Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast to June 2025 - 24th Nov 24
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Climacteric for The Banking Cartel, Opportunity for Investors

Stock-Markets / Market Manipulation Apr 09, 2010 - 01:03 PM GMT

By: DeepCaster_LLC

Stock-Markets

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleThe Heat is intensifying on The Cartel*. Exposés of their Market Interventional Regime are increasingly appearing in the Mainstream Financial Media.


*We encourage those who doubt the scope and power of Overt and Covert Interventions by a Fed-led Cartel of Key Central Bankers and Favored Financial Institutions to read Deepcaster’s December, 2009, Special Alert containing a summary overview of Intervention entitled “Forecasts and December, 2009 Special Alert: Profiting From The Cartel’s Dark Interventions - III” and Deepcaster’s July, 2009 Letter entitled "A Strategy For Profiting From The Cartel’s Dark Interventions & Evolving Techniques - II" in the ‘Alerts Cache’ and ‘Latest Letter’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com. Also consider the substantial evidence collected by the Gold AntiTrust Action Committee at www.gata.org for information on precious metals price manipulation. Virtually all of the evidence for Intervention has been gleaned from publicly available records. Deepcaster’s profitable recommendations displayed at www.deepcaster.com have been facilitated by attention to these “Interventionals.” Attention to The Interventionals facilitated Deepcaster’s recommending five short positions prior to the Fall, 2008 Market Crash all of which were subsequently liquidated profitably.

Thus, we address certain of The Key Revelations and how Investors might Protect and Profit. The first excerpt is from Motley Fool.com.

“A recent extraordinary hearing held by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to discuss the need for position limits in metals futures morphed unexpectedly into what I will argue was the grandest expose of potential fraud in modern financial history…

There is not an investor among us who has not been deeply disappointed by revelations of shady dealings in the financial sector over recent years…

Given a financial industry so awash in systemic impropriety, perhaps the notion of a scheme to manipulate and suppress the prices of gold and silver isn't so loony after all…

…GATA has spent more than a decade compiling evidence of gold price suppression…

…during the CFTC hearings the world was finally offered a glimpse from inside the alleged manipulation process. Andrew Maguire, a professional metals trader in London, has claimed colleagues from JPMorgan Chase bragged of their ability to knock down the price of silver at will.

On February 3, 2010…he reportedly informed the CFTC's enforcement division of a manipulation event that would occur two days later…

Mr. Maguire alerted GATA of his allegations... which were then made public by GATA Chairman Bill Murphy during the recent hearings.

But wait... the story gets bigger still.

…The underlying argument here is that the volume of gold traded daily at the London OTC metals exchange (LBMA) is so large (at about 20 million ounces of gold per day), that in fact the over-the-counter market for "physical" metal can not possibly be backed on a 1:1 basis by actual physical supply. As Mr. Douglas asserts: "it's fractional-reserve accounting, and you can't trade that much gold -- it doesn't exist in the world"…

I believe that these revelations place this entire leveraged house of cards at risk. Conceivably, all it would take would be a few deep-pocketed investors overseas to call the market's bluff by demanding physical delivery of bullion, and the world's major futures exchanges could break down before our very eyes…Without mincing words, if the supposed quantities of gold and silver bullion simply are not there, then we may witness the greatest incidence of fraud in financial history.” (Emphasis added.)

“Is Your Safe Haven a House of Cards?” Christopher Barker, The Motley Fool, 4/5/10

The Evidence is now overwhelming that Cartel Intervention in the Markets has existed for years.

But The Cheese is becoming binding for The Cartel. Thus, it is crucial to consider the effect that certain specific revelations may have on Key Markets.

Consider the following specifics excerpted from a Huffington Post article.

“We've had a string of amazing revelations recently regarding the world's precious metals market…

This news has been actively suppressed in the mainstream media

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a U.S. government regulatory agency, held hearings in Washington D.C. in late March…

Analysts like silver maven, Ted Butler, hedge fund giant, Eric Sprott, and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) have been collecting evidence of this manipulation for years.

These hearings were supposed to be a non-event…

The CFTC even invited GATA's Bill Murphy and Adrian Douglas to make statements. Would you be surprised to learn that the cameras had a "technical malfunction" during Bill Murphy's statement, which magically righted itself immediately after he finished?

After the hearing, according to Douglas, Murphy was contacted by several major media outlets for more interviews. Within 24 hours, all the interviews were canceled. All of them

The second part is the appearance of London metals trader and now whistleblower Andrew Maguire, who understands JP Morgan's manipulation scheme inside and out…

Maguire has taken some personal risks to tell all this in public. In fact, almost immediately after his initial statements, he was run over by a car while walking down the street. The driver sped away, nearly running over some other pedestrians in his haste to escape. Fortunately, Maguire survived the hit-and-run "accident" with minor injuries. What a coincidence.

The third item was during the question-and-answer session at the CFTC hearings. GATA's Adrian Douglas.

For many years, people assumed that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the world's largest gold market, was a simple bullion market. Cash for gold. However, just in the past few months, more people are realizing that there is actually very little gold within the LBMA system…

During the CFTC hearings, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group apparently informed us that the LBMA banks actually have about a hundred times more gold deposits than actual gold bullion

This means that there are thousands of clients -- Asian and Middle Eastern governments and sovereign wealth funds among them -- who think they own hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions of dollars of gold bullion, and are being charged storage fees on that fantasy bullion, but they really own unsecured gold loans to the banks at a negative interest rate.

There is nothing new about this. Morgan Stanley paid several million dollars in 2007 to settle claims that it had charged 22,000 clients for storage fees on silver bullion that didn't exist…

The entire gold market is complete "ponzimonium," a word popularized by the CFTC's Bart Chilton…

There is an easy way to sidestep all the scams, frauds, and phony nonsense. Take delivery on your bullion, whether a 1 oz. Kruggerand or a truckload of 400 oz. institutional bars. Put it in an independent, insured depository that is not affiliated with any bank. Assay all the holdings for tungsten counterfeits. Then audit it periodically, for exact serial numbers and specified weights.” (Emphasis added.)

“It's Ponzimonium in the Gold Market” Nathan Lewis, Huffington Post, 3/31/10

Indeed, if you own Gold (or Silver) Bullion stored at a Major Financial Institution, there’s a chance that all your really own is an “unsecured Gold loan to the banks at a negative interest rate” as Lewis so aptly puts it.

First principle for Investors, if you do, or wish to, own Gold and/or silver (and you should), it is essential to demand a delivery of physical, assay it, and store it yourself.

Physical has commanded substantial premium to Paper in the past and will do so in the future.

Underlining the importance of Physical Possession are excerpts from an article from MarketOracle.co.uk:

“During the time I have been writing this newsletter, I have frequently mentioned the blatant manipulation of the gold and silver markets. For background on this issue, please see my article in the May, 2009, issue. The manipulation of gold has been accomplished primarily by central banks selling or leasing gold into the markets so as to artificially depress the prices. The bullion banks (e.g., JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others) have also helped suppress the prices of gold and silver by selling them short on the commodities exchanges.

Most of the time, I have focused on the gold manipulation schemes. That is because gold is the ultimate form of money, so it is the primary target of all those who benefit from the current fiat money system. However, silver is also a monetary metal. When the silver price rises, this can also be a sign that something is rotten in the fiat currency world. In addition, silver is a very important industrial metal. No doubt, there are parties who benefit from being able to buy silver at artificially depressed prices for their industrial needs…

At the CFTC hearings, there was some astounding testimony from Jeffrey Christian, founder of the CPM Group, a precious metals consulting firm. Mr. Christian, formerly of Goldman Sachs, actually admitted that the LBMA trades more than one hundred times the amount of gold that it actually has on hand to back up the trades! In short, most of those who think that they are buying physical gold on the LBMA are actually buying paper. The LBMA is counting on the fact that most of the buyers will not want to take physical delivery of their gold. If and when they do, then cash settlements are offered instead, exactly as reported by newsletter writer Jim Willie several months ago.

Mr. Christian's testimony has serious implications. It means that the LBMA is actually short many times the amount of gold it has on hand. If enough buyers insisted on taking delivery, then the LBMA would clearly be in default. In fact, given that the LBMA has been pressuring buyers to take cash plus 25% rather than physical delivery, it can be said that the LBMA has already been in default on its promises to deliver physical gold to buyers…

A Postscript:

On March 25, 2010, Bill Murphy made public the information about the metals market manipulation which London metals trader Andrew Maguire had provided to the CFTC. On March 26, the very next day, Mr. Maguire and his wife were injured when their car was struck by a hit-and-run driver in the London area. According to information obtained by GATA, Maguire's car "...was struck by a car careening out of a side road. When a pedestrian who witnessed the crash tried to block the other driver's escape, the other driver accelerated at the pedestrian, causing him to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. The other driver's car then struck two other cars in escaping. But the other driver was caught by police after a chase in which police helicopters were summoned."

Mr. Maguire and his wife spent the night in a hospital and are expected to make a full recovery. For now, we will assume that the incident was merely an accident.

I did an internet search to see whether or not any of the mainstream "news" organizations had reported on the market rigging information which Andrew Maguire provided to the CFTC. CNBC? Fox Business?  Bloomberg? Not one of them did.”

“Metals Market Manipulation Update: Are The Metals markets Rigged? Do Fish Swim?!” Jim Richter, The Market Oracle, 4/6/10

This raises the important issue of Shares in Gold and Silver Miners.

As acquisitions for one’s Core Holding well-managed Juniors (and Seniors) with Substantial Reserves are Superb Assets.

But one must bear in mind that the Representations of One’s Ownership Interest in Precious Metals Mining Companies, are Paper, or, more often, Electronic Records, housed on some Remote Server. They are not the metals themselves.

As such Paper/Electronic Data they are subject to price manipulation and periodic price Takedowns by The Cartel. Deepcaster has developed a Strategy  designed to protect Wealth from, and Profit in spite of, such Manipulation – see “Defeating the Cartel... With Profit, Part 2” (06/19/2009) and “Defeating the Cartel... With Profit, Part 1” (03/28/2008) in the ‘Articles by Deepcaster’ at www.deepcaster.com. This Strategy is designed to allow one to buy and profit from, Mining Shares in spite of Cartel Price Manipulation.

The Cartel’s Market Interventional Regime is pressured on other fronts as well, the primary one of which is Debt – Major Sovereign Nation Debts are increasing, and several Nations will, ultimately, be unable to pay their Debts.

Greece’s Problems are the Eurozones’ Problems, and the Eurozone’s Problems are to one degree or another Challenges for Investors/Taxpayers around the World, given the Interconnectedness of Today’s International Financial System.

Greek banks are being hit by a wave of redemptions as rich citizens and companies look to move their money to big global banks or offshore as the country's debt crisis rages, the Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site…

The report appeared to contradict recent data from the European Central Bank and comments to Reuters by analysts and Greek banking sources, who said there was no clear evidence of a major, extended deposit outflow from Greek banks

More than 3 billion euros ($4.05 billion) of deposits held by Greek households and companies left the country in February, while in January about 5 billion euros of deposits were moved out, the Telegraph quoted figures from Bank of Greece as showing…

However, latest ECB data showed no clear trend for deposit flows out of Greek banks.” (Emphasis added.)

“Panicky Investors Pull Cash Out of Greek Banks” Moneynews.com, 4/6/10

These revelations of ECB misstatements, highlights the issue of Official Data (Bogus, usually, as the ECB data above) versus Real Data. In order to make profitable investment decisions, it is essential to have the Real Data, such as that provided by Shadowstats.com on the U.S. Economy.

Official Numbers      vs.      Real Numbers

Annual Consumer Price Inflation reported March 18, 2010
2.14%                            9.39% (annualized March 2010 Rate)

U.S. Unemployment reported April 2, 2010
9.7%                              21.7%

U.S. GDP Annual Growth/Decline reported March 26, 2010
0.06%                            -4.62%

As well, and Investors/Taxpayers also need to be aware not only of prospective, or, defacto, present, sovereign nation default, (such as for the so-called PIIGS), but also of the prospective defaults of other states and governmental entities, and these defaults likely effects.

For example, several U.S. States are near, or de facto in, bankruptcy, California, for example, has over $500 billion in unfunded liabilities. California’s entire Pension system is at Great Risk.

“Researchers tallied CalPERS' unfunded liabilities at $239.7 billion and CalSTRS' liabilities at $156.7 billion.

The new figures are significantly higher than previous estimates from the pension funds. In July 2008, CalPERS estimated its unfunded liabilities at $38.6 billion and CalSTRS estimated its liabilities at $16.2 billion (AP/Ventura County Star, 4/5).”

“Study: California Public Pensions Underfunded by Over $500B” Californiahealthline.org, 4/6/10

Deepcaster Recommends Systematically Moving away from Paper “Wealth” –  for the Reasons Stated in “Opportunities to Profitably Escape Paper "Wealth" in 2010”  (03/12/2010) in the ‘Articles by Deepcaster’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com.

And then one must be prepared to cope with what is outright chicanery, to put it mildly.

To his credit, Eminent Mainstream Financial Writer, Peter Brimelow, recently chronicled such Chicanery in a recent Marketwatch.com article.

“Paranoids notoriously have enemies, but sometimes they have friends too. Long-derided financial conspiracy theories are finally being reported in the mainstream media. Could be ominous…

One example: another remarkable article by ferocious Goldman critic Matt Taibbi, posted March 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's Web site. (See "Looting Main Street.") It purports to chronicle the way in which J.P. Morgan Chase managed to saddle Jefferson County, Ala. (containing the city of Birmingham) with more than $5 billion debt for a sewage system originally supposed to cost $250 million, bringing it to the brink of bankruptcy…

If Taibbi is right about this Alabama atrocity -- and he says that there have already been more than 20 local convictions for corruption, plus an SEC fine for J.P. Morgan -- then anyone dealing with Wall Street is in effect putting themselves in the hands of the Sopranos. It's hard to see how any economy can survive this sort of predatory parasitism.”

“Paranoids have enemies, radical gold bugs have Wall Street; Commentary: Gold-conspiracy theories go mainstream” Peter Brimelow, Marketwatch.com, 4/5/10

All of this points to Increased Market Volatility and Major Markets Moves sooner rather than later. For Deepcaster’s Forecast for Gold, Silver, Equities, Crude Oil, U.S. Dollar and U.S. T-Notes and Bonds, see the ‘Alerts Cache’ and ‘Latest Letter’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com.

And as if coping with Chicanery were not enough, Investors / Taxpayers must be prepared to deal with the consequences when the Mainstream Media–perpetuated Delusion of a Sustainable Economic Recovery is finally punctured.

For example, not only is Residential Real Estate not recovering, Commercial Real Estate is likely to take a Big Bath in the next few months.

“About half of the country's commercial real estate mortgages will be "underwater" by the end of 2010, meaning the value of the assets will be less than what's owed on them, says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

That's bad news for the economy and small and midsize banks, which will need up to three years to work out the problems, Warren says.”

“Warren: Commercial Real Estate Is Sinking Fast” Forrest Jones, Moneynews.com, 4/6/10

For an overarching Strategy for addressing all these problems, see Deepcaster’s article “Avoiding Wealth Confiscation, with Profit!” (02/05/10) available in the ‘Articles by Deepcaster’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com.

In conclusion, for an excellent overview of the Magnitude of The Financial – Institutional Problem, Matt Taibbis well-documented articles in Rolling Stone are essential Reading.

“Lloyd Blankfein…CEO…at Goldman Sachs….left a peculiar voicemail…

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. "In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines," he said, "I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative."

The nation's six largest banks…set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007…

Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation…

The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there's still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street "earns" its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around "earns."… where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its "performance" was just that awesome?...

The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.

The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In fact, they're back conniving and playing speculative long shots in force — only this time with the full financial support of the U.S. government. In the process, they're rapidly re-creating the conditions for another crash, with the same actors once again playing the same crazy games of financial chicken with the same toxic assets as before

CON #1 THE SWOOP AND SQUAT

By now, most people who have followed the financial crisis know that the bailout of AIG was actually a bailout of AIG's "counterparties" — the big banks like Goldman

What is less understood is that the bailout of AIG counter-parties like Goldman and Société Générale, a French bank, actually began before the collapse of AIG, before the Federal Reserve paid them so much as a dollar. Nor is it understood that these counterparties actually accelerated the wreck of AIG

At the height of the housing boom, Goldman was selling billions in bundled mortgage-backed securities…to various institutional suckers…At the same time, in a glaring example of the perverse incentives that…Goldman was also betting against those same sorts of securities…

…Goldman made money coming and going…

…As AIG headed into a tailspin that fateful summer of 2008…So Goldman and other banks began demanding that AIG provide them with cash collateral…Goldman received $5.9 billion in collateral…

…Had AIG gone bankrupt, Goldman would have likely lost much of the $5.9 billion that it pocketed as collateral…

…according to the terms of the bailout deal struck when AIG was taken over by the state in September 2008, Goldman was paid 100 cents on the dollar on an additional $12.9 billion it was owed by AIG…Along with the collateral it pocketed, that's $19 billion in pure cash that Goldman would not have "earned" without massive state intervention

In fact, the Fed became not just a source of emergency borrowing that enabled Goldman and Morgan Stanley to stave off disaster — it became a source of long-term guaranteed income. Borrowing at zero percent interest, banks like Goldman now had virtually infinite ways to make money…

"You're borrowing at zero, putting it out there at two or three percent, with hundreds of billions of dollars — man, you can make a lot of money that way,"…

The "Pig in the Poke" scam is another key to the entire bailout era. After the crash of the housing bubble — the largest asset bubble in history…In the cleanup phase after that bubble burst, the whole game was to get taxpayers, clients and shareholders to buy these worthless cats, but at pig prices.

…Another new rule allowed banks to collect interest on the cash they were required by law to keep in reserve accounts at the Fed — meaning the state was now compensating the banks simply for guaranteeing their own solvency…

That's why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. "The most valuable part of the bailout," says Rep. Sherman, "was the implicit guarantee that they're Too Big to Fail." Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money…

More to the point, the fact that we haven't done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don't get it…” (Emphasis added.)

“Wall Street's Bailout Hustle: Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash” Matt Taibbi, Rollingstone.com, 2/17/10

Taibbi also chronicles the Devastating Effect ‘Creative Financing’ can have on Main Street.

“If you want to know what life in the Third World is like, just ask Lisa Pack, an administrative assistant who works in the roads and transportation department in Jefferson County, Alabama. Pack got rudely introduced to life in post-crisis America last August, when word came down that she and 1,000 of her fellow public employees would have to take a little unpaid vacation for a while. The county, it turned out, was more than $5 billion in debt…

As public services in and around Birmingham were stripped to the bone, Pack struggled to support her family on a weekly unemployment check of $260…

… There were also a few bills that were unique to the area — like the $64 sewer bill that Pack and her family paid each month. "Yeah, it went up about 400 percent just over the past few years,"…

The sewer bill, in fact, is what cost Pack and her co-workers their jobs. In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet…

Birmingham became the poster child for a new kind of giant-scale financial fraud, one that would threaten the financial stability not only of cities and counties all across America, but even those of entire countries like Greece…

…We live in a gangster state… In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime…

The original cost estimates for the new sewer system were as low as $250 million. But in a wondrous demonstration of the possibilities of small-town graft and contract-padding, the price tag quickly swelled to more than $3 billion…

Wall Street was happy to help. First, it employed the same trick it used to fuel the housing crisis: It switched the county from a fixed rate on the bonds it had issued to finance the sewer deal to an adjustable rate. The refinancing meant lower interest payments for a couple of years — followed by the risk of even larger payments down the road…

But then Wall Street got really creative. Having switched the county to a variable interest rate, it offered commissioners a crazy deal: For an extra fee, the banks said, we'll allow you to keep paying a fixed rate on your debt to us. In return, we'll give you a variable amount each month that you can use to pay off all that variable-rate interest you owe to bondholders.

In financial terms, this is known as a synthetic rate swap — the spidery creature you might have read about playing a role in bringing down places like Greece and Milan. On paper, it made sense: The county got the stability of a fixed rate, while paying Wall Street to assume the risk of the variable rates on its bonds. That's the synthetic part. The trouble lies in the rate swap. The deal only works if the two variable rates — the one you get from the bank, and the one you owe to bondholders — actually match. It's like gambling on the weather. If your bondholders are expecting you to pay an interest rate based on the average temperature in Alabama, you don't do a rate swap with a bank that gives you back a rate pegged to the temperature in Nome, Alaska…

For Jefferson County, the deal blew up in early 2008, when a dizzying array of penalties and other fine-print poison worked into the swap contracts started to kick in…

Last November, the SEC charged JP Morgan with fraud and canceled the $647 million in termination fees. The bank agreed to pay a $25 million fine and fork over $50 million to assist displaced workers in Jefferson County. So far, the county has managed to avoid bankruptcy, but the sewer fiasco had downgraded its credit rating, triggering payments on other outstanding loans and pushing Birmingham toward the status of an African debtor state. For the next generation, the county will be in a constant fight to collect enough taxes just to pay off its debt, which now totals $4,800 per resident.

… "It's not high finance," says Taylor, the former bond regulator. "It's low finance." And even if the regulators manage to catch up with them billions of dollars later, the banks just pay a small fine and move on to the next scam. This isn't capitalism. It's nomadic thievery.”

“Looting Main Street: How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece” Matt Taibbi, Rollingstone.com, 2/17/10

It is not yet too late to seize The Opportunity to achieve genuine reform of the financial system in this Session of the U.S. Congress. Achieving significant reform is in the Interest of Investor/Taxpayer’s around the World. John Tate, President of “Campaign” for Liberty tells us how.

“After nearly wrecking the U.S. economy with its backroom deals and hundreds of billions of worthless fiat currency, you would think Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve would be on every politician's target list.

But shockingly, Fed-loving senators, led by Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and backed by the Obama White House, are pushing legislation to give the Fed more power ... while stripping out Ron Paul's Audit the Fed.

Dodd's Fed Empowerment Act is now on the fast track in the Senate, but there is still time for liberty activists to expose and stop this powergrab…

Crafted by Senator Christopher Dodd, the Senate version would create a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be housed at the Fed and funded by it.

And the Connecticut senator would have us believe this agency would be "independent."…

The legislation also includes a new Financial Stability Oversight Council to "monitor" companies that supposedly could become "too big to fail."

under the Federal Reserve's supervision

Showing his utter contempt for the nearly 80% of Americans who think it's time to thoroughly audit the Federal Reserve, Chris Dodd's bill also strips out the complete audit of the Fed…

For far too long, the Federal Reserve has wielded its control over our money with disastrous results for the value of the dollar and the security of our economic future.

Enough is enough…

Tell them that if they are serious about financial reform, they will take every opportunity to push for a standalone, up or down vote on Audit the Fed, S. 604…

We can prevent further government meddling in our economy, but only if we take immediate action.

Call your senators Today!”

“You can stop the Fed from grabbing more power” John Tate, President of Campaign for Liberty, 4/8/10

Investors have a Window of Opportunity, but that Window will not be open much longer.

Best Regards,

By DEEPCASTER LLC

www.deepcaster.com
DEEPCASTER FORTRESS ASSETS LETTER
DEEPCASTER HIGH POTENTIAL SPECULATOR
Wealth Preservation         Wealth Enhancement

© 2010 Copyright DeepCaster LLC - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

DEEPCASTER LLC Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in