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Paul Merrell

"Secret Scheme To Manipulate The Price Of Silver" - Lawsuits Against Banks Proceed | In... - 1 views

investmentwatchblog.com/lawsuits-against-banks-proceed

banksters litigation silver silver-futures

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Litigation alleging that Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC Plc illegally fixed the price of silver were centralised in a Manhattan federal court yesterday. The banks have been accused of rigging the price of billions of dollars in silver to the detriment of investors globally. Lawsuits filed by investors since July over the allegations were consolidated yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, following an order issued last Thursday by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, a special body of federal judges that decides when and where to consolidate related lawsuits. The banks abused their position of controlling the daily silver fix to reap illegitimate profit from trading, hurting other investors in the silver market who use the benchmark in billions of dollars of transactions, according to the suit. Investors claim, the banks unlawfully manipulated silver and silver futures.
  • The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that the cases should be handled by U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan, who is already overseeing similar litigation over alleged gold price fixing. Three lawsuits were originally filed in Manhattan, and two were filed in Brooklyn. The plaintiffs in the Brooklyn lawsuits had sought to have the litigation consolidated there. The banks had also asked that the litigation be consolidated in Brooklyn, in the Eastern District of New York. However, the multidistrict litigation panel said Manhattan made more sense because the defendants all had corporate offices there and also because the cases involved issues similar to the gold litigation. The plaintiffs allege that the banks abused their power as participants in the silver fix, a London based benchmark pricing method dating back to the Victorian era, in which banks fixed silver prices once a day by phone. In August, the system was replaced by a new benchmark system administered by the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and Thomson Reuters.
  • HSBC spokesman Neil Brazil declined to comment and representatives of the other banks did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This follows the initiation of similar actions against some bullion banks for alleged gold price manipulation earlier this year. The three named banks, Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, and HSBC are alleged to have abused their position at the LBMA to profit from inside knowledge. The fixing of the price of silver is a daily operation where banks on the panel of the LBMA agree on a price for the precious metals which are then used throughout the financial, jewellery and mining industries throughout the day. It is alleged that some of the banks who fix the price, position themselves advantageously in the silver market before the price is made public. “Defendants have a strong financial incentive to establish positions in both physical silver and silver derivatives prior to the public release of silver fixing results, allowing them to reap large illegitimate profits,” plaintiff Scott Nicholson told the AFP. Separately, Bullion Desk reported yesterday that JPMorgan Chase Bank is now the fifth accredited member of the silver pricing benchmark, the LBMA has confirmed, with others parties “in the pipeline”, a spokesman said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The American multinational bank which has been the subject of silver manipulation allegations by Max Keiser and others, took part in its first silver benchmarking session yesterday. A spokesperson said they had completed “strict regulatory controls” for accredited members.. JP Morgan becomes the fifth member, alongside HSBC Bank USA, Mitsui & Co Precious Metals, the Bank of Nova Scotia – ScotiaMocatta and UBS AG. Furthermore, the LBMA has confirmed that several other parties are also in the process of joining the list, subject to passing regulatory requirements. Several Chinese banks have expressed interest in participating in the new global price setting mechanism for silver, according to the head of the LBMA. The LBMA ushered in a new era of electronic benchmarking for London’s precious metals market in August when an algorithm was used for the first time to set the benchmark price for silver after recent scandals regarding price fixing and concerns about the nature of the gold and silver fix. It will be interesting to see if Chinese banks partake in the new fix process as the concern is that the fixes remain the play things of certain western banks and are not representative of global physical demand and supply of actual gold and silver bullion.
  • Manipulation of the silver market was covered in a recently released ‘Get REAL’ Special on Silver presented by Jan Skoyles. Mark O’Byrne of Goldcore.com was interviewed and the interview was an in depth look at this silver market today.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices? - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...ves-To-Suppress-Bullion-Prices

GOLD Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15
     
    "During 2015 the attack on bullion prices has intensified, driving the prices lower than they have been for years. During the first quarter of this year there was a huge upward spike in the quantity of precious metal derivatives. If these were long positions hedging the banks' Comex shorts, why did the price of gold and silver decline? More evidence of manipulation comes from the continuing fall in the prices of gold and silver as set in paper future markets, although demand for the physical metals continues to rise even to the point that the US Mint has run out of silver coins to sell. Uncertainties arising from the Greek No vote increase systemic uncertainty. The normal response would be rising, not falling, bullion prices. The circumstantial evidence is that the unregulated OTC derivatives in gold and silver are not really hedges to short positions in Comex but are themselves structured as an additional attack on precious metal prices. If this supposition is correct, it indicates that seven years of bailing out the big banks that control the Federal Reserve and US Treasury at the expense of the US economy has threatened the US dollar to the extent that the dollar must be protected at all cost, including US regulatory tolerance of illegal activity to suppress gold and silver prices."
Paul Merrell

Supply and Demand in the Gold and Silver Futures Markets - Paul Craig Roberts and Dave ... - 0 views

www.paulcraigroberts.org/...ul-craig-roberts-dave-kranzler

banksters gold-silver market fraud

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • This article establishes that the price of gold and silver in the futures markets in which cash is the predominant means of settlement is inconsistent with the conditions of supply and demand in the actual physical or current market where physical bullion is bought and sold as opposed to transactions in uncovered paper claims to bullion in the futures markets. The supply of bullion in the futures markets is increased by printing uncovered contracts representing claims to gold. This artificial, indeed fraudulent, increase in the supply of paper bullion contracts drives down the price in the futures market despite high demand for bullion in the physical market and constrained supply. We will demonstrate with economic analysis and empirical evidence that the bear market in bullion is an artificial creation. The law of supply and demand is the basis of economics. Yet the price of gold and silver in the Comex futures market, where paper contracts representing 100 troy ounces of gold or 5,000 ounces of silver are traded, is inconsistent with the actual supply and demand conditions in the physical market for bullion. For four years the price of bullion has been falling in the futures market despite rising demand for possession of the physical metal and supply constraints.
Gary Edwards

Federal Reserve Loans Need To Be Investigated - post-journal.com | News, Sports, Jobs, ... - 1 views

post-journal.com/...s-Need-To-Be-Investigated.html

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 12
     
    I'm almost too afraid to look, but the Federal Reserve must be stopped.  Let's see, the Treasury takes in $2 Trillion per year in taxes;  the ruling establishment has tripled the spending, pegging at $3.6 Trillion per year; meaning we have to finance a deficit of $1.6 Trillion per year; and we're facing interest payments on the national debt of $5 Trillion per year with unfunded "social" obligation at $100 Trillion.  Now we find out the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel passed out over $7 Trillion in goodies to member banksters before they secretly passed out $16.2 Trillion to the Cartel to cover the 2008 financial collapse losses. Time to dust off Executive Order 11110, issued by President John F Kennedy five months prior to the coup d'état, giving the Treasury Department the explicit authority to issue silver certificates backed by Treasury silver bullion, if needed.  Basically Order 11110 stripped the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel of it's power to loan money to the US Government at interest.  The Federal Reserve Notes in use would be competing with newly minted US Silver Certificates.   It would be easy enough to pay off the Bankster Cartel interest with official Federal Reserve Notes since there is so much paper out there.  But i would prefer the RiCO statue be invoked, assets seized, and charges of treason levied via the outrageous violations of the 1792 Coinage Act and conspiracy to destroy the dollar.   Many Americans, myself included, have long wondered why We the People would charge ourselves "interest" on money we borrow from our future selves?  Who does that?  But when we discover that the Federal Reserve is about as 'Federal" as Federal Express, the narrative wuickly leads to questions of how did it happen that we turned governance and stewardship of the national currency over to a private cartel of banksters?   Is the Federal Reserve Bankster Act of 1913 constitutional? Hardly.  Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution la
Paul Merrell

Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices? -- Paul Craig Roberts and D... - 0 views

www.paulcraigroberts.org/...ul-craig-roberts-dave-kranzler

banksters gold-silver-market fraud

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • We have explained on a number of occasions how the Federal Reserve’s agents, the bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia) sell uncovered shorts (“naked shorts”) on the Comex (gold futures market) in order to drive down an otherwise rising price of gold. By dumping so many uncovered short contracts into the futures market, an artificial increase in “paper gold” is created, and this increase in supply drives down the price. This manipulation works because the hedge funds, the main purchasers of the short contracts, do not intend to take delivery of the gold represented by the contracts, settling instead in cash. This means that the banks who sold the uncovered contracts are never at risk from their inability to cover contracts in gold. At any given time, the amount of gold represented by the paper gold contracts (“open interest’) can exceed the actual amount of physical gold available for delivery, a situation that does not occur in other futures markets. In other words, the gold and silver futures markets are not a place where people buy and sell gold and silver. These markets are places where people speculate on price direction and where hedge funds use gold futures to hedge other bets according to the various mathematical formulas that they use. The fact that bullion prices are determined in this paper, speculative market, and not in real physical markets where people sell and acquire physical bullion, is the reason the bullion banks can drive down the price of gold and silver even though the demand for the physical metal is rising.
  • For example last Tuesday the US Mint announced that it was sold out of the American Eagle one ounce silver coin. It is a contradiction of the law of supply and demand that demand is high, supply is low, and the price is falling. Such an economic anomaly can only be explained by manipulation of prices in a market where supply can be created by printing paper contracts. Obviously fraud and price manipulation are at work, but no heads roll. The Federal Reserve and US Treasury support this fraud and manipulation, because the suppression of precious metal prices protects the value and status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency and prevents gold and silver from fulfilling their role as the transmission mechanism that warns of developing financial and economic troubles. The suppression of the rising gold price suppresses the warning signal and permits the continuation of financial market bubbles and Washington’s ability to impose sanctions on other world powers that are disadvantaged by not being a reserve currency.
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

Gold: The Once and Future of Money | Silver Monthly - The Silver Investor's Resource - 1 views

www.silvermonthly.com/...d-the-once-and-future-of-money

Gold-currency history-of-money gold-standard silvermonthly

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 May 10 - Cached
  • although convenient, barter is an inefficient economic tool, because it is too arbitrary.  This arbitrariness is not conducive to productivity or prosperity
  • Reagan proposed his Rosy Scenario
  • Reagan believed a good economic policy was one that would “result in a better economy, not a worse one.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Lewis is proposing what he calls “a fully modernized version of the classical gold standard.” 
  • he proposes a new gold standard, which includes “a provision for convertibility.”  He explains that convertibility keeps governments honest.
  • His proposal includes a trading band of 2%, and a central banking system that exists for only one reason:  “the prevention of liquidity-shortage crises.” 
  • the most difficult part of such a transition would be the establishment of dollar/gold parity.
  • the “correct parity is the economy’s ‘center of gravity,’ the point that balances the forces of inflation and deflation and the interests of creditors and debtors.”
  • Gary Edwards on 13 May 10
     
    the gold standard is the foundation of any economy desirous of being a Camelot.  In that sense, then, Gold is a plea for a return to sanity - the gold standard. The book is presented in three parts.  Part One takes a look at the history of money, what it is and how it works.  Part Two examines the history of America's money, from Colonial silver through the 1930s and into the Reagan administration and the Greenspan years.  The third part of Gold discusses recent currency crises around the world, including Japan, the Asian crisis of the 1990s, Russia, China, Mexico and Yugoslavia.
Gary Edwards

The Looting Of America: The Federal Reserve Made $16 Trillion In Secret Loans To Their ... - 0 views

endoftheamericandream.com/...uption-that-has-been-uncovered

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • If the federal government shut down the Federal Reserve system, started issuing debt-free money and established a new system based on sound financial principles we might have a chance of turning this thing around.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11
       
      Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan all thought they could issue silver certificates from the US Treasury.  Only Reagan lived to tell about his once and future ambition, but even that was a close call. 1/4" from his heart to be exact.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11
       
      An interesting side note is that Sadam Hussein, Hitler, and Quadafi shared more than just tyrannical blood lust.  They each defied the world order of international Banksters by threatening to create hard currencies.  Sadam wanted to be paid for his oil in Euro's denominated in gold and silver equivalencies rather than dollar denominated contractual agreements.  Meaning, whatever the prive of gold/silver is on a given day instead of whatever the dollar contracts specify.  Hitler ended the Wiemar fiat currency and moved to a hard Deutch Mark based on Bankster gold used to lauch the national socialist movement (the Banksters also famously funded Lenin's international communist revolution).  And it's well known that Quadafi tried to convince the congress of African nations to move off the dollar/euro fiat currencies to a hard gold/silver backed African currency initially launched through the trade of oil, diamonds and yellow cake commodities. One thigns for sure.  The Banksters are very good at stirring nationalist sentiment, and using these militaries to defeat those who would defy their control of the worlds money.
  • “”If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation,the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson
Paul Merrell

JPMorgan to pay record $920 million to resolve trading probes - 1 views

www.cnbc.com/...s-into-trading-practices-.html

banksters JPMorgan penalties market-manipulation spoofing

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • JPMorgan Chase is set to pay a record $920 million to resolve probes from three federal agencies over its role in the manipulation of global markets for metals and Treasurys.The figure was released Tuesday morning by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a statement from Commissioner Dan Berkovitz. Last week, news reports indicated that the New York-based bank was nearing a settlement of almost $1 billion.The penalty is a record for spoofing, which is when sophisticated traders flood markets with orders that they have no intention of actually executing. The practice was banned after the 2008 financial crisis and regulators have made it a priority to stamp out.Of the $920 million, $436.4 million is a criminal monetary penalty, $172 million is a “criminal disgorgement amount” and $311.7 million is for victim compensation, according to the Department of Justice.
  • JPMorgan Chase is set to pay a record $920 million to resolve probes from three federal agencies over its role in the manipulation of global markets for metals and Treasurys.The figure was released Tuesday morning by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a statement from Commissioner Dan Berkovitz. Last week, news reports indicated that the New York-based bank was nearing a settlement of almost $1 billion.The penalty is a record for spoofing, which is when sophisticated traders flood markets with orders that they have no intention of actually executing. The practice was banned after the 2008 financial crisis and regulators have made it a priority to stamp out.Of the $920 million, $436.4 million is a criminal monetary penalty, $172 million is a “criminal disgorgement amount” and $311.7 million is for victim compensation, according to the Department of Justice.
  • The bank, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ that will expire in three years if the firm satisfies its obligations under the deal. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In his statement, the CFTC’s Berkovitz said he opposed the ruling from his agency that JPMorgan’s actions “should not result in any disqualifications under the ‘bad actor’ provisions of the securities laws.” He is apparently referring to the fact that the settlement isn’t expected to result in business restrictions on other areas of the firm.
  • The bank also has quietly settled a long-running lawsuit that accused the bank of manipulating precious metals markets with “spoofing” trades. The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by Daniel Shak, the hedge fund operator and high-stakes poker player, and two metals traders, Mark Grumet and Thomas Wacker.The three plaintiffs had accused JPMorgan of manipulating the silver futures market from 2010 through 2011 through spoofing trades. Details of the settlement were not disclosed in court filings.
  • In September 2019, federal prosecutors charged Nowak and two other former JPMorgan precious metals traders, Gregg Smith and Christopher Jordan, with participating in a racketeering conspiracy in connection with a multiyear scheme to manipulate the markets and defraud customers, as well as other crimes related to alleged spoofing.A superseding indictment was filed in the criminal case two months later, adding another defendant, ex-JPMorgan executive Jeffrey Ruffo, who had worked in hedge fund sales on the firm’s precious metals desk.All four defendants have pleaded not guilty. Trial in that case is scheduled to begin next April in Chicago federal court.
  • The CFTC noted in their press release that the agency continues to pursue civil litigation against Nowak and  Smith, for spoofing and attempted price manipulation.Although Shak’s lawsuit has been settled, JPMorgan still faces a class action lawsuit related to alleged spoofing in the precious metals markets.
Gary Edwards

CHILDREN KILLED OF KEVIN KRIM, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CNBC DIGITAL, AFTER RELEASING INFORMA... - 0 views

www.fourwinds10.net/...news.php

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel assasination murder

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12
     
    Incredible article about the behind-the-scenes story of the nanny murder of two small children in NYC.   First, it's a staged murder meant to send a clear message to ALL media.  The children were the offspring of Kevin Krim, CEO of CNBC digital.  His website had published a story about the Spire Law Group suing an entire class of bigshot BANKSTERS for the theft of $43 TRILLION dollars of tax payer money.  Second, this involves the US Government.  The Spire allegation is that the Feds actively helped and assisted the Bankster theft. Third, the story describes the historical background of these Bankster hits, assassination and threats.  Although not covered in the article, Presidential assassinations in particular have an unmistakable link to Executive Orders that the Treasury print Silver Certificates that would compete against Bankster notes.  In one way or another, it's all about control of the money system.  This list of Presidents includes Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy and Reagan. Original Press Release from the Spire Law Group:  ... http://goo.gl/ynV6O .... Wow! ................................... excerpt:: "On 10/25/2012 two corporate financial media bastions,  MarketWatch  (an affiliate of the Wall Street Journal) and CNBC, presented their readers with a bombshell.  In a too-good-to-be-true lawsuit, the top echelons of the USA's banking and civilian government had been sued for "racketeering and money laundering."  The suit requested "the return of $43 trillion to the United States Treasury."  Yes, you've read that right: 43 trillion-roughly 3 years worth of America's GDP or 3 times America's underestimate of its own national debt. The suit characterizes itself, according to these two corporate media tabloids, as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History.  [It identifies] $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the 'Banksters' and their U.S. r
Gary Edwards

Member List - ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA - 0 views

www.icleiusa.org/...member-list

Property-Rights Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth Agenda-21 ICLEI

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13
     
    ICLEI is a UN Agenda 21 initiative.  It's a direct assault on property ownership rights.  I had my own first hand view of these Marxists at work in the small town of Belmont California, when the Fire Chief presented a plan to turn 2/3rd's of the cities land over to the State by declaring it "a risk fire hazard zone".  The declaration would move the 2/3rds to State control and regulation, dramatically increasing the costs of building codes compliance and insurance, while effectively ending development and property improvement.  It would also end the sale of homes in these sectors since Home Owners insurance and property compliance would be prohibitively expensive.  Agenda 21 at work.  Right next door.   From TeaPartyORG:  http://goo.gl/QHIOS ......   "The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is a conglomerate of 600 national, regional, and local government associations who promote "sustainable development" and protection of the environment because of man-made global warming that does not exist. "Sustainable development" is the United Nations effort to contain and limit economic development in developed countries and thus control population growth. It is "sustainable de-growth," plain and simple. The focus is "low-income agriculture" and to set limits on the developed world. United Nations and its affiliates believe that first world countries polluted significantly during their development while urging third world countries to reduce pollution thus impeding their growth. Implementation of"sustainable development" would revert our society to a pre-modern lifestyle. ICLEI wants to keep the environment as pristine as possible through "ideal-seeking behavior." These euphemisms are not clearly defined in terms of what or who will evaluate or set the standards for this "ideal-seeking behavior." Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure to manage, count, and control assets. It is not concerned with
Paul Merrell

US Investigates World's Largest Banks for Precious Metals Price-Fixing / Sputnik Intern... - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...1018669832.html

banksters price-fixing precious-metals HSBC Credit-Suisse Goldman Societe-Generale

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The US Department of Justice is investigating a possible breach of law by 10 major banks during the price-setting process for precious metals, the Wall Street Journal reported. US prosecutors are currently examining the pricing for gold, silver, platinum and palladium in Britain's capital London, while the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has started a civil investigation, the newspaper said Monday, citing undisclosed sources close to the inquires.
  • The US Department of Justice is investigating a possible breach of law by 10 major banks during the price-setting process for precious metals, the Wall Street Journal reported. US prosecutors are currently examining the pricing for gold, silver, platinum and palladium in Britain's capital London, while the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has started a civil investigation, the newspaper said Monday, citing undisclosed sources close to the inquires.
  • Both agencies have already requested that banks provide the information necessary for the probe and even issued a subpoena to the world's second largest bank, the UK-based HSBC Holdings PLC. The list of banks under scrutiny also includes such giants as Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale. The investigation, which is currently in its early stages, is part of the US Justice Department inspection of alleged banking manipulation of financial standards, including the rigging of lending rates between banks as well as the handling of currency markets.
Paul Merrell

Clinton Email Hints that Oil and Gold Were Behind Regime Change In Libya Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ehind-regime-change-libya.html

war & peace Libya Hillary Gadafi gold-dinar petrodollar banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • On New Year’s Eve, 3,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server were released. One of them confirms – an email dated April 2, 2011 to Clinton from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal – that: Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. *** This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French. franc (CFA).
  • (Source Comment [This is in the original declassified email, and is not a comment added by us]: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, Increase French influence in North Africa, Improve his internal political situation in France, Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa) This may confirm what some of us have been saying for years.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16
     
    Time to check in again with that first link in the last sentence, then recall: [i] that series in the Washington Times on Hillary ignoring the intelligence reports saying that Libyan government forces were not in fact massacring civilians; [ii] the interview with the guy who was the source of the "massacre" reports admitting that his only source of information on the massacres he claimed were taking place had been provided by the Libyan "rebels;" [iii] the reported role of the French government, the CIA, and future Dept. of State Ambassador Stevens (killed in Benghazi post-coup) in launching the rebellion with mercenaries provided by Qatar; [iv] Hillary suckering the Russians into not vetoing the Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya; [v] the U.S. and allies promptly exceeding that authority to serve as the mercenaries' air force in accomplishing regime change; [vi] Gadafi's death after being repeatedly sodomized with a knife; and [vii] Hillary's cackling, "we came, we saw, he died" video. That's what happens if you try to establish gold as Africa's currency. The western banksters don't like that. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest each of their armpits.   
Paul Merrell

Paul Craig Roberts: Our Collapsing Economy and Currency - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33198.htm

war & peace economy currency financial-collapse

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used. The fiscal cliff is the result of the inability to close the federal budget deficit. The budget deficit cannot be closed because large numbers of US middle class jobs and the GDP and tax base associated with them have been moved offshore, thus reducing federal revenues. The fiscal cliff cannot be closed because of the unfunded liabilities of eleven years of US-initiated wars against a half dozen Muslim countries--wars that have benefitted only the profits of the military/security complex and the territorial ambitions of Israel. The budget deficit cannot be closed, because economic policy is focused only on saving banks that wrongful financial deregulation allowed to speculate, to merge, and to become too big to fail, thus requiring public subsidies that vastly dwarf the totality of US welfare spending.
  • The real crisis facing the US is the impending collapse of the US dollar’s foreign exchange value. The US dollar’s value in relation to silver and gold has already collapsed. In the past ten years, gold’s price in US dollars has increased from $250 per ounce to $1,750 per ounce, an increase of $1,500. Silver’s price has risen from $4 per ounce to $34 per ounce. These price rises are not due to a sudden scarcity of gold and silver, but to a flight from the dollar into the two forms of historical money that cannot be created with the printing press.
  • What can be done? For a number of years I have pointed out that the problem is the loss of US employment, consumer income, GDP, and tax base to offshoring. The solution is to reverse the outward flow of jobs and to bring them back to the US. This can be done, as Ralph Gomory has made clear, by taxing corporations according to where they add value to their product. If the value is added abroad, corporations would have a high tax rate. If they add value domestically with US labor, they would face a low tax rate. The difference in tax rates can be calculated to offset the benefit of the lower cost of foreign labor. As all offshored production that is brought to the US to be marketed to Americans counts as imports, relocating the production in the US would decrease the trade deficit, thus strengthening belief in the dollar. The increase in US consumer incomes would raise tax revenues, thus lowering the budget deficit. It is a win-win solution.
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  • The second part to the solution is to end the expensive unfunded wars that have ruined the federal budget for the past 11 years as well as future budgets due to the cost of veterans’ hospital care and benefits. According to ABC World News, “In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 2,333,972 American military personnel have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or both, as of Aug. 30, 2011 [more than a year ago].” These 2.3 million veterans have rights to various unfunded benefits including life-long health care. Already, according to ABC, 711,986 have used Veterans Administration health care between fiscal year 2002 and the third-quarter of fiscal year 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-veterans-numbers/story?id=14928136#1 The Republicans are determined to continue the gratuitous wars and to make the 99 percent pay for the neoconservatives’ Wars of Hegemony while protecting the 1 percent from tax increases. The Democrats are little different.
  • No one in the White House and no more than one dozen members of the 535 member US Congress represents the American people. This is the reason that despite obvious remedies nothing can be done. America is going to crash big time. And the rest of the world will be thankful. America along with Israel is the world’s most hated country. Don’t expect any foreign bailouts of the failed “superpower.”
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Gerald Celente on Multinationalism, Breaking the Chains and Individual... - 0 views

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gerald-celente Globalist-Elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gerald Celente: As I said, they're in a trap and it's a tapering trap, the quantitative easing trap. They can't keep printing more money because it's going to devalue the currency. And by the way, this is complicated, because it's not only the United States that's doing it; most of the central banks are doing it. China, the Europeans – they're all pumping money into their systems to keep them afloat. They're all in a trap. A time comes when you just can't keep doing it anymore. You can only take heroin so much before it kills you. This is monetary methadone and it's not going to cure the problem so they're going to have to stop. When it stops, that's when we go back into a recession and/or a depression.
  • Is it a depression? Is it a depression if you live in Greece or Spain or Portugal? Is it a depression if you're among the over 12% unemployed in Italy? When you look at John Williams's ShadowStats, in the US we're looking at about 22% unemployment. So yes, it's a depression for a lot of people. And then again, median household income in the US, accounting for inflation, is 10% below 1999 levels. That's a fact. So if you're earning 10 percent less for your family than you were in 1999 and the costs have skyrocketed since then, particularly in healthcare, food, rent, property, gas and other costs, do you think you're living in a depression? Daily Bell: Is central banking an art, a science or just a fraud?
  • Gerald Celente: Neither. It's a criminal operation. Throughout the 1800s, one of the major issues of every presidential election was whether or not to have a central bank. They fought it successfully not to have one until 1913. These are private banks that are running our country and many others. This goes back to the scriptures; it's Christ chasing the moneychangers out of the temple. The moneychangers have just got new names – Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and, of course, JPMorgan Chase got that name because you're going to have to chase them to get your money because they just put a limit on how much you can withdraw or deposit each month in certain accounts, with a limit of $50,000.
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  • Daily Bell: It seems like people don't believe in central banking anymore so why does it continue? What holds it up in a so-called democracy where people have a vote? Gerald Celente: Most people don't even know what a central bank is and they still believe the lie that the Federal Reserve is a quasi-government institution when it's not. It's a totally private bank. Most people don't even know that. So most people are uninformed and like in all countries, they follow their leaders. Very few people rebel. There was an incident that happened in late October in the States. Hillary Clinton was speaking in Buffalo, delivering her model for what is required to solve complex problems. There was a heckler in the crowd who she admonished by saying, "... which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking." What patronizing bullshit. You know what happened? The audience of 6,500 stood up and gave her a standing ovation that extended on and on. So it's the people. The people can blame the politicians all they want, but as I see it, it's the people's responsibility for the state of their nation.
  • Daily Bell: What's the employment picture like going forward in the US?
  • Gerald Celente: Lower paying jobs, less benefits, more temporary jobs and I think the question at the end is rather than going forward in the US it should be what's going forward in Slavelandia, because that's what it's become. You get out of college and you're an indentured servant. For the rest of your life you have to pay off your debt for your degree in worthlessness, for the most part. There are degrees that are worth something but not a lot of them. Where are you going to work? Name the company – Macy's? Starbucks? You can become a barista. Are they going to start teaching Shipping & Handling 101 in college? What are they going to do? Who are you going to work for? What are you going to do – stock shelves? This is better than slavery because when they had the plantation you had to take care of the slaves. Now you can just use them up and send them home. It's kind of like Bangladesh right here in the good 'ol USA.
  • Daily Bell: How about the rest of the world? Give us a global summary.
  • Gerald Celente: The global summary is this: Everybody can see what happened when the Federal Reserve talked about tapering several months ago. All of a sudden you saw the emerging markets start to crash; they dropped about 11% in a year before the Fed reversed its policy because all the hot, low-interest rate money that was leaving the US was flowing into the emerging markets, where you could borrow the money cheaply. So when they started to talk about tapering the hot money started flowing out of these countries, such as India, Brazil. They were really suffering from it and so were their stock markets. So without the cheap money flowing from the central banks, the entire global economy goes on stall and then it turns negative. You can see what's going on in China now; they're facing a banking crisis. Real estate prices in cities like Shanghai and Beijing have gone up over 20% in a year and no matter how the government tries to deflate it, the housing bubble keeps growing. The banks also have a lot of bad loans they're carrying. Now the Chinese government is trying to restrain that free-flow of cheap money, and what happens to their stock market when they do? It dives and the contagion spreads to other Asian equity markets. They all start dropping. It's all tied to cheap money and when the cheap money spigot begins to tighten up the global economy goes down. As I've made very clear, when the interest rates go up the economies go down – it's as simple as that. They've run out of this game. Compare this with the Great Depression, when it began essentially in 1930. This recession begin in 2008. It's now 2013 – we're only in 1935.
  • Daily Bell: China and the BRICS seem to be making noises about setting up their own monetary infrastructure without the dollar. Will that happen?
  • Gerald Celente: Yes, they are making noise, but reality is another issue, and the currency issue is complicated. The dollar goes down but where are you going to go, the euro? We were talking briefly about what's going on in Europe. There's financial market propaganda boasting that the worst of the eurozone crisis is over. They're bragging that The GDP of Spain was just reported to have gone up 0.1% and they made a big deal out of it. "The recession's over" is the B.S. message. No, the recession is not over! They're cooking the numbers to make a rotten situation look less rotten. In countries like Greece and Spain, youth unemployment is running above 50% and overall unemployment around 30%. The recession continues unabated, and there's absolutely no way out of this and they can't print their way out. Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland are doing terrible – what would anyone substitute euros for dollars? And what other currency choices are there, the yuan? As I mentioned, China has plenty of its own problems. They've been dumping a lot of cash into that society to keep it going. You know what China's greatest fear is? It's not the Spratly Islands or the South and China Sea territorial problems that are going on between them, the Philippines, Vietnam or the Japanese. China's greatest fear is its people. They've got 1.2 billion of them and if they're hungry or not happy there's going to be a lot of problems.
  • Again, what do you substitute the dollar for, Brazil's real or the Indian rupee? Remember, we saw what happened when the hot money started leaving the emerging market countries. The South African rand is also under pressure. The BRIC nations can speak as much as they want and they may have the greatest intention to create another reserve currency, but the fact is their economies are not robust or independent enough to create one at this time. As I said, talk is one thing, facts are another and although the world is less dependent on the dollar it is still by far the major reserve currency of the world and I don't see that rapidly changing unless there's a catastrophe that would cause it to happen. However, over the years, I do expect a new reserve model to develop.
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk about military action, particularly in Syria where Al Qaeda types have been fighting on the side of the US and NATO. Why does the US want to destabilize Syria and what country will be next – Iran? Russia?
  • Gerald Celente: We wrote about this in the Trends Journal going back to 2011. After Libya fell, Syria was the only port that the Chinese and the Russians had in the Mediterranean – the Port of Tartus. And also, Syria's only real ally in that area is Iran and, of course, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So with Syria out of the way there's nothing in the Middle East other than Iran to stop the continued spread of US influence and control in that area. It's really more about that than anything we see – again, having more control over that area for the US to do as it wants, with Iran really being the main target.
  • When President Obama backed off his red line threat and didn't attack Syria that was a tipping point. And, as important, the vast majority of Americans opposed the attack plan. That was a significant statement. The country said it was tired of war – and so are a lot of other nations.
  • Gerald Celente: Again, talk about morality and the recent Amnesty International report that said the United States was breaking international law in its use of drones to kill people that were convicted of nothing in addition to innocent people. How much more immoral could you get?
  • I can tell you how much immoral. How about starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in Iraq with the proof that a war was started that killed at least a half a million people that was started under fake reasons; lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. An Afghan war that's the longest war in American history, the war in Libya that they called a time-limed, scope-limited kinetic action that's destroyed the entire nation. You want to talk about immorality? How about the "too big to fail"? The government mandated immoral act of stealing money from the American people to give it to the banks, financiers and favored corporations? They say the fish rots from the head down and that's it; the fish has rotted in America for a long time. It didn't start with Obama. It goes back to Bush, Clinton, and keeps going back. Society gets the message from the top and, as I see it, they're simply following their leaders. For example, if their leader can start wars, rob people, take their money, why shouldn't I? Why should I operate on a moral level when immorality is condoned at the top?
  • Most recently, the United States government, in virtually every fashion of behavior, has been fascist. I don't say that by throwing the word out loosely. It's called the merger of corporate state and powers. It goes back to "too big to fail." Under capitalism there's no such thing. You're not too big to fail; you fail. Big, small, medium, you fail – it's capitalism.
  • Not anymore. You have your money taken from you by government order and it's transferred to the people who are the most favored by those in power. That's the only reason why the stock market keeps going up and why the multinationals are doing so well. That's where the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is using in their quantitative easing is going. Then when you look at the other levels of immorality, as I mentioned, why shouldn't people feel as though they can do anything the government is doing? That's why it just keeps getting worse and worse. It's reflected in the music, the politics, every element of culture – both pop culture and political culture.
  • Under the dictates of the eurozone and globalization, the love of one's culture and pride of nation is denounced as "populism."
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk hard money. Can you give us an update on the price action of gold and silver? How about equity? Where is the stock market headed? We think the big boys are trying to rev it up and go for one last killing. Your thoughts?
  • Gerald Celente: The stock market will continue to rise as long as interest rates stay low. That's the best estimate you could give. They keep all of this quantitative easing that, for example, benefits the big private equity firms. Look what's going on in the United States with Blackstone Group. They own 40,000 homes. Where are they getting the money? Deutsche Bank is loaning them tons of money because they're getting money with overnight rates near zero, and they in turn loan it to the "bigs" really cheaply so it is just another example of what's keeping the whole stock market scam going.
  • As long as the money stays cheap the stock market keeps going up. As the money stays cheap gold and silver go up, and you're seeing gold making a bit of a rebound lately because of, again going back to the employment numbers in the States – there is no recovery, the jobs stink, they're not creating enough jobs. The tapering keeps going on, which is a devaluation of the currency, and quantitative easing continues. As long as money stays cheap gold goes up. Now, gold may go down when quantitative easing and tapering slow down. However, that's only going to be temporary because when that happens the bond market's going to explode, when interest rates go up, there's going to be another financial crisis. My best analysis at this time is the second quarter of 2014. The 'experts' are saying the stock market is booming. It has gone from a 14,000 high in 2007 to mid-15,000 now. Accounting for inflation, the stock market has to be about 15,750 just to be back at the 2007 level.
  • Daily Bell: There are other trends, of course, ones you often mention. You spoke to us last time about the New Millennium Renaissance.
  • Gerald Celente: Back to the renaissance... To me, that's the only thing that's going to change the future. We need a cultural, artistic and moral redevelopment, a restoration. Every issue that we've been talking about so far is based on human behavior and the human spirit – morality or immorality. Until morality is restored and the human spirit rises, nothing's going to change. As I was mentioning before, the fish rots from the head down. If you see the people at the head acting immorally, and from the head all the way down, why shouldn't you or I act immorally? What license do they have to steal that we don't? What license do they have to kill that we shouldn't?
Paul Merrell

Billionaires Make War on Iran - The Unz Review - 0 views

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Israel-lobby Iranian-nukes-myth UANI Restis Kaplan litigation DoJ secrets

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • All the pro-Israel anti-Iran groups engage in pressure tactics on Capitol Hill and have been effective in dominating the political debate. Of thirty-six outside witnesses brought in to testify at seven Senate hearings on Iran since 2012 only one might be characterized as sensitive to Iranian concerns. The enormous lobbying effort enables the anti-Iran groups to define the actual policies, move their drafts of legislation through congress, and eventually see their bills pass with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. It is democracy in action if one accepts that popular rule ought to be guided by money and pressure groups rather than by national interests. Less well known is United Against Nuclear Iran, which has a budget just shy of $2 million. UANI is involved in the New York lawsuit. The group, which has somehow obtained a 501[c]3 “educational” tax status that inter alia allows it to conceal its donors, has offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City. It is active on Capitol Hill providing “expert testimony” on Iran for congressional committees, to include “help” in drafting legislation. At a July Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran all three outside witnesses were from UANI. It is also active in the media but is perhaps best known for its “name and shame” initiatives in which it exposes companies that it claims are doing business with Tehran in violation of US sanctions.
  • UANI is being sued by a Greek billionaire Victor Restis whom it had outed in 2013. Restis, claiming the exposure was fraudulent and carried out to damage his business, has filed suit demanding that UANI and billionaire Thomas Kaplan turn over documents and details of relationships regarding UANI donors who it is claimed are linked to the case. Kaplan, a New York City resident, made his initial fortune on energy exploration and development. More recently he has been involved in commodities trading in precious metals. His wife Daphne is Israeli and his involvement in various Jewish philanthropies both in the US and in Israel have invited comparison with controversial deceased commodities trader Marc Rich, who reportedly worked closely with the Israeli government on a number of projects. The Justice department would like to the see the UANI lawsuit go away as it is aware that what is being described as “law enforcement” documents would include both privileged and classified Treasury Department work product relating to individuals and companies that it has investigated for sanctions busting. Passing either intelligence related or law enforcement documents to a private organization is illegal but the Justice Department’s only apparent concern is that the activity might be exposed. There is no indication that it would go after UANI for having acquired the information and it perhaps should be presumed that the source of the leak is the Treasury Department itself.
  • Who or what provided the documents to a private advocacy group that is also a tax exempt foundation supported by prominent businessmen with interests in the Middle East is consequently not completely clear but Restis is assuming that the truth will out if he can get hold of the evidence. The lawsuit claims that UANI intimidates its targets by defaming their business practices as well as by demanding both examination of their books and an audit carried out by one of its own accountants followed by review from an “independent counsel.” Kaplan is named in the suit as he appears to be the gray eminence behind UANI. He once boasted “we’ve (UANI) done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative.” Kaplan also employs as a director or officer in six of his companies the Executive Director of UANI Mark Wallace and reportedly arranged the awarding of the Executive Director position at Harvard’s Belfer Center to its President Gary Samore. Kaplan is a business competitor to Restis, whose lawyers are apparently seeking to demonstrate two things: first, that the US government has been feeding sometimes only partially vetted information to UANI to help in its “name and shame” program and second, that UANI is itself supported by partisan business interests like Kaplan as well as by foreign sources, which apparently is meant to imply Israel. Or even the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, is on the UANI advisory board, which also includes ex-Senator Joseph Lieberman and former Senior Diplomat Dennis Ross, both of whom have frequently been accused of favoring Israeli interests and both of whom might well have easy access to US government generated information.
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  • And then there is the Muhadedin-e-Khalq, the Iranian terrorist group that has assassinated at least six Americans and is now assisting the Israeli government in killing Iranian scientists, a prima facie definition of what constitutes terrorism. The group was on the State Department terrorist list from 1997 until 2012, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton de-listed it in response to demands coming from friends of Israel in Congress as well as from a large group of ex government officials, many of whom were paid large honoraria by the group to serve as advocates. The paid American shills included former CIA Directors James Woolsey and Porter Goss, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Louis Freeh and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton. The promoters of MEK in congress and elsewhere claimed to be primarily motivated by MEK’s being an enemy of the current regime in Tehran, though its virulent anti-Americanism and terrorist history make it a somewhat unlikely poster child for the “Iranian resistance.”
  • Supporters of MEK also ignore the fact that the group is run like a cult, routinely executes internal dissidents, and has virtually no political support within Iran. But such are the ways of the corrupt Washington punditocracy, lionizing an organization that it should be shunning. MEK’s political arm is located in Paris and it has long been assumed that it is funded by the Israeli government and by at least some of the same gaggle of billionaires, possibly including their Israeli counterparts, who support the anti-Iranian agenda in the United States.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14
     
    More detail about the extraordinary action of the Dept. of Justice to negotiate a settlement because discovery requested from the United Against Nuclear Iran private organization would include privileged and classified "law enforcement" records.
Paul Merrell

"It's Carnage" - Swiss Franc Soars Most Ever After SNB Abandons EURCHF Floor; Macro Hed... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...dons-eurchf-floor-macro-hedge-

economic-collapse Switzerland negative-interest-rate FX bill-and-bond-yields-negative banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Over two decades ago, George Soros took on the Bank of England, and won. Just before lunch local time, the Swiss National Bank took on virtually every single macro hedge fund, the vast majority of which were short the Swiss Franc and crushed them, when it announced, first, that it would go further into NIRP, pushing its interest rate on deposit balances even more negative from -0.25% to -0.75%, a move which in itself would have been unprecedented and, second, announcing that the 1.20 EURCHF floor it had instituted in September 2011, the day gold hit its all time nominal high, was no more. What happened next was truly shock and awe as algo after algo saw their EURCHF 1.1999 stops hit, and moments thereafter the EURCHF pair crashed to less then 0.75, margining out virtually every single long EURCHF position, before finally rebounding to a level just above 1.00, which is where it was trading just before the SNB instituted the currency floor over three years ago.
  • The SNB press release:
  • The resultant move across all currency pairs has seen the EUR and USD sliding, the USDJPY crashing, and US futures tumbling even as European stocks plunged only to kneejerk higher as markets are in clear turmoil and nobody knows just what is going on right now. In other asset classes, Treasury yields, understandably plunged across the entire world, and the entire Swiss bond curve left of the 10 Year is now negative, with the On The Run itself threatening to go negative soon as can be seen on the table below: All Swiss government bill and bond yields out to 7 years are negative: pic.twitter.com/b4YCVSDFu7 — Jamie McGeever (@ReutersJamie) January 15, 2015 Crude and other commodities, except gold, are also tumbling, as are most risk assets over concerns what today's epic margin call will mean when the closing bell arrives. An immediate, and amusing, soundbite came from the CEO of Swatch Nick Hayek who said that "words fail me" at the SNB action: "Today's SNB action is a tsunami for the export industry and for tourism, and finally for the entire country." More from Reuters:
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  • Swatch Group UHR.VX Chief Executive Nick Hayek called the Swiss National Bank's decision to discontinue the minimum exchange rate on the Swiss franc a "tsunami" for the Alpine country and its economy.   "Words fail me! Jordan is not only the name of the SNB president, but also of a river… and today's SNB action is a tsunami; for the export industry and for tourism, and finally for the entire country," Hayek said in an emailed statement on Thursday.   Swiss watchmakers, which are also grappling with weak demand in Asia, are very exposed to moves in the Swiss franc exchange rate because their production costs are largely in Swiss francs, but most of their sales are done abroad.   Shares in Swatch Group fell 15 percent at 1056 GMT, while Richemont CFR.VX was down 14 percent, underperforming a 9 percent drop in the Swiss market index .SSMI following the SNB's announcement.    "Absolutely shocking ... For companies with international operations – translated earnings are going to be lower and if companies make products in Switzerland it is going to hurt margin. It is a terrible day for corporate Switzerland," Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Jon Cox said
  • Indeed, in retrospect, it does seem foolhardy that the SNB, whose balance sheet ballooned to record proportions just to defends it currency for over three years would give up so easily. The one silver lining, so to say, is that gold prices in CHF just crashed by some 13%. Some more soundbites from strategists, none of whom foresaw this stunning move:
  • However, the best soundbites today will surely come from US hedge funds which are just waking up to the biggest FX shocker in years, and of course, any retail investors who may have been long the EURCHF, and who are not only facing epic margin calls, but are unable to cover their positions, as one after another retail FX brokerage has commenced "Rubling" the Swissy and the CHF pair is suddenly not available for trading for retail accounts. To say that today will be interesting, is an understatement.
Paul Merrell

Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Wins Rosemary Award - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...20150318

Hillary Auction 2016 email-scandal State-Dept. gov't.-CIOs

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton E-Mail Controversy Illuminates Government-Wide Failure National Security Archive Lawsuit Established E-Mails as Records in 1993 CIO Council Repeats as Rosemary "Winner" for Doubling Down On "Lifetime Failure" Only White House Saves Its E-Mail Electronically, Agencies No Deadline Until 2016
  • The Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance of 2014, according to the citation published today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org. The National Security Archive had hoped that awarding the 2010 Rosemary Award to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council for never addressing the government's "lifetime failure" of saving its e-mail electronically would serve as a government-wide wakeup call that saving e-mails was a priority. Fallout from the Hillary Clinton e-mail debacle shows, however, that rather than "waking up," the top officials have opted to hit the "snooze" button. The Archive established the not-so-coveted Rosemary Award in 2005, named after President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had erased 18-and-a-half minutes of a crucial Watergate tape — stretching, as she showed photographers, to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Bestowed annually to highlight the lowlights of government secrecy, the Rosemary Award has recognized a rogue's gallery of open government scofflaws, including the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Justice Department, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
  • Chief Information Officer of the United States Tony Scott was appointed to lead the Federal CIO Council on February 5, 2015, and his brief tenure has already seen more references in the news media to the importance of maintaining electronic government records, including e-mail, and the requirements of the Federal Records Act, than the past five years. Hopefully Mr. Scott, along with Office of Management & Budget Deputy Director for Management Ms. Beth Cobert will embrace the challenge of their Council being named a repeat Rosemary Award winner and use it as a baton to spur change rather than a cross to bear.
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  • Many on the Federal CIO Council could use some motivation, including the beleaguered State Department CIO, Steven Taylor. In office since April 3, 2013, Mr. Taylor is in charge of the Department's information resources and IT initiatives and services. He "is directly responsible for the Information Resource Management (IRM) Bureau's budget of $750 million, and oversees State's total IT/ knowledge management budget of approximately one billion dollars." Prior to his current position, Taylor served as Acting CIO from August 1, 2012, as the Department's Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) and Chief Technology Officer of Operations from June 2011, and was the Program Director for the State Messaging and Archival Retrieval Toolset (SMART). While Hillary Clinton repeatedly claimed that because she sent her official e-mail to "government officials on their State or other .gov accounts ... the emails were immediately captured and preserved," a recent State Department Office of Inspector General report contradicts claims that DOS' e-mail archiving system, ironically named SMART, did so.
  • The report found that State Department "employees have not received adequate training or guidance on their responsibilities for using those systems to preserve 'record emails.'" In 2011, while Taylor was State's Chief Technology Officer of Operations, State Department employees only created 61,156 record e-mails out of more than a billion e-mails sent. In other words, roughly .006% of DOS e-mails were captured electronically. And in 2013, while Taylor was State's CIO, a paltry seven e-mails were preserved from the Office of the Secretary, compared to the 4,922 preserved by the Lagos Consulate in Nigeria. Even though the report notes that its assessments "do not apply to the system used by the Department's high-level principals, the Secretary, the Deputy Secretaries, the Under Secretaries, and their immediate staffs, which maintain separate systems," the State Department has not provided any estimation of the number of Clinton's e-mails that were preserved by recipients through the Department's anachronistic "print and file" system, or any other procedure.
  • The unfortunate silver lining of Hillary Clinton inappropriately appropriating public records as her own is that she likely preserved her records much more comprehensively than her State Department colleagues, most of whose e-mails have probably been lost under Taylor's IT leadership. 2008 reports by CREW, right, and the GAO, left, highlighted problems preserving e-mails. Click to enlarge. The bigger issue is that Federal IT gurus have known about this problem for years, and the State Department is not alone in not having done anything to fix it. A 2008 survey by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org did not find a single federal agency policy that mandates an electronic record keeping system agency-wide. Congressional testimony in 2008 by the Government Accountability Office indicted the standard "print and file" approach by pointing out:
  • 2011- the Justice Department (for doing more than any other agency to eviscerate President Obama's Day One transparency pledge through pit-bull whistleblower prosecutions, recycled secrecy arguments in court cases, retrograde FOIA regulations, and mixed FOIA responsiveness) 2010 - the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council (for "lifetime failure" to address the crisis in government e-mail preservation) 2009 - the FBI (for having a record-setting rate of "no records" responses to FOIA requests) 2008 - the Treasury Department (for shredding FOIA requests and delaying responses for decades) 2007 - the Air Force (for disappearing its FOIA requests and having "failed miserably" to meet its FOIA obligations, according to a federal court ruling) 2006 - the Central Intelligence Agency (for the biggest one-year drop-off in responsiveness to FOIA requests yet recorded).
  • Troublingly, current Office of Management and Budget guidance does not require federal agencies to manage "all email records in an electronic format" until December 31, 2016. The only part of the federal government that seems to be facing up to the e-mail preservation challenge with any kind of "best practice" is the White House, where the Obama administration installed on day one an e-mail archiving system that preserves and manages even the President's own Blackberry messages. The National Security Archive brought the original White House e-mail lawsuit against President Reagan in early 1989, and continued the litigation against Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, until court orders compelled the White House to install the "ARMS" system to archive e-mail. The Archive sued the George W. Bush administration in 2007 after discovering that the Bush White House had junked the Clinton system without replacing its systematic archiving functions. CREW subsequently joined this suit and with the Archive negotiated a settlement with the Obama administration that included the recovery of as many as 22 million e-mails that were previously missing or misfiled.
  • s a result of two decades of the Archive's White House e-mail litigation, several hundred thousand e-mails survive from the Reagan White House, nearly a half million from the George H.W. Bush White House, 32 million from the Clinton White House, and an estimated 220 million from the George W. Bush White House. Previous recipients of the Rosemary Award include: 2013 - Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (for his "No, sir" lie to Senator Ron Wyden's question: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?") 2012 - the Justice Department (in a repeat performance, for failing to update FOIA regulations to comply with the law, undermining congressional intent, and hyping its open government statistics)
  • Rogue Band of Federal E-mail Users and Abusers Compounds Systemic Problems Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other federal officials who skirt or even violate federal laws designed to preserve electronic federal records compound e-mail management problems. Top government officials who use personal e-mail for official business include: Clinton; former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration; chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board Rafael Moure-Eraso; and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who told ABC's This Week "I don't have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files." Others who did not properly save electronic federal records include Environmental Protection Agency former administrator Lisa Jackson who used the pseudonym Richard Windsor to receive email; current EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who improperly deleted thousands of text messages (which also are federal records) from her official agency cell phone; and former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, whose emails regarding Obama's political opponents "went missing or became destroyed."
  • "agencies recognize that devoting significant resources to creating paper records from electronic sources is not a viable long-term strategy;" yet GAO concluded even the "print and file" system was failing to capture historic records "for about half of the senior officials."
  • The destruction of other federal records was even more blatant. Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official in charge of the agency's defunct torture program ordered the destruction of key videos documenting it in 2005, claiming that "the heat from destroying [the torture videos] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain;" Admiral William McRaven, ordered the immediate destruction of any emails about Operation Neptune Spear, including any photos of the death of Osama bin Laden ("destroy them immediately"), telling subordinates that any photos should have already been turned over to the CIA — presumably so they could be placed in operational files out of reach of the FOIA. These rogues make it harder — if not impossible — for agencies to streamline their records management, and for FOIA requesters and others to obtain official records, especially those not exchanged with other government employees. The US National Archives currently trusts agencies to determine and preserve e-mails which agencies have "deemed appropriate for preservation" on their own, often by employing a "print and file" physical archiving process for digital records. Any future reforms to e-mail management must address the problems of outdated preservation technology, Federal Records Act violators, and the scary fact that only one per cent of government e-mail addresses are saved digitally by the National Archive's recently-initiated "Capstone" program.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15
     
    Complete with photos, names, titles, of the 41 federal department and independent agency CIOs. The March 2015 Insopector General report linked from the article belies Hillary Clinton's claim that all emails she sent to State Department staff had been preserved by the Department.   
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