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"The Mafia has succeeded in its long-term goal and
has integrated its underground economy with that of the overground.
True
to Michele Sindona's early
prediction, the former has thrown sand into the "immense and recondite
machinery" of the latter the more so since even big money-center banks have
adopted Sindona's standards and practices.
Citigroup, JP Morgan,
Barclays, and Royal Bank of Scotland have all pled guilty to anti-competitive
bid-rigging of exchange
rates.
An unprecedented number of major banks face criminal
charges.
Barclays traders also led the pack in the online chat rooms
dubbed "The Cartel" and "The Bandits Club" in which major banks
colluded to fix the all-important LIBOR, the dominant interbank lending rate
benchmark.
Although the culprits have agreed to pay fines amounting to
$25 billion, the amount is a mere bagatelle compared to the hundreds of
trillions of dollars vested in the notional value of these derivatives." -
Patiricia Goldstone2012 An
international investigation into the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor,
revealed a widespread conspiracy by multiple banks - notably Deutsche Bank,
Barclays, UBS, Rabobank, and the Royal Bank of Scotland - to manipulate
interest rates for
profit.
"Our
very human need to not feel threatened by our immediate environment allows us
to ignore certain realities existent in
that environment.
We do this without the conscious
awareness of choosing to ignore.
This is due in large part simple to the
large amount of conflicting data.
Some we sort
consciously and
some we sort subconsciously." -
AA
"Overconfident
judgements are utterly representative' of those made by
professionals in medical
care, financial services -
"expert" decision
making.
In fact, physicists,
economists, and
demographers all suffer
from this bias, even when reasoning about their field of expertise.
When you have a good theory, overconfidence may do less damage.
The problem is people usually
believe they have a good theory." - JD Trout
"Human beings have
a nasty habit of ignoring the cold
hard facts of the present in the hopes of using
apathy as
a magical elixir for future
prosperity.
They
want to believe that disaster is a mindset, that it is a boogeyman under
their bed that can be defeated through
blind optimism." - Brandon Smith
Bonds and stocks are both
securities, the major difference between the
two is that (capital) stockholders have an equity stake in a company (owners),
whereas bondholders have a creditor stake in the company (lenders).
Bondholders have priority over
stockholders in
the event of bankruptcy.
Secured creditors have
priority over bondholders in the event of bankruptcy.
A
futures contract is a
legal contract to buy or sell
an asset at a predetermined price at a specified time in the
future.
A futures option is an
option contract to purchase a
futures
contract.
A
put option is a
contract to sell a specified amount of a
fungible security at
a pre-determined price within
a specified time frame.
A call option is a
contract to buy a specified amount of a
fungible security at a a
specified price within a specific time period.
A derivative contracts value is based on a
fungible asset or
asset index.
Futures contracts, forward contracts,
options, swaps, and warrants
are commonly used derivatives.
Credit default swaps are used by lenders
as a hedge against default.
Interest rate derivatives
are contracts to exchange a notional amount of money on an agreed upon interest
rate - typically a Cost of Funds Index.
A
stock option is a
derivative as value is "derived" from stock.
Derivatives can be used to
hedge or as
insurance.
Three top securities brokers
had offices in the World Trade
Center, Cantor Fitzgerald, Euro Brokers and Garbon Inter
Capital.
Flight 11 struck just under the floors where Cantor Fitzgerald
was located.
An explosion in the vacant 23rd floor of the
North Tower, right
under the offices of the FBI and Garbon Inter Capital on the 25th floor caused
a huge fire from the 22nd through the 25th floors.
Hundreds of billions
of dollars of securities stored in a vault where destroyed in an explosion in
the basement of the North Tower.
Flight 175 slammed into the 78th floor
of the South Tower just below the 84th floor where Euro Brokers were located.
Brian Clark, the manager at Euro Brokers, heard numerous explosions,
apparently unrelated to what he referred to as the oxygen-starved fire caused
by the plane crash.
Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert, estimated
that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed
through the WTC computers before and during the disaster on September 11,
2001.
A
Deutsche Bank employee verified that approximately five minutes before the
first plane hit the tower that the Deutsche Bank computer system in their WTC
office was seized by an outside, unknown entity.
On September 26, CBS reported that the amount was more
than $100 million and that seven countries were investigating the irregular
trades.
Two newspapers, Reuters and the New York Times, and other
mainstream media reported that the
CIA regularly monitors
extraordinary trades and economic irregularities to ascertain possible criminal
activities or financial assaults.
In fact, the CIA uses
specialized software,
PROMIS, to scrutinize
trades.
The Federal Reserve, untouched by the crisis at its downtown
offices (as they had everything backed up to a remote location), assumed
emergency powers that afternoon,
$240 billion in securities
are electronically cleared.
"The World Trade Center was destroyed just days
after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers,
security personnel said yesterday [September 11]. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at
Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the
past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday [September
6], bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed." - NY Newsday
"On the weekend of 9/8, 9/9 there was a 'power
down' condition in WTC tower 2, the South Tower. This power down condition
meant there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hrs from floor 50 up ... Of
course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors
and many, many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower." - WingTV
1982 ICTS International N.V.
founded by former members of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency,
and El Al airline security agents.
1993 to June
2000
Marvin P. Bush served on the Board of Directors of
Securacom which provided security for the World Trade Center,
United Airlines, and
Dulles International
Airport.
Securacom, later Stratesec, which defined itself as a
"single-source" provider of "end-to-end" security services, including
everything from diagnosis
of existing systems to hiring subcontractors to installing video and
electronic equipment.
Securacom was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American
investment firm on whose board Marvin Bush also served.
According to
CEO Barry McDaniel, Securacom handled some of the security at the World Trade
Center up until 911.
Securacom was ordered to change its name, as the result of
a 1995 name infringement suit brought by SecuraComm, a smaller Pittsburgh-based
consultancy.
The court found a deliberate effort by Securacom to
financially "bury" the plaintiff, Ron Libengood, and "take everything he had"
by filing a barrage of frivolous arguments against Libengood and his attorneys
in multiple jurisdictions. Appellate courts opined that Securacom "tried to
prevail by crushing Libengood and his corporation" in a "sweeping attempt to
beat a financially weaker opponent through the
use of vexatious litigation."
The company changed its name to "Stratesec" in 1998.
Stratesec
was delisted from the American Stock Exchange in July 2002 due to inability to
make financing payments to ES Bankest, its primary shareholder.
1998ICTS International NV acquires Huntleigh USA which
provides airline passenger screening services at 47 US airports, including all
the international aviation gateways in the USA.
Israeli citizens Menachem Atzmon
and Ezra Harel take over management of security at the
Boston and Newark
airports.
September
11, 2001 Former Deputy Director of the FBI John P. O'Neil takes over his
new job as security chief of the
World Trade
Center.
John O'Neil resigned from the FBI after 31 years of service
after
Barbara Bodine barred him from following up his
investigation of the
attack on the US$ Cole.
Jim Pierce, a Bush cousin and
managing director of the AON Corporation watches the South Tower from the
nearby Millennium Hotel.
Pierce arranged a conference to be held on
105th floor this morning.
However, the previous night, the conference is
moved to Millennium Hotel.
collateralized debt
obligations
"There was nothing accidental about the
crisis."
Paul
Krugman
"More than 100 securities
cases involving losses of $400 billion were filed against financial firms last
year, according to Cornerstone Research." - Vikas Bajaj
01/19/08
"Let's hope we are all
wealthy and retired by the
time this house of cards falls." - Standard & Poor analyst 'texting' about
OTC CDO.
"Auction-rate preferred
securities is the largest fraud ever
perpetuated by Wall Street on investors." - Harry Newton
"This has
gone beyond Greece, at this point, the markets smell the blood, and they're
picking off each weak link." - Win Thin, senior currency strategist at
Brown Brothers
Harriman commenting of the Greek meltdown
"I think virtually
everybody associated with the financial world contributed to it. Some of it
stemmed from greed, some from stupidity,
some from people saying the other guy was doing it." - Warren Buffet on the
meltdown
"Over the last 20 years American financial institutions have
taken on more and more risk, with the blessing of regulators, with not a word
from rating agencies, which, incidentally, are paid by the issuers of the bonds
they rate.
American
International, Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac, General Electric and municipal bond guarantors
Ambac Financial and MBIA had triple-A rating.
In pursuit of their own
short term earnings, they did exactly the opposite of what they were meant to
do: rather than expose financial risk they systematically disguised it. " -
Michael Lewis & David Einhorn
2007 S&P,
Moody's and Fitch control 98% of the US
debt ratings market.
From the start of 2007 until
September 2008
Moody's Investors
Service downgraded more than $449 billion in marketable securities similar
to Gemstone VII or 82% of all those outstanding.
Moody's also
downgraded more than three-quarters of collateralized debt obligation securities it
once rated AAA.
The three credit rating corporations graded Lehman
Brothers debt A-1 the day it filed for bankruptcy.
State regulators depend on
credit grades to monitor the safety of bonds held by US insurance companies.
The rating companies reaped a bonanza in fees as they worked with
financial firms to manufacture collateralized
debt obligations.
On Sept. 16, one day after the three credit
rating firms downgraded American International Group double-A score by two to
three grades, private contract provisions that it had with banks around the
world based on credit rating changes forcing the insurer to hand over billions
of dollars of collateral.
Credit raters are paid by the companies whose
debt they analyze so ratings will always reflect a bias.
Credit raters
are likely to charge $400 million in fees to taxpayer's for TALF credit
ratings.
"To promote competition, in the 1970s ratings
agencies were allowed to switch from having investors pay for ratings to having
the issuers of debt pay for them.
That led the ratings agencies to
compete for business by currying favor with investment banks that would pay
handsomely for the ratings they wanted. Wall Street paid as much as $1 million
for some ratings, and ratings agency profits soared.
This new revenue
stream swamped earnings from ordinary ratings." - Kevin G. Hall
"In
2001, Moody's had revenues of $800.7 million; in 2005, they were up to $1.73
billion; and in 2006, $2.037 billion.
The exploding profits were fees
from packaging and granting the top-class AAA ratings, which were supposed to
mean they were as safe as US government securities." - Lawrence McDonald
"Ratings agencies abjectly failed in serving the interests of
investors.
They've benefited from the
monopoly status achieved with a
tremendous amount of assistance from regulators." - SEC Commissioner Kathleen
Casey
Five days before filing for bankruptcy
Richard Severin Fuld Jr. assures
investors that Lehman Brothers has $42 billion in
liquidity.
"How does $42 billion
vanish in five days. Did Lehman officers know of harbingers of
doom they weren't
sharing?" - Roger Parloff
"Moral hazard" is a term
commonly applied to financial contracts, under which
one party is obliged to pay
another money if a specified event occurs.
Moral hazard refers to
situations in which the very existence of the contract
alters the behavior of one party
increasing the
probability of the hazard actually taking place.
September 2008 Until
September, the month of the Lehman Brothers
bankruptcy, the Federal Reserve had held the expansion of the
Monetary Base virtually
flat.
US Treasury Secretary
Timothy Franz Geithner, decides
to let Lehman
Brothers fail "to teach a lesson".
On October 7, 2008, the Federal
Reserve announced that it was using its emergency authority under Section 13(3)
of the Federal Reserve Act to establish a Commercial Paper Funding
Facility.
By the end of October, the Federal Reserve had purchased
more than $100 billion in commercial paper.
October 2,
2008 George W Bush signs the $700 billion Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act (EESA) of 2008 after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
asked Congress to approve a bailout to buy mortgage-backed securities in danger
of defaulting.
"Under the Paulson Plan,
the government would buy mortgages
and mortgage-backed securities for more than they are worth.
Among
the companies that most vigorously pushed the idea were the
American International Group
and Freddie Mac.
Federal Reserve and
Treasury think that the prices have fallen too far.
The goal is to
recapitalize the banking system by placing a floor under the prices of
securities that never should have been issued." - Floyd Norris
December 2008 A
quarterly report issued by the
Bank of International Settlements
states the total outstanding notional amount of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives in the world is
$683 trillion while the gross market value for those same instruments was $22
trillion.
Bank like investment strategies - such as the use of leverage
and financing long-term investments with short-term debt - became common
outside the safety net provided by
deposit insurance and
strong regulation.
As a result nonbank institutions became vulnerable to
runs.
If markets lost
confidence their sources of funds could dry up.
Complexity reduces
transparency.
"Neither regulators nor market participants can easily
assess the true financial condition of firms
that hold or trade these derivatives.
Since large parts of
derivatives markets are unregulated, there
is a global web of financial claims and
counterclaims that is essentially invisible to financial supervisors and
market participants alike.
Key characteristics that produced this
systemic vulnerability include:
the use of complex financial
instruments, whose value is often linked
by complex formulae to the value of other instruments or financial
variables;
extensive use
of leverage, or borrowed funds, which permits larger market positions with
a given capital base, increasing potential profits (and losses);
the practice of moving risky financial
speculation off the books, into
nominally
independent accounting entities, so that the results do not appear in the
financial accounts of the parent financial institution." - Mark
Jickling
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American social mores and values have declined
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