holding onto it yourself. In the event of the Cyprus ‘bank heist’, only those who chose not to place their funds in the banking system were safe from any problems.
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$16 billion. That's how much JPMorgan Chase has paid in fines, settlements and other litigation expenses in the last four years alone.
More than half of that amount, $8.5 billion, was paid out in fines and settlements as the result of illegal actions taken by bank executives.
$8.5 billion is almost 12 percent of the net income the mega-bank brought in during the same period.
High Overhead These figures comes from "JPMorgan Chase: Out of Control," an impressive analysis of the bank's performance by Joshua Rosner, an investment analyst at GrahamFisher. And there's more. Since Rosner published his report only last week, JPMorgan Chase has settled another dispute.
This latest agreement is with the trustee for customers of fraudulent investment firm MF Global.
The MF Global deal included a $100 million cash payout from Chase, and an agreement to waive the $417 million in claims it had made against MF Global's clients. If you add in the full amount of this agreement, the bank has given up more than $9 billion in settlements since 2009.
Now we're over 12 percent just in payouts. Throw in all the other litigation costs and the total comes to well over 20 percent of the bank's net income in a four year period.
And illegalities aren't the only thing that's costing JPMorgan Chase's shareholders a lot of money.
There's also the London Whale foul-up, an apparently illegal series of trades that's already lost the bank $6.2 billion.
Add it all up. Then throw in the massive fines JPMorgan Chase paid before 2009, but after Dimon took the helm. Then add in the likely cost of the cases which loom before the bank today. You'll find that the Price of Evil for Dimon & Co. is very high -- at least by normal standards.
Bad Company Is "evil" too harsh a word? Merriam-Webster defines evil as "morally reprehensible," "arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct," "causing discomfort or repulsion," or "causing harm." Which of those descriptions is not true for the leaders of an institutions that's paid billions for misdeeds such as:
Reportedly taking MF Global's customers' money as that firm was collapsing under the weight of its own fraud;
Closing the bank account and freezing the credit card of a hedge fund manager because he criticized its handling of MF Global on television;
Bribing officials in Jefferson County, Alabama, which subsequently went bankrupt;
Fraudulently submitting court documents in support of its foreclosures, using a group of untrained college students and other young people (known in the firm as "Burger King Kids") to prepare and submit the papers.
Follow the links at the bottom of the page if you want more information, but here's a sneak preview: Angels, they ain't.
The Gang That Couldn't Cheat Straight If "evil" strikes you as too harsh you may not like the word "incompetent" either. But the Office of the Controller of the Currency, which is not known for being overly aggressive with bankers, secretly downgraded its internal assessment of the bank's management and ruled that its internal oversight "needs improvement."
The OCC found that the "Matters Requiring Attention" within the bank include its much bragged-about risk management, its money-laundering controls, audit oversight, and its valuation of its trading positions."
What's a little laxity about money-laundering between friends?
They're not just taking us for a ride. They're bad drivers. By being both unethical and incompetent, the management at JPMorgan Chase has violated the moral principle expressed so eloquently the late, great country singer Vern Gosdin: "If you're gonna do me wrong, do it right."
Who's in Charge Here? You'd think shareholders would be up in arms at Dimon and the Board of Directors for mismanaging their bank so badly. And yet they're all still in their seats, thanks in part to the way large corporations are allowed to manipulate their own corporate governance. Dimon is both CEO and Board Chair, an extraordinarily privileged position he was not asked to give up after the London Whale scandal. And about that scandal: There are four things worth knowing about the Whale:
The trades were illegal, according to all the evidence.
Despite the bank's bragging about its risk management model -- which it publicized widely as a lure to investors -- that model wasn't followed by the London office.
Jamie Dimon's publicists and politician friends have burnished his reputation as "America's best banker" - and he bypassed his bank's org chart so that the London unit reported directly to him.
His friends and publicists have also burnished his reputation as the country's most ethical banker. As Henny Youngman used to say, How do ya like me now?
We've been all over JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon for a long time. (See below for a partial listing), so we're glad to see the public tide finally turning against the bank and its leader. One of the triggers for that shift was the Senate's report on the bank's trade, which is as damning in its own way as Rosner's.
Payback The media climate's changing, too. Lynn Parramore of Alternet has written a piececalled "The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Jamie Dimon, Wall Street's Golden Boy." A Google search of "Jamie Dimon" and "tarnished" (as in reputation) yields articles from USA Today, Bloomberg News, and WGBH News. And Dimon was finally forced to resign his seat on the Board of the New York Federal Reserve.
At long last, people are openly questioning the competence and ethics of Dimon and his team. But nothing's really happened. Dimon's still the boss. Nobody's been charged with a crime. The only 'punishment'the bank has faced has been fines which, while massive by ordinary standards, are a slap on the wrist considering the gravity of the offenses.
The bank executives who committed those crimes haven't paid a penny in restitution, nor have they been charged with crimes. Those fines have been paid by the bank's shareholders, who in some cases were the victims of the very crimes that led to the fine in the first place!
It's like we said the other day about Cyprus: In banking, the victim's expected to pay restitution to the criminal.
Talk Talk Chase's most recent annual report, the document which represents it to current and prospective shareholders, boasts of a "laser focus on managing expenses" and states that "As a business, we are guided by our objectives to expand and deepen client relationships, invest consistently in our franchise, and maintain our risk and expense discipline."
How's that working out for you?
Senators came down hard on these malefactors last week -- rhetorically, anyway. But the government isn't cracking down on this den of iniquity. It's enabling it. As Rosner notes, "Rather than being driven by the strength of its operations and management, many of JPM's returns appear to be supported by an implied guarantee (emphasis Rosner's) it receives as a too-big-to-fail institution."
That's right: Instead of cracking down on these guys, the government is helping them get even richer -- and helping their out-of-control bank get even bigger and more dangerous. And they're doing it at a time when the Attorney General of the United States has made it clear that he will not prosecute criminals at a too-big-to-fail bank like Chase. Talk is cheap, but actions speak louder than rhetoric.
Crime Pays Life is still good for Dimon and some of the other senior executives at JPMorgan Chase: Shareholders can't -- or won't -- fire them. The government won't prosecute them. Taxpayers are helping them get rich. And every day their institution becomes bigger and more powerful. Sure, all that power doesn't come cheap, but they've found other peoplewilling to pay the price ... $16 billion and counting.
The price of evil may be high at JPMorgan Chase, but the malefactors who actually committed the wrongdoing aren't paying it. Wrongdoing and incompetence may be expensive. But for executives at JPMorgan Chase and our other too-big-to fail banks, it's also surprisingly affordable.
RJ Eskow is a writer, business person, and songwriter/musician. He has worked as a consultant in public policy, technology, and finance, specializing in healthcare issues
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Elizabeth Warren Confronts the Atrocity of Drug Money Laundering by Big Banks
Americans have been waiting for a politician like Warren for nearly a century.
March 10, 2013 |
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Heavens to Betsy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren leapt from the gate of her first term pummeling Ben Bernanke on too-big-to-fail financial institutions. Then she demanded to know why American banks were never brought to trial. Finally, last Thursday, looking for all the world like a school principal called to sort out teenage hooligans, she queried regulators as to why HSBC bankers who launder money for drug lords and terrorists should go free. Quoth the senator:
"If you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to jail. If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life. But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night.”
Game on! Naturally, the left is swooning. Elizabeth Warren says what we all wish we could say to the besuited jerks who defend a crooked industry. Except, instead of snatching them by the lapels and screaming obscenities as we might do, Warren sits calmly and repeats her inimitably direct questions like a blond Terminator. The big banks and their lackeys can’t stand her, and it looks as if the feeling is mutual.
Americans love her because we have serious unfinished business with the banking industry. We remember how the White House chose to protect the bankers from the pitchforks in the wake of the financial crisis. We’ve gritted our teeth as bankers have charted a course to record-breaking profits as the rest of us slogged through a shitty economy.
Now it feels like the day we hoped for. The one the banking industry feared as it tried to thwart Warren's victory in 2013. There's a new sheriff in town, a real champion for the 99 percent who will not accept a two-tiered justice system and who dares look the criminal and the complicit in the eye.
That Warren's showdown in the Senate Banking Committee corral came just a day after Attorney General Eric Holder fessed up to the fact that some banks are so big and powerful they are really above the law felt like balm on a freshly salted wound.
Economist Robert Johnson, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, who served as chief economist to the Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of William Proxmire, praised Warren's resolve in an email to me:
"Elizabeth Warren has chosen to do something novel as a US senator: represent the people. In our money-drenched political system that is akin to defying gravity. God bless Elizabeth Warren."
Warren is certainly making welcome noises in these early days of her tenure. She is breaking a taboo in speaking up so forcefully this early in the game, as newbie senators are generally expected to keep their heads down.
Cynics cannot deny the fact that it actually matters tremendously that someone knowledgeable is at the table. If regulators know they'll be cross-examined by a person who knows what they're up to, they may think twice about what they're (not) doing.
They can't completely ignore congressional pressure, particularly as Warren is a majority member of the Senate. On HSBC, unfortunately, the case is probably closed. But banks certainly hate the negative light Warren shined on them with her latest confrontation. And that's welcome news. This is not small potatoes.
However, Warren will need to follow up her tough talk with serious legislative proposals that she could build support for as she takes the lead on banking issues. As Yves Smith has pointed out on Naked Capitalism, the real test of her tough-mindedness “will come through the letters, speeches, and positions she takes on banking matters outside the formal Committee sessions."
Early in the 20th century, a largely forgotten group of independent-minded populists came to Washtington to speak up for the needs of ordinary citizens against financial predators, like Nebraska's George W. Norris and South Dakota's Peter Norbeck, who appointed one Ferdinand Pecora as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Committee on Banking and Currency and thereby opened up a can of whup-ass on Wall Street following the crash of '29.
America hasn't seen the likes of these politicians in a long, long time. If Warren can withstand the forces that will want to pull her into the general White House PR machine, we might just get one.
Friends of Leduc man fight his credit card debt
Caley Ramsay, Global News : Monday, March 11, 2013 8:01 PM
EDMONTON- Friends of a 39-year-old Leduc man who lives with developmental disabilities went searching for answers, after he accumulated $10,000 in credit card debt.
Ralph, who has asked that his last name not be mentioned, has Down syndrome and cannot read or write. He has been living on his own for just over a year and has control of his own finances. Ralph received the credit card in 2005, from a Bank of Montreal kiosk in a grocery store, and says he didn't understand what a credit card was.
"The bank gave me it," Ralph said. "I didn't know I had to pay this thing back."
Ralph's friends say he shouldn't have to pay the money back, because he wouldn't have been able to understand the credit card contract he signed.
"Ralph has no academics, Ralph lives a simple life," said Ingred Dubyk, whose daughter is a friend of Ralph's. "I couldn't wrap my head around that for the longest time. It was hard to absorb that Ralph could be given a credit card."
Ralph says he thought the credit card worked like a debit card and used the card to buy many things including movies and watches.
"The credit card I used, I didn't know (anything) about it because nobody told me (anything) about it."
Ralph says he started to worry when the collection agencies began calling to collect the money he owed.
"I didn't know anything about this and I told them again I have no money, I have no money, I'm not making enough money," he explained.
Ralph is on Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) and works part-time bagging groceries. The credit card payments came out of his bank account automatically. Ralph says he turned to Dubyk for help when he ran out of money.
"He's just such a wonderful, sweet person," Dubyk explained. "My heart wept. I knew I had to do something."
"He brought me some of his statements and I started the procedure of going through the front line at the bank," Dubyk explained. "I just started calling and what I heard was 'he has to pay his bills.'"
Dubyk says she explained to BMO that Ralph did not understand the contract he signed.
"I want them to look at this and acknowledge that this was a mistake and give Ralph whatever break they can."
BMO says everyone applying for credit cards is treated the same and must meet the same criteria.
Officials from the Alberta Association for Community Living (AACL) say that's important, but there needs to be way of protecting vulnerable individuals.
"We don't want to discriminate against people on the basis of their disability, we want to be in a position to assist them to be able to have access to the means to a good life as the rest of us have," explained Bruce Uditsky, CEO of AACL. "Some individuals can manage cards quite well, there are other ways to limit how much the card is, there could be prepaid cards for example."
After Global News contacted BMO Monday, officials reviewed the case and decided to forgive the entire debt, and offered the following statement:
"While it can be challenging, we believe firmly in our obligation to protect customers from discrimination, including for reasons of a disability. We cannot presume that a disability equals inability. We are comfortable that we acted responsibly when the application was first adjudicated and we also believe that we have made the appropriate decision (to forgive the debt) in light of the information that we now have before us." With files from Julie Matthews.
NEW! PODCAST OF 'ALL WARS ARE BANKERS WARS' FROM JANUARY 14TH, 2013 RADIO SHOW.
By Michael RiveroI know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign nations. There is ample precedent for this. The United States fought the American Revolution primarily over King George III's Currency act, which forced the colonists to conduct their business only using printed bank notes borrowed from the Bank of England at interest. After the revolution, the new United States adopted a radically different economic system in which the government issued its own value-based money, so that private banks like the Bank of England were not siphoning off the wealth of the people through interest-bearing bank notes.
"The refusal of King George 3rd to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution." -- Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father
But bankers are nothing if not dedicated to their schemes to acquire your wealth, and know full well how easy it is to corrupt a nation's leaders. Just one year after Mayer Amschel Rothschild had uttered his infamous "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws", the bankers succeeded in setting up a new Private Central Bank called the First Bank of the United States, largely through the efforts of the Rothschild's chief US supporter, Alexander Hamilton. Founded in 1791, by the end of its twenty year charter the First Bank of the United States had almost ruined the nation's economy, while enriching the bankers. Congress refused to renew the charter and signaled their intention to go back to a state issued value based currency on which the people paid no interest at all to any banker. This resulted in a threat from Nathan Mayer Rothschild against the US Government, "Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war." Congress still refused to renew the charter for the First Bank of the United States, whereupon Nathan Mayer Rothschild railed, "Teach those impudent Americans a lesson! Bring them back to colonial status!" Financed by the Rothschild controlled Bank of England, Britain then launched the war of 1812 to recolonize the United States and force them back into the slavery of the Bank of England, or to plunge the United States into so much debt they would be forced to accept a new private central bank. And the plan worked. Even though the War of 1812 was won by the United States, Congress was forced to grant a new charter for yet another private bank issuing the public currency as loans at interest, the Second Bank of the United States. Once again, private bankers were in control of the nation's money supply and cared not who made the laws or how many British and American soldiers had to die for it.
Once again the nation was plunged into debt, unemployment, and poverty by the predations of the private central bank, and in 1832 Andrew Jackson successfully campaigned for his second term as President under the slogan, "Jackson And No Bank!" True to his word, Jackson succeeds in blocking the renewal of the charter for the Second Bank of the United States.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!" -- Andrew Jackson, shortly before ending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels
Shortly after President Jackson (the only American President to actually pay off the National Debt) ended the Second Bank of the United States, there was an attempted assassination which failed when both pistols used by the assassin, Richard Lawrence, failed to fire. Lawrence later said that with Jackson dead, "Money would be more plenty."
Of course, the public school system is as subservient to the bankers' wishes to keep certain history from you, just as the corporate media is subservient to Monsanto's wishes to keep the dangers of GMOs from you, and the global warming cult's wishes to conceal from you that the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 16 years. Thus is should come as little surprise that much of the real reasons for the events of the Civil War are not well known to the average American.
When the Confederacy seceded from the United States, the bankers once again saw the opportunity for a rich harvest of debt, and offered to fund Lincoln's efforts to bring the south back into the union, but at 30% interest. Lincoln remarked that he would not free the black man by enslaving the white man to the bankers and using his authority as President, issued a new government currency, the greenback. This was a direct threat to the wealth and power of the central bankers, who quickly responded.
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." -- The London Times responding to Lincoln's decision to issue government Greenbacks to finance the Civil War, rather than agree to private banker's loans at 30% interest.
In 1872 New York bankers sent a letter to every bank in the United States, urging them to fund newspapers that opposed government-issued money (Lincoln's greenbacks).
"Dear Sir: It is advisable to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers... as will oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the Government issue of money.�Let the Government issue the coin and the banks issue the paper money�of the country...�[T]o restore to circulation the Government issue of money, will be to provide the people with money, and will therefore seriously affect your individual profit as bankers and lenders." -- Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"It will not do to�allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate�as money any length of time, as we cannot�control that." -- Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war�power, and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I�and my European friends are in favor of, for�slavery is but the owning of labor and carries�with it the care for the laborer, while the�European plan, led on by England, is for capital to control labor by controlling the wages.�THIS CAN BE DONE BY CONTROLLING�THE MONEY." -- Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
Goaded by the private bankers, much of Europe supported the Confederacy against the Union, with the expectation that victory over Lincoln would mean the end of the Greenback. France and Britain considered an outright attack on the United States to aid the confederacy, but were held at bay by Russia, which had just ended the serfdom system and had a state central bank similar to the system the United States had been founded on. Left free of European intervention, the Union won the war, and Lincoln announced his intention to go on issuing greenbacks. Following Lincoln's assassination, the Greenbacks were pulled from circulation and the American people forced to go back to an economy based on bank notes borrowed at interest from the private bankers.
Finally, in 1913, the Private Central Bankers of Europe, in particular the Rothschilds of Great Britain and the Warburgs of Germany, met with their American financial collaborators on Jekyll Island, Georgia to form a new banking cartel with the express purpose of forming the Third Bank of the United States, with the aim of placing complete control of the United States money supply once again under the control of private bankers. Owing to hostility over the previous banks, the name was changed to "The Federal Reserve" system in order to grant the new bank a quasi-governmental image, but in fact it is a privately owned bank, no more "Federal" than Federal Express. Indeed, in 2012, the Federal Reserve successfully rebuffed a Freedom of Information Lawsuit by Bloomberg News on the grounds that as a private banking corporation and not actually a part of the government, the Freedom of Information Act did not apply to the operations of the Federal Reserve. 1913 proved to be a transformative year for the nation's economy, first with the passage of the 16th "income tax" Amendment and the false claim that it had been ratified.
Later that same year, and apparently unwilling to risk another questionable amendment, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act over Christmas holiday 1913, while members of Congress opposed to the measure were at home. This was a very underhanded deal, as the Constitution explicitly vests Congress with the authority to issue the public currency, does not authorize its delegation, and thus should have required a new Amendment to transfer that authority to a private bank. But pass it Congress did, and President Woodrow Wilson signed it as he promised the bankers he would in exchange for generous campaign contributions. Wilson later regretted that decision.
The next year, World War One started, and it is important to remember that prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, there was no such thing as a world war.
World War One started between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, but quickly shifted to focus on Germany, whose industrial capacity was seen as an economic threat to Great Britain, who saw the decline of the British Pound as a result of too much emphasis on financial activity to the neglect of agriculture, industrial development, and infrastructure (not unlike the present day United States). Although pre-war Germany had a private central bank, it was heavily restricted and inflation kept to reasonable levels. Under government control, investment was guaranteed to internal economic development, and Germany was seen as a major power. So, in the media of the day, Germany was portrayed as the prime opponent of World War One, and not just defeated, but its industrial base flattened. Following the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was ordered to pay the war costs of all the participating nations, even though Germany had not actually started the war. This amounted to three times the value of all of Germany itself. Germany's private central bank, to whom Germany had gone deeply into debt to pay the costs of the war, broke free of government control, and massive inflation followed (mostly triggered by currency speculators) , permanently trapping the German people in endless debt.
When the Weimar Republic collapsed economically, it opened the door for the National Socialists to take power. Their first financial move was to issue their own state currency which was not borrowed from private central bankers. Freed from having to pay interest on the money in circulation, Germany blossomed and quickly began to rebuild its industry. The media called it "The German Miracle". TIME magazine lionized Hitler for the amazing improvement in life for the German people and the explosion of German industry, and even named him TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938.
Once again, Germany's industrial output became a threat to Great Britain.
"Should Germany merchandise (do business) again in the next 50 years we have led this war (WW1) in vain." - Winston Churchill in The Times (1919)
"We will force this war upon Hitler, if he wants it or not." - Winston Churchill (1936 broadcast)
"Germany becomes too powerful. We have to crush it." - Winston Churchill (November 1936 speaking to US - General Robert E. Wood)
"This war is an English war and its goal is the destruction of Germany." - Winston Churchill (- Autumn 1939 broadcast)
Germany's state-issued value based currency was also a direct threat to the wealth and power of the private central banks, and as early as 1933 they started to organize a global boycott against Germany to strangle this upstart ruler who thought he could break free of private central bankers!
As had been the case in World War One, Great Britain and other nations threatened by Germany's economic power looked for an excuse to go to war, and as public anger in Germany grew over the boycott, Hitler foolishly gave them that excuse. Years later, in a spirit of candor, the real reasons for that war were made clear.
"The war wasn't only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer sales markets. We could have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from breaking out without doing one shot, but we didn't want to."- Winston Churchill to Truman (Fultun, USA March 1946)
"Germany's unforgivable crime before WW2 was its attempt to loosen its economy out of the world trade system and to build up an independent exchange system from which the world-finance couldn't profit anymore. ...We butchered the wrong pig." -Winston Churchill (The Second World War - Bern, 1960)
As a side note, we need to step back before WW2 and recall Marine Major General Smedley Butler. In 1933, Wall Street bankers and financiers had bankrolled the successful coups by both Hitler and Mussolini. Brown Brothers Harriman in New York was financing Hitler right up to the day war was declared with Germany. And they decided that a fascist dictatorship in the United States based on the one on Italy would be far better for their business interests than Roosevelt's "New Deal" which threatened massive wealth re-distribution to recapitalize the working and middle class of America. So the Wall Street tycoons recruited General Butler to lead the overthrow of the US Government and install a "Secretary of General Affairs" who would be answerable to Wall Street and not the people, would crush social unrest and shut down all labor unions. General Butler pretended to go along with the scheme but then exposed the plot to Congress. Congress, then as now in the pocket of the Wall Street bankers, refused to act. When Roosevelt learned of the planned coup he demanded the arrest of the plotters, but the plotters simply reminded Roosevelt that if any one of them were sent to prison, their friends on Wall Street would deliberatly collapse the still-fragile economy and blame Roosevelt for it. Roosevelt was thus unable to act until the start of WW2, at which time he prosecuted many of the plotters under the Trading With The Enemy act. The Congressional minutes into the coup were finally released in 1967 and became the inspiration for the movie, "Seven Days in May" but with the true financial villains erased from the script.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent more of my time being a high--class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. "I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that the Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. I operated on three continents." -- General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant,1935
As President, John F. Kennedy understood the predatory nature of private central banking. He understood why Andrew Jackson fought so hard to end the Second Bank of the United States. So Kennedy wrote and signed Executive Order 11110 which ordered the US Treasury to issue a new public currency, the United States Note.
Kennedy's United States Notes were not borrowed form the Federal Reserve but created by the US Government and backed by the silver stockpiles held by the US Government. It represented a return to the system of economics the United States had been founded on, and was perfectly legal for Kennedy to do. All told, some four and one half billion dollars went into public circulation, eroding interest payments to the Federal Reserve and loosening their control over the nation. Five months later John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas, and the United States Notes pulled from circulation and destroyed (except for samples held by collectors). John J. McCloy, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and President of the World Bank, was named to the Warren Commission, presumably to make certain the banking dimensions behind the assassination were concealed from the public.As we enter the eleventh year of what future history will most certainly describe as World War Three, we need to examine the financial dimensions behind the wars.
Towards the end of World War Two, when it became obvious that the allies were going to win and dictate the post war environment, the major world economic powers met at Bretton Woods, a luxury resort in New Hampshire in July of 1944, and hammered out the Bretton Woods agreement for international finance. The British Pound lost its position as the global trade and reserve currency to the US dollar (part of the price demanded by Roosevelt in exchange for the US entry into the war). Absent the economic advantages of being the world's "go-to" currency, Britain was forced to nationalize the Bank of England in 1946. The Bretton Woods agreement, ratified in 1945, in addition to making the dollar the global reserve and trade currency, obligated the signatory nations to tie their currencies to the dollar. The nations that ratified Bretton Woods did so on two conditions. The first was that the Federal Reserve would refrain from over-printing the dollar as a means to loot real products and produce from other nations in exchange for ink and paper; basically an imperial tax. That assurance was backed up by the second requirement, which was that the US dollar would always be convertible to gold at $35 per ounce.
Of course, the Federal Reserve, being a private bank and not answerable to the US Government, did start overprinting paper dollars, and much of the perceived prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was the result of foreign nations' obligations to accept the paper notes as being worth gold at the rate of $35 an ounce. Then in 1970, France looked at the huge pile of paper notes sitting in their vaults, for which real French products like wine and cheese had been traded, and notified the United States government that they would exercise their option under Bretton Woods to return the paper notes for gold at the $35 per ounce exchange rate. Of course, the United States had nowhere near the gold to redeem the paper notes, so on August 15th, 1971, Richard Nixon "temporarily" suspended the gold convertibility of the US Federal Reserve Notes. This "Nixon shock" effectively ended Bretton Woods and many global currencies started to delink from the US dollar. Worse, since the United States had collateralized their loans with the nation's gold reserves, it quickly became apparent that the US Government did not in fact have enough gold to cover the outstanding debts. Foreign nations began to get very nervous about their loans to the US and understandably were reluctant to loan any additional money to the United States without some form of collateral. So Richard Nixon started the environmental movement, with the EPA and its various programs such as "wilderness zones", Roadless areas", Heritage rivers", "Wetlands", all of which took vast areas of public lands and made them off limits to the American people who were technically the owners of those lands. But Nixon had little concern for the environment and the real purpose of this land grab under the guise of the environment was to pledge those pristine lands and their vast mineral resources as collateral on the national debt. The plethora of different programs was simply to conceal the true scale of how much American land was being pledged to foreign lenders as collateral on the government's debts; eventually almost 25% of the nation itself.
With open lands for collateral already in short supply, the US Government embarked on a new program to shore up sagging international demand for the dollar. The United States approached the world's oil producing nations, mostly in the Middle East, and offered them a deal. In exchange for only selling their oil for dollars, the United States would guarantee the military safety of those oil-rich nations. The oil rich nations would agree to spend and invest their US paper dollars inside the United States, in particular in US Treasury Bonds, redeemable through future generations of US taxpayers. The concept was labeled the "petrodollar". In effect, the US, no longer able to back the dollar with gold, was now backing it with oil. Other peoples' oil. And that necessity to keep control over those oil nations to prop up the dollar has shaped America's foreign policy in the region ever since.But as America's manufacturing and agriculture has declined, the oil producing nations faced a dilemma. Those piles of US Federal Reserve notes were not able to purchase much from the United States because the United States had little (other than real estate) anyone wanted to buy. Europe's cars and aircraft were superior and less costly, while experiments with GMO food crops led to nations refusing to buy US food exports. Israel's constant belligerence against its neighbors caused them to wonder if the US could actually keep their end of the petrodollar arrangement. Oil producing nations started to talk of selling their oil for whatever currency the purchasers chose to use. Iraq, already hostile to the United States following Desert Storm, demanded the right to sell their oil for Euros in 2000 and in 2002, the United Nations agreed to allow it under the "Oil for food" program instituted following Desert Storm. One year later the United States re-invaded Iraq, lynched Saddam Hussein, and placed Iraq's oil back on the world market only for US dollars. The clear US policy shift following 9-11, away from being an impartial broker of peace in the Mideast to one of unquestioned support for Israel's aggressions only further eroded confidence in the Petrodollar deal and even more oil producing nations started openly talking of oil trade for other global currencies.Over in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi had instituted a state-owned central bank and a value based trade currency, the Gold Dinar. Gaddafi announced that Libya's oil was for sale, but only for the Gold Dinar. Other African nations, seeing the rise of the Gold Dinar and the Euro, even as the US dollar continued its inflation-driven decline, flocked to the new Libyan currency for trade. This move had the potential to seriously undermine the global hegemony of the dollar. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. So, the United States invaded Libya, brutally murdered Qaddafi ( the object lesson of Saddam's lynching not being enough of a message, apparently), imposed a private central bank, and returned Libya's oil output to dollars only. The gold that was to have been made into the Gold Dinars is, as of last report, unaccounted for.According to General Wesley Clark, the master plan for the "dollarification" of the world's oil nations included seven targets, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran (Venezuela, which dared to sell their oil to China for the Yuan, is a late addition). What is notable about the original seven nations originally targeted by the US is that none of them are members of the Bank for International Settlements, the private central bankers private central bank, located in Switzerland. This meant that these nations were deciding for themselves how to run their nations' economies, rather than submit to the international private banks.Now the bankers' gun sights are on Iran, which dares to have a government central bank and sell their oil for whatever currency they choose. The war agenda is, as always, to force Iran's oil to be sold only for dollars and to force them to accept a privately owned central bank. Malaysia, one of the new nations without a Rothschild central bank, is now being invaded by a force claimed to be "Al Qaeda", and with the death of President Hugo Chavez, plans to impose a US and banker friendly regime on Venezuela are clearly being implemented. The German government recently asked for the return of some of their gold bullion from the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve. France has said it will take 5 years to return Germany's gold. The United States has said they will need 8 years to return Germany's gold. This suggests strongly that the Bank of France and the NY Federal Reserve have used the deposited gold for other purposes, most likely to cover gold futures contracts used to artificially suppress the price of gold to keep investors in the equities markets, and the Central Banks are scrambling to find new gold to cover the shortfall and prevent a gold run. So it is inevitable that suddenly France invades Mali, ostensibly to combat Al Qaeda, with the US joining in. Mali just happens to be one of the world's largest gold producers with gold accounting for 80% of Mali exports. War for the bankers does not get more obvious than that! Mexico has demanded a physical audit of their gold bullion stored at the Bank of England, and along with Venezuela's vast oil reserves (larger than Saudi Arabia), Venezuela's gold mines are a prize lusted after by all the Central Banks that played fast and loose with other peoples' gold bullion. So we can expect regime change if not outright invasion soon.You have been raised by a public school system and media that constantly assures you that the reasons for all these wars and assassinations are many and varied. The US claims to bring democracy to the conquered lands (they haven't; the usual result of a US overthrow is the imposition of a dictatorship, such as the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and the imposition of the Shah, or the 1973 CIA overthrow of Chile's democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, and the imposition of Augusto Pinochet), or to save a people from a cruel oppressor, revenge for 9-11, or that tired worn-out catch all excuse for invasion, weapons of mass destruction. Assassinations are always passed off as "crazed lone nuts" to obscure the real agenda.The real agenda is simple. It is enslavement of the people by creation of a false sense of obligation. That obligation is false because the Private Central Banking system, by design, always creates more debt than money with which to pay that debt. Private Central Banking is not science, it is a religion; a set of arbitrary rules created to benefit the priesthood, meaning the owners of the Private Central Bank. The fraud persists, with often lethal results, because the people are tricked into believing that this is the way life is suppoed to be and no alternative exists or should be dreamt of. The same was true of two earlier systems of enslavement, Rule by Divine Right and Slavery, both systems built to trick people into obedience, and both now recognized by modern civilizatyion as illegitimate. Now we are entering a time in human history where we will recognize that rule by debt, or rule by Private Central Bankers issuing the public currency as a loan at interest, is equally illegitimate. It only works as long as people allow themselves to believe that this is the way life is supposed to be.
But understand this above all; Private Central Banks do not exist to serve the people, the community, or the nation. Private Central Banks exist to serve their owners, to make them rich beyond the dreams of Midas and all for the cost of ink, paper, and the right bribe to the right official.Behind all these wars, all these assassinations, the hundred million horrible deaths from all the wars lies a single policy of dictatorship. The private central bankers allow rulers to rule only on the condition that the people of a nation be enslaved to the private central banks. Failing that, said ruler will be killed, and their nation invaded by those other nations enslaved to private central banks. The so-called "clash of civilizations" we read about on the corporate media is really a war between banking systems, with the private central bankers forcing themselves onto the rest of the world, no matter how many millions must die for it. Indeed the constant hatemongering against Muslims lies in a simple fact. Like the ancient Christians (prior to the Knights Templars private banking system) , Muslims forbid usury, or the lending of money at interest. And that is the reason our government and media insist they must be killed or converted. They refuse to submit to currencies issued at interest. They refuse to be debt slaves. So off to war your children must go, to spill their blood for the money-junkies' gold. We barely survived the last two world wars. In the nuclear/bioweapon age, are the private central bankers willing to risk incinerating the whole planet just to feed their greed?Apparently so.
Flag waving and propaganda aside, all modern wars are wars by and for the private bankers, fought and bled for by third parties unaware of the true reason they are expected to gracefully be killed and croppled for. The process is quite simple. As soon as the Private Central Bank issues its currency as a loan at interest, the public is forced deeper and deeper into debt. When the people are reluctant to borrow any more, that is when the Keynesian economists demand the government borrow more to keep the pyramid scheme working. When both the people and government refuse to borrow any more, that is when wars are started, to plunge everyone even deeper into debt to pay for the war, then after the war to borrow more to rebuild. When the war is over, the people have about the same as they did before the war, except the graveyards are far larger and everyone is in debt to the private bankers for the next century. This is why Brown Brothers Harriman in New York was funding the rise of Adolf Hitler. As long as Private Central Banks are allowed to exist, inevitably as the night follows day there will be poverty, hopelessness, and millions of deaths in endless World Wars, until the Earth itself is sacrificed in flames to Mammon. The path to true peace on Earth lies in the abolishment of all private central banking everywhere, and a return to the state-issued value-based currencies that allow nations and people to become prosperous.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Trail of Fraud and Vengeance Leads to Kabul Bank Convictions
Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sherkhan Farnood, the Kabul Bank founder, in court Tuesday. He had told American investigators about fraud.
Concern over Kabul Bank scandal sentences
EMMA GRAHAM-HARRISON, in Kabul
Two key players in the $900 million (€690 million) Kabul Bank scandal in Afghanistan have been sentenced to just five years in prison each, a relatively light sentence that will fuel concerns about government indifference to rampant corruption in the country.
The judges baffled observers with a last-minute change in the charges against the men, dropping allegations of embezzlement, forgery, money-laundering and other serious offences in favour of “breach of trust”, which has a shorter maximum sentence.
Kabul Bank nearly collapsed in 2010, and has been described by western officials as virtually a Ponzi scheme.
In addition to their prison time, the chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, and chief executive, Khalilullah Ferozi, have been ordered to pay back a combined total of more than $800 million. But the new charges will make it far harder to claw back the stolen cash from offshore accounts and other hiding places. A money-laundering conviction would have brought an automatic confiscation order, but experts say the three judges issued a much weaker demand for return of goods obtained illegally.
“International standards require sanctions that are proportionate, dissuasive and effective. We feel that this is lacking in the judgment,” said Drago Kos, chairman of the joint Afghan and international anti-corruption committee, which organised a public inquiry into the crisis last year.
The brothers of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and vice-president Mohammad Fahim, were among the bank’s shareholders, although they have not been prosecuted, and handling of the high-profile case has been seen by the international community as a “litmus test” of Kabul’s desire to rein in corruption. – (Guardian service)
Monday, 4 March 2013
£15bn profit at scandal-hit HSBC: Boss of bank that laundered drug money will pocket £2m
Bonus is reward for bank's estimated pre-tax profits of about £15.6bn
Profit would be biggest made by British bank since global financial crisis
Royal Bank of Scotland last week announced bonuses totalling £600m
By Ben Griffiths PUBLISHED:23:31, 3 March 2013| UPDATED:23:45, 3 March 2013
Bonus: Stuart Gulliver is expected to receive a windfall of around £2million as part of a total pay and benefits package worth between £6million and £7million for 2012
HSBC will hand its chief executive a huge bonus as it today posts one of the biggest profits in banking history. Stuart Gulliver is expected to receive a windfall of around £2million as part of a total pay and benefits package worth between £6million and £7million for 2012. Last week Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 82 per cent owned by taxpayers, announced it was paying bonuses totalling £600million – despite posting losses of £5.2billion. Downing Street caused controversy by praising the bank for its ‘responsibility and restraint’. Mr Gulliver’s handout is reward for HSBC notching up pre-tax profits of around £15.6billion, according to City estimates. That is just short of the bank’s record haul of £15.9billion in 2007 and would be the biggest profit by a British bank since the global financial crisis. Mr Gulliver’s bumper payout comes just months after the bank was slapped with a £1.25billion fine by US regulators following accusations it laundered billions of pounds for rogue states and drug cartels through its America division. HSBC was accused by the US Senate of fostering a ‘polluted culture’, ignoring warnings and breaching safeguards that could have prevented the laundering of money from Iran, Syria and Mexico. London-based banker David Bagley, head of HSBC’s compliance division, which is meant to prevent breaches of the law, sensationally quit in front of the Senate committee. He had been with the bank for 20 years. The US fine will have an impact on the company’s overall bonus pot, which is expected to be in the region of £2billion compared to the £2.8billion seen in 2011.
Mr Gulliver would have been entitled to a total package worth £12.5million, including long-term share awards, but is likely to receive about half that sum. His bonus of £2million, which compares with £2.1million last year, will be deferred and subject to possible ‘clawback’, where he will not be able to cash it in until he retires from or leaves HSBC. Deborah Hargreaves, of the High Pay Centre think-tank, said: ‘Banks should get their own house in order and ensure the internal culture has changed so that wrongdoing is stamped out before they think about paying bonuses of any kind to those in charge. HSBC clearly presided over a culture in the US with scant regard for the rules and little respect for compliance.
Performance: Mr Gulliver's handout is reward for HSBC notching up pre-tax profits of around £15.6billion, according to City estimates. Pictured is the bank's headquarters, in Canary Wharf, London
‘The buck for that has to stop at the chief executive’s door and if there is no penalty, what’s to stop it happening again.’ Despite being based in Canary Wharf, HSBC makes an estimated 90 per cent of its money outside Britain and has benefited from its presence in emerging markets in Asia. Since taking over as chief executive in 2011 Mr Gulliver has led an overhaul of the bank’s operations. He has cut about 10 per cent of its workforce and pulled out from 46 countries, as well as sold off a number of general insurance businesses.
'Banks should get their own house in order and ensure the internal culture has changed so that wrongdoing is stamped out before they think about paying bonuses of any kind to those in charge'
- Deborah Hargreaves, of the High Pay Centre think-tank
Sky News also reported that HSBC will for the first time publish a single figure for the aggregate pay and benefits packages awarded to Mr Gulliver and his most senior colleagues. It is designed to show compliance with Government rules on disclosure that will come into force later this year. On Tuesday London-based Standard Chartered is also expected to cut its total bonus pot and the payout for its chief executive, Peter Sands. Despite a record trading year, the bank was also hit by a US regulatory probe into its dealings with Iran. According to Sky News, Standard Chartered will pay out around £930million in bonuses, down from £1.02billion a year earlier. Mr Sands will receive £2million compared with the £2.3million he was handed for 2011.
