Infinite Unknown

- I Illustrate How The Irish Banking Cancer Spreads To The UK Taxpayer And Metastasizes Through US Markets! (ZeroHedge, April 12, 2013)

Tags: Banking, Bonds, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, IMF, Ireland, Lehman Brothers, RBS, Reggie Middleton, U.K., U.S.

YouTube Added: 21.03.2013

Tags: AIG, Bank of England, Banking, Bonds, Collapse, Cyprus, Debt, Derivatives, Derivatives market, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Hillary Clinton, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Max Keiser, MF Global, Obama administration, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Reggie Middleton, Society, U.S.

- Euro Official On Cyprus: “Markets Believe We Will Find A Solution, This Might Not Be The Case” (ZeroHedge, March 21, 2013):

While the market levitation courtesy of the Fed, BIS and BOJ continues unabated to give the impression that all is well, allowing empty momentum-chasing chatterboxes to say that Cyprus is not a big deal because… well, look at the market (and real traders the chance to quietly dump existing risk positions), the artificial, centrally-planned calm during the storm may be ending. The reason comes from none other than the Eurogroup, whose deputy finance ministers held a conference call last night, and whose transcript has been seen by Reuters.

Here are the highlights.

Euro zone finance officials acknowledged being “in a mess” over Cyprus during a conference call on Wednesday and discussed imposing capital controls to insulate the region from a possible collapse of the Cypriot economy.

In detailed notes of the call seen by Reuters, one official described emotions as running “very high”, making it difficult to come up with rational solutions, and referred to “open talk in regards of (Cyprus) leaving the euro zone”.

Not very confidence boosting. But then again, with confidence in Cyprus now gone, the time for damage control is long gone. Sure enough, it just goes from bad to worse: Continue reading »

Tags: Banking, Collapse, Cyprus, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Global News, Government, Lehman Brothers, Politics

See also:

- Why Is JPMorgan’s Gold Vault, The Largest In The World, Located Next To The New York Fed?

It is conventional wisdom that in the days leading to Lehman’s bankruptcy filing on the night of September 15, 2008, sheer panic and utter confusion ruled ever back- and middle-office, over concerns that a counterparty, any counterparty, but especially Lehman, would end up being “not money good“, and the result was that trigger-happy margin clerks had the potential to make or break a company, by demanding just enough variation margin that would send the notice recipient promptly into bankruptcy. It is also conventional wisdom, that it was precisely several such margin calls mostly out of JPMorgan that precipitated the Chapter 7 filing by Lehman brothers, as the firm was finally unable to mask the fact that it was terminally overlevered, and even more terminally illiquid. It is certainly conventional wisdom, that Lehman was certainly massively overlevered, holding billions of overmarked CMBS on its balance sheet, and was doing everything in its power to hold on to precious liquidity, taking every opportunity to window dress its balance sheet as far better than it truly was (Repo 105 at the end of every quarter promptly comes to mind), over fears of avoiding precisely such a margin call onslaught, where the first margin call would cascade into many, likely lethal, margin calls. Continue reading »

Tags: Banking, Economy, Global News, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, U.S.

- Secrets and Lies of the Bailout (Rolling Stone, Jan 4, 2013):

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

Continue reading »

Tags: AIG, Bailout, Bank of America, Banking, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Bush administration, Citigroup, Economy, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, General Motors, George Bush, Global News, GM, Goldman Sachs, Government, Great Depression, Henry Paulson, Jamie Dimon, Larry Summers, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Neil Barofsky, Nomi Prins, Obama administration, Politics, Ponzi schemes, Sheila Bair, Society, TARP, Taxpayers, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wachovia, Wall Street, Wells Fargo

@Amazon.com: Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network

- The Federal Reserve Cartel: Part IV: A Financial Parasite (Veterans Today, Dec 14, 2012):

(Excerpted from Chapter 19: Big Oil & Their Bankers…Part four of a five-part series)

United World Federalists founder James Warburg’s father was Paul Warburg, who financed Hitler with help from Brown Brothers Harriman partner Prescott Bush. [1]

Colonel Ely Garrison was a close friend of both President Teddy Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson.  Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve, “Paul Warburg was the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition.  The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Adolf Hitler, Banking, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, CS First Boston, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Gold, Goldman Sachs, Government, James Paul Warburg, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Max Warburg, Merrill Lynch, Military, Morgan Stanley, Paul Volcker, Politics, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Salomon Brothers, U.S., UBS, Woodrow Wilson

- Marc Faber: “Paul Krugman Should Go And Live In North Korea” (ZeroHedge, Dec 13, 2012):

If there is one thing better than Marc Faber providing a free, must-watch (and listen) 50 minute lecture on virtually everything that has transpired in the end days of modern capitalism, starting with who caused it, adjustable rate mortgages, leverage, why did the Fed let Lehman fail, why was AIG bailed out, quantitative easing, Operation Twist, where the interest on the debt is going, which bubbles he is most concerned about, a discussion of gold and silver, and culminating with his views on a world reserve currency, is him saying the following: “The views of the Keynesians like Mr. Krugman is that the fiscal deficits are far too small. One of the problems of the crisis is that it was caused by government intervention with fiscal and monetary measures. Now they tells us we didn’t intervene enough. If they really believe that they should go and live in North Korea where you have a communist system. There the government intervenes into every aspect of the economy. And look at the economic performance of North Korea.” Priceless.

50 minutes of Faberian bliss:

YouTube

Tags: AIG, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Bonds, Bubble, Collapse, Debt, Dollar, Economy, Fannie Mae, Fed, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, Global News, Government, Lehman Brothers, LTCM, Marc Faber, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Operation Twist, Paul Krugman, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Stock Market, U.S.

- What Really Happened When Lehman Failed… and Why a Spanish Default Will Be Exponentially Worse (ZeroHedge, Nov 15, 2012)

Tags: Banking, Bonds, Collapse, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, Lehman Brothers, Politics, Spain, Wall Street

- “What’s Next?”: Simon Johnson Explains The Doomsday Cycle (ZeroHedge, Sep 22, 2012):

There is a common problem underlying the economic troubles of Europe, Japan, and the US: the symbiotic relationship between politicians who heed narrow interests and the growth of a financial sector that has become increasingly opaque (Igan and Mishra 2011). Bailouts have encouraged reckless behaviour in the financial sector, which builds up further risks – and will lead to another round of shocks, collapses, and bailouts.This is what we have called the ‘doomsday cycle’ (Boone and Johnson 2010). The cycle turned in 2007-8 and was most dramatically manifest in the weeks and months that followed the fall of Lehman Brothers, the collapse of Iceland’s banks and the botched ‘rescue’ of the big three Irish financial institutions.

The consequences have included sovereign debt restructuring by Greece, as well as continuing problems – and lending programmes by the IMF and the EU – for Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Italy, Spain and other parts of the Eurozone remain under intense pressure.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of England, Banking, Central Bank, Debt, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, IMF, Japan, Lehman Brothers, Politics, Society, U.K., U.S.

From the article:

Comment: It’s not “socialism for the rich”; that’s an oxymoron.

It’s corporatism, i.e. fascism, as defined by Benito Mussolini.

- Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts (Sott.net, Sep 1, 2012):

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.

What was revealed in the audit was startling:
Continue reading »

Tags: Alan Greenspan, Bailout, Bank of America, Banking, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Congress, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Government, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Politics, RBS, U.S., UBS