Friday, February 10, 2012

Manipulation And Abuse Confirmed In $350 Trillion Market

Just over three years ago, Zero Hedge first pointed out some dramatically meaningless inconsistencies in one of the world's most important numbers (which also happens to be "self-reported" and without any checks and balances) - the London Interbank Offered Rate, better known as LIBOR, which is the reference rate of a rather large market. Following that, we made a stronger case that the Libor, should really be abbreviated to LiEbor in "On the Uselessness of Libor" from June 2009, which alleged that this number is essentially manipulated, potentially with malicious intent. That alone got us a very unhappy retort from the British Banker Association (BBA) which is the banker-owned entity set to "determine" what the daily Libor fixing is based on how banks themselves tell us their liquidity conditions are. Well, as has been getting more and more obvious over the past two years, our allegations were 100% correct, and have now manifested in a series of articles digging through the dirt, manipulation and outright crime behind this completely fabricated number. And yet this should be the most aggravated offence in the capital markets, because LIBOR just so happens is the primary driver in determining implicit risk as a reference rate for $350 trillion worth of financial products. That's right - that one little number, now thoroughly discredited, has downtstream effects on $350,000,000,000,000.00 worth of notional assets. That's a lot. And while we are confident that nobody will ever go to prison for LIBOR fraud, which has explicitly been leading investors and speculators alike to believe that risk is far lower than where it truly is, what one should ask if the LIBOR rate is manipulated, and with is the entire floating and interest rate derivative market, not to mention CDS which are also driven off a Libor benchmark, what is there to say about the minuscule in comparison global equity market? In other words, does anyone honestly think that with the entire fixed income market pushed around by individuals with ulterior motives, that stocks are ... safe for manipulation?




The Ben Bernank...Quote Of The Day

And the winner is...
  • BERNANKE: HOUSING MAY NO LONGER BE VIEWED AS SECURE INVESTMENT
That's right. He just said that. And with that, a Lewis Black moment is coming on...





The Collapse Of America In Raw Numbers *Video*

by Mac Slavo, SHTFPlan.com:
Looking at the numbers behind our federal budgets reveals that the majority of our government’s spending goes not to running the day to day operations of government, but rather, to social safety net programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, welfare, food assistance, rental stipends and a host of other entitlement programs. In many cases, the programs themselves are used as a marketing tool during election campaigns, with the winner of an election often being the candidate who promises the most benefits to their constituents.
While this strategy of indirect vote buying has worked well for politicians on both sides of the aisle for many decades, and has been instrumental in ushering in an era of centrally planned economies and expansion of government influence on the individual lives of American citizens, it is as Bill Whittle suggests (video below), an unsustainable system that will ultimately fail.
Read More (and Watch the Video) @ SHTFPlan.com





Mortgage Settlement Is Just Another Stealth Bank Bailout

The 50-state settlement with the banks (Oklahoma didn’t sign, but supports letting the banks go scot-free) over mortgage fraud is a stealth bank bailout, according to many top observers. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
This is par for the course … All of Obama’s previous “mortgage relief” programs have really been stealth bank bailouts which screwed the homeowner. And see this.
For example:
Read More @ WashingtonsBlog.com





What if the News Media Reports Missiles Launched From the Iranian Coast Hit a US Aircraft Carrier With Deaths and Casualties?

by Bill Sardi, LewRockwell.com:
“We interrupt this broadcast for an important News bulletin…” [...]
If the American public were suddenly shocked by the news that three shoulder-fired missiles launched from the coast of Iran had hit a US aircraft carrier in the Straits of Hormuz and killed 200 navy personnel, would even one American question whether this report was accurate in its assumption that the regime in Iran was behind the missile attack?
How easy it would be for any party that wanted to instigate war to place saboteurs on Iran’s coast to aim shoulder-fired missiles at a US aircraft carrier positioned near the Straits of Hormuz where a third of the world’s oil tankers pass every day.
The very first posting I submitted to Lew Rockwell over a decade ago was entitled “Remember The Maine.” It was about events, all at sea, that triggered all the modern major world wars. All were staged events. I repeat them here:
Read More @ LewRockwell.com




Silver Update: Is Silver Outperforming The Gold Fractal?

by Hubert Moolman, SilverSeek.com:
Below, is an extract of my Silver Premium Update for 25 January 2012:
Since my last silver articles (here and here), the silver chart has been following the patterns, I have been tracking, quite nicely. Below is an updated version of the gold vs. silver fractal:

I have highlighted the patterns (marked 1 to 10) on gold and silver to illustrate how they are similar. It seems that silver is now just past point 12, and it has broken out at the blue downtrend line. If it follows the gold pattern exactly, it will move along in the channel formed by the two brown lines, just like gold did. If this happens, we could still wait a long time before the $50 level is challenged.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com




David Morgan Talks With Dr. Stan



Group Forces Congressional Hearing On Big Sis’ Twitter, Drudge Spying

Homeland Security is monitoring the web for anti-government sentiment and signs of social unrest
by Steve Watson, InfoWars.com

A privacy advocacy group has swayed Congress to hold a hearing next week into the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of monitoring social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as media reports and organizations, including The Drudge Report.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) recently obtained close to 300 pages of documents, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, detailing the federal agency’s “intelligence gathering” practices on the web.
Among the documents were guidelines from DHS instructing outside contractors to monitor the web for media reports and comments that “reflect adversely” on the agency or the federal government.
As Reuters reported last month, in early 2010 contractors were asked to spend 24 hours monitoring news media coverage on popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks, as well as news sites including the Huffington Post and The Drudge Report.
Read More @ InfoWars.com




Fraud & Technicals Converge to Make US Stock Markets Ripe for a Sell-Off

by JS Kim, The Underground Investor:
A brief but very important post today. The S&P 500 appears as if it’s ripe for a significant pull back right now. However, anyone that’s been following us for years now knows that we don’t believe technical charting patterns alone are good predictors of future stock market or asset behavior due to its “completely-rigged-by-the-PPT” nature.
[...]
Follow this link and you’ll find incontrovertible visual proof that the big Wall Street banks have been using their HFT algorithms to artificially pump US markets higher. Combined with the bearish rising wedge formation above and the very low daily trading volume that’s easy for the HFT machines to rig, one thing about fraud never changes. Fraud can often last much longer than one would be believe to be possible, but growth based upon fraud is unsustainable and will always eventually break down. Due to these rigging games, it’s become incredibly difficult to predict the timing of these inevitable sell-offs, but right now, the dam looks ready to break. Of course, if its imminent break is countered by the Feds funneling trillions of new dollars into the market, either covertly or openly, any possible continued rise in the market can only happen on the back of rapidly devaluing dollars, which in the end, means one will just have a greater amounts of worthless USDs.
Read More @ TheUndergroundInvestor.com





Voter Fraud in Minnesota Made Easy!

from VeritasVisuals:

Project Veritas, a group founded by James O’Keefe, the man many credit with taking down ACORN via his undercover video exposés, was in Minnesota recently. Using hidden cameras, they took a look at Minnesota’s alarmingly loose voter registration and absentee voting procedures. Election officials advise no ID necessary to register Timothy Tebow and Thomas Brady to vote in Minnesota. Absentee ballots are discussed, voter registration forms are given out, and Election officials blow the whistle on potential fraud in their own state.
Learn More @ WeWantVoterID.com




Not Buying Yet – Gold and Silver To Dip A Little More?

from TFMetalsReport.com:
Holy Toledo! How far would the metals be down today if margins had been raised instead of lowered??
I’ll try to touch upon several items this morning but I’m getting a bit of a late start so I’ll try to exercise a little brevity. First up, our overnight beatdown courtesy of The Goons at The LBMA. As Ranting Andy has so diligently chronicled, The Goons like to hit gold nearly every single night at exactly 3:00 a.m. EST. This happens regularly, often 3-4 times per week and on the nights The Goons don’t attack, The Monkeys on the Comex usually pick up the ball for them the next day. Sometimes, just to throw us off of their scent and, perhaps, keep us on our toes, The Goons throw us a little change-up. Last night was just such an event. Check out the chart below:
Read More @ TFMetalsReport.com





“Pink Ribbons” (Trailer)

[Ed. Note: Related. --- Society is riddled good-willed "symbolic" gestures. Every time you encounter one, you should be asking questions like, "Are the people wearing pink ribbons REALLY doing anything to cure cancer?" Why vote for Ron Paul, and support the troops by bringing them home, when you can just as proudly display a stupid yellow ribbon, and fail to ask the obvious question, "Are the yellow ribbons REALLY supporting the troops?" Why do anything about the problem of child abuse, when you can simply change your Facebook avatar to a cartoon figure, and avoid asking the question, "Does this cartoon REALLY do anything to reduce child abuse?" Why care at all about a global HIV/AIDS epidemic when you can just wear a stupid white ribbon, in order to pretend you're part of the solution? This movie trailer almost perfectly sums up everything that is wrong with our nearly endless list of good-willed symbolic gestures... Enjoy. ~SJB]









Hayek on Money: Let the People Choose

by Gabriel M. Mueller, GoldMoney.com:
Pile of money “With the exception only of the 200-year period of the gold standard (1714 to 1914 in Britain), practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money in order to defraud and plunder the people.”
In 1976, Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek wrote these bold words in a published address called Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Inflation. In it, Hayek makes the direct and commonsensical argument that the only true way to fight inflation was to keep government honest, and the only way to keep government honest was to take away government’s legal privilege to issue money exclusively. Hayek’s proposal was simple: repeal “legal tender” laws and let the people use whatever sort of money they want.
According to Hayek’s research, history proved two things: 1) that all representative governments eventually abuse their money-issuing privileges, which results in inflation; and 2) that people with access to various types of money always look for the most stable kind – usually gold or silver.
Read More @ GoldMoney.com




Leftist Media Resorts To ‘Conspiracy Theories’ To Sell Syria Invasion

Despite Arab League confirming opposition rebels are committing violence, Guardian blames Assad for terror attack
by Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars.com:
Desperate to sell another “humanitarian” invasion, the leftist media in the United Kingdom has resorted to inventing conspiracy theories about events in Syria as part of a campaign to depict President Bashar Assad’s government as genocidal, while completely failing to acknowledge that the country is in a state of civil war.
While the likes of the Guardian and other establishment leftist newspapers in Britain routinely savage anyone who dares to commit the thought crime of questioning the official story behind the 9/11 attacks or the London bombings, apparently it’s perfectly reasonable to continually imply that the wave of bombings and attacks targeting President Bashar Assad’s forces are false flags committed by the regime itself.
Read More @ InfoWars.com




A ‘Controlled Retreat’ by Central Banks in the Gold Market Isn’t Nearly Enough

by Chris Powell, GATA:
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
In his commentary this week, “Gold Cars and Gas Stations,” posted at GoldSeek, 24hGold, and 321Gold –
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1328632354.php
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-gold-cars-and-gas-statio…
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/thomson_s/thomson_s_020712.html
– financial letter writer Stewart Thompson remarks that “banks likely are manipulating gold, and manipulating it higher, with central bank buy programs” and that gold investors should take a break along with the gold price rather than keep “screaming that you’re being manipulated to death.”
Read More @ GATA.org




A Tale of Two Settlements

by Gonzalo Lira:

So yesterday, there were two big settlements: Greece, and the Mortgage Mess.
Completely independent of each other, both settlements not only happened on the same day, they happen to highlight two issues which ought to be bugging us all like cockroaches crawling through our underwear.
Issue One is how in both cases, the Too Big To Fail banksters won—and they won big. Again. Insofar as the mortgage settlement goes, they got what amounted to a speeding ticket, while getting a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card on the worst of the robo-signing and illegal foreclosures scandal. And insofar as the Greek situation goes, the banksters have gotten the IMF, the ECB and the EC to essentially put the Greek people’s collective nuts in a vise and squeeze until they scream “θείος!” (“Uncle!”)
Read More @ GonzaloLira.Blogspot.com




Say It Ain’t So: FOX Drops the Axe on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “FreedomWatch”

FOX Business Network Adds Encore Presentations of Marquee Business Programming
from MarketWatch.com:
NEW YORK, Feb 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — FOX Business Network (FBN) will debut a new primetime schedule featuring encore presentations of the channel’s top post-market programs, announced Kevin Magee, Executive Vice President of the network. Starting February 20th at 8 PM/ET, viewers will find additional airings of The Willis Report (5PM & 8PM/ET), Cavuto (6PM & 9PM/ET) and Lou Dobbs Tonight (7PM & 10PM/ET). The new lineup will replace FreedomWatch with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Power & Money with David Asman and Follow the Money with Eric Bolling.
In addition, FBN is developing a new 5PM/ET program hosted by Melissa Francis who joined the network from CNBC earlier this year. The show will debut in the second quarter, at which point The Willis Report will move to 8PM/ET, enabling FBN to be the only business network providing viewers with uninterrupted live coverage of financial news from 5AM/ET to 9PM/ET.
Read More @ MarketWatch.com





This is Why Ron Paul Will WIN



Greek Death Spiral Accelerates

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph.co.uk:

Another normal day at the Hellenic Statistical Authority.
We learn that:

Greece’s manufacturing output contracted by 15.5pc in December from a year earlier.
Industrial output fell 11.3pc, compared to minus 7.8pc in November.
Unemployment jumped to 20.9pc in November, up from 18.2pc a month earlier.

I have little further to add. This is what a death spiral looks like.
It is what can happen if you join a fixed exchange system, then take out very large debts in what amounts to a foreign currency, and then have simultaneous monetary and fiscal contraction imposed upon you.
Germany discovered this on the Gold Standard when it racked up external debt from 1925 to 1929 (owed to American bankers) in much the same way as Greece has done.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk




Silver Update: 2/09/12 Metals Margins




Felix Zulauf on the European Debt Crisis − No Painless Way Out

Money Printing Going Global
from FinancialSense.com:


Jim welcomes back Felix Zulauf, Founder and President at Zulauf Asset Management AG for another wide-ranging discussion. In the first of a two-part interview, Felix discusses the European debt crisis and believes the bailouts will be bigger than anticipated. He also sees money printing going global as central banks expand their balance sheets to equal or surpass the GDP of their respective countries.
Felix has worked in the financial markets and asset management for almost 40 years. He started his investment career as a trader for a large Swiss Bank and received training in research and portfolio management thereafter with several leading investment banks in New York, Zurich and in Paris. Felix joined Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), Zurich, in 1977 and held several positions over the years including managing global mutual funds, heading the institutional portfolio management unit and at the same time acting as the global strategist for the UBS Group. After two years with a medium-sized Financial Organization as a member of the executive board, he founded his wholly owned Zulauf Asset Management AG in 1990, allowing him to independently practice his own individual investment philosophy.
In 2001, he made two of his staff members to partners and sold the majority of his company to them in steps and acted only as advisor from 2003 onwards. Mr. Zulauf focused on macro and strategic issues within the firm. In spring 2009 Zulauf Asset Management was split in two parts and Felix Zulauf fully owns the split-off Zulauf Asset Management AG focusing on some advisory activities to selected family offices and institutions including a US based global macro fund.
Click Here to Listen to the Interview




Mortgage and Foreclosure Fraud, Syria and More: Weekly News Wrap-Up

 

 

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