Économie: La fraude de Madoff, FED, Dépression, Plans de sauvetage

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Économie: La fraude de Madoff, FED, Dépression, Plans de sauvetage

Madoff Arrest Sends Shockwaves Through Jewish Philanthropy

The arrest of Wall Street trader Bernard L. Madoff, who federal agents say defrauded investors of an estimated $50 billion, has had immediate consequences in the Jewish philanthropic world. One charity already closed and insiders are worried that the ramifications of Madoff’s financial demise may extend to the many organizations he supported and the wealthy Jews he advised.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Additional links:

Huffington Post: Madoff and the Palm Beach Jewish Club

NY Times: Madoff was called the Jewish T-Bill

Madoff the National Treasurer of Jews:

Who is Bernard Madoff?

The latest massive financial scandal is the giant $50 billion pyramid or "Ponzi" scheme run by a New York Zionist Jew, Bernard Lawrence Madoff. How can anyone lose $50 thousand million? Where did the $50 billion disappear to? Israel?

Madoff told two "senior employees," i.e. his sons, Mark and Andrew, at his apartment the night before his arrest that the Madoff hedge fund and his investment advisory business was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme," according to court documents. His investment fund business was insolvent, and had been for years.

Rich investors 'wiped out' by Wall Street fraud

Some victims of Wall Street's biggest fraud – planned and carried out over decades by one of its most respected figures – are as yet unaware that their entire savings have been wiped out, financial experts in New York said yesterday. Such is the extent of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50bn (£34bn) swindle, and so convoluted its paper trail of derivatives, that this weekend there will be Americans under the impression they are rich who are oblivious that their wealth had been placed in Mr Madoff's apparently criminal hands, and is therefore now lost.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Here is the important point. Most white-collar fraud goes unreported. Corporations often see simply concealing the losses with creative accounting as preferable to the public admission of having been duped. As a result, only a small percentage of frauds ever become publicly know, fewer still result in prosecutions and convictions.

So, for every Bernard Madoff caught and jailed, it is safe to assume there are others just like him still operating and playing their games. White Collar crime costs Americans ten times as much as street crime (but street crime gets the press coverage).

And the comment about Bernard Madoff's scam being the largest may also be untrue.

There are currently allegations against Citi, involving former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, of a ponzi scheme where the losses have reached into the trillions of dollars and may have been a major factor in the take down of the American economy!

The future of the US economy

Long term prognosis - not good

I don't know.

What do you think?

This film was made before the current credit crisis and accompanying end-of-term looting...I mean bailouts...by the Bush administration.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/496.html

Sometimes the news is so astonishing, there's little
more to say that repeat it verbatim.

For example...

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request
by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than
$2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the
assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of
Information Act requesting details about the terms of
11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest
financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it's allowed to withhold
internal memos as well as information about trade secrets
and commercial information. The institution confirmed that
a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to
some of the requests.

"If they told us what they held, we would know the potential
losses that the government may take and that's what they don't
want us to know," said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director
at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion
in assets.

==========

And here's the truly scary thing...

This obvious, massive, out-of-control scam is the
LEAST of the country's financial worries.

Details:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/496.html

Fed Ponders Issuing Debt to Finance Its Mushrooming Balance Sheet

The Wall Street Journal, in a typically anodyne bit of reporting, tells us that the Fed is considering selling its own debt to finance its balance sheet, Its good old buddy, the Treasury Department, which heretofore has been selling bills in part on behalf of the Fed, now has a big enough financing calendar in the offing that it no longer can lend a helping hand.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This is how they plan to get around that pesky Congressional debt ceiling!

A Nightmare Before Christmas

Once the government runs out of foreign and private sector bidders for new treasuries, the Federal Reserve will be the only buyer, and the hyper-inflation cat will be completely out of the bag. Sensing this, the Fed has recently indicated a desire to begin issuing its own bonds. However, since dollars are already recorded as liabilities on the Fed’s balance sheet (dollars are in actuality Federal Reserve Notes) the Fed already issues debt. The difference now is that they are proposing to issue interest bearing debt. Perhaps the Fed feels this will make holding its notes more appealing.

Bernanke ‘War Powers’ Undermine Fed Bank Presidents

The district chiefs’ authority over borrowing costs has been marginalized in the past two months as Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the Fed Board of Governors in Washington made their own decisions on emergency measures to flood the economy with cash.

“The Board has usurped authority,” said William Poole, former president of the St. Louis Fed and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington. “This dramatic change in policy direction has not been announced or even acknowledged.”

Britain worse credit risk than McDonald's

Britain has become a worse credit risk than McDonald's and a host of other large companies, figures produced for The Independent reveal.

The collapse in Britain's credit rating has taken place over the past two and a half months, since the Government underwrote the banking system and decided to spend its way out of recession. Investing in UK government debt is now almost twice as risky as buying McDonald's corporate bonds, according to the market in credit default swaps (CDS), which provides insurance for the buyers of such debt.

Is an International Financial Conspiracy Driving World Events?

by Richard C. Cook

Global Research, March 27, 2008

U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE MAY BUY U.S. TREASURIES

This doesn’t make any sense. The U.S. Government authorizes the Fed to create money out of thin air, which it will then use to buy up the debt of the U.S. Government that nobody else wants?

Is anyone who is currently holding U.S. Treasuries even reading the news? The auctions are going to fail, so the debtor is just going to snap his fingers and create the money to buy the debt that nobody else wanted to buy?

How does the dollar not collapse on this?

Webmaster's Commentary:

Is the Federal Reserve buying the United States with money created out of thin air?

The global economy is at the point of maximum danger

It feels like the summer of 1931. The world's two biggest financial institutions have had a heart attack. The global currency system is breaking down. The policy doctrines that got us into this mess are bankrupt. No world leader seems able to discern the problem, let alone forge a solution.

Fed Covers Up Financial Crisis

The China connection to Goldman Sachs figures prominently in the current crisis. Because China owned $376 billion of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae paper, it played a big role in the financial crisis, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, with his own personal and financial ties to China, admittedly tried to reassure the Chinese through this process that their investments would be protected. They are being “protected” in the sense that the American taxpayers are now on the hook for these government mortgage companies, which have been nationalized.

Record number of Americans using food stamps: report

Food stamps, the main U.S. antihunger program which helps the needy buy food, set a record in September as more than 31.5 million Americans used the program -- up 17 percent from a year ago, according to government data.

America's Second Great Depression Has Started

America's Second Great Depression is not a typical 20th century recession that happens to strike a bit harder or linger somewhat longer. Nor is it merely a fictional scenario conjured up by economists with a murky crystal ball.

America's Second Great Depression is the probable consequence of a great housing bust, a massive mortgage meltdown and the biggest financial crisis in history.

It promises to bring the worst wave of bankruptcies, job losses and wealth destruction any citizen under 90 has ever experienced.

Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays

Hedge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile financial universe, are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable, even in Wall Street's rarefied realms.

How to stop the Great Crash of '08

The oil price has doubled in the past year because the US Federal Reserve panicked over risks to the over-leveraged financial system and flooded markets with excess liquidity. The world is willing to pay arbitrarily high prices to hedge against inflation, but the cost of inflation hedges drags down the world economy. Last week's spike in commodity prices and swoon in global stock markets points the way to a deep and prolonged fall in economic activity.

The Purpose Behind The Financial Crisis

The purpose of the current financial catastrophe was to infect the entire world financial system with toxic waste and other unregulated derivatives, also known as financial weapons of mass destruction, to bring it crashing down so that a single world financial system with a single medium of exchange could be set forth as the suggested solution and then crammed down our throats in yet another nauseating and tiresome iteration of the Hegelian Dialectic.

Collapsing the Economy in the Buildup to World War III: 11 of the Most Important Economic Events of the Last 11 Years

Since 1999, the following events have either caused or been the symptom of the present economic crises:

AIG May Double Some Salaries With Retention Payments

American International Group Inc., whose bonuses and perks drew fire from lawmakers after the insurer accepted a federal bailout, will make special retention payments that more than double the salaries of some senior managers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Are you [REDACTED] kidding me????????

THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR A POLITICIAN USE THE WORD "BILLION"

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

ROBIN HOOD IN REVERSE

UK Government's $100 BILLION bank bailout whilst taxing the poor $14 BILLION - Robin Hood in Reverse whilst using Enron style accounting loopholes

Another Look at the Bull Market in Commodities

The above chart is important. There have been dozens of reports the past couple of weeks that the bull market in commodities has ended. Those reports conflict with the message of the above chart. One can only reasonably conclude from any objective view of this chart that the bull market in commodities in still going strong.

i.e. prices are still going up.

Stunned Icelanders Struggle After Economy’s Fall

The collapse came so fast it seemed unreal, impossible. One woman here compared it to being hit by a train. Another said she felt as if she were watching it through a window. Another said, “It feels like you’ve been put in a prison, and you don’t know what you did wrong.”

Colossal Financial Collapse: The Truth behind the Citigroup Bank "Nationalization"

by F. William Engdahl

CITI IS BEYOND REPAIR

Banking analyst Meredith Whitney blasted Citigroup's turnaround plan yesterday, saying the financial giant is so deep in a black hole that even renown physicist Stephen Hawking could not help the ailing company.

"Tell us again how hackers made you limit withdrawals on your ATM machines ... we just LOVE that one!"

Chinese wealth fund turns back on western banks

China Investment Corporation is to put the brakes on making investments in western banks until governments come up with coherent policies to cope with the global economic downturn.

Lou Jiwei, the chairman of the sovereign wealth fund, said today: "Right now, we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions. We have to wait for the time when there won't be massive collapses of financial institutions."

China had lost confidence in many financial institutions, Lou said, because foreign governments seemed to be changing their policies "every week".

Meltdown of U.S. Dollar Underway as China Dumps the Currency

Comments by China that it intends to move away from its reliance on the dollar triggered a sharp drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and heightened worldwide fears about the U.S. currency's stability. Chinese Central Bank Vice Director Xiu Jian said that his country is planning to shift much of its $1.4 trillion national currency reserve from dollars to more stable currencies, such as the euro or Canadian dollar. After these comments, the dollar fell to record lows relative to other currencies -- the lowest ever against the euro, the lowest in a generation against the British pound, and the lowest in 57 years against the Canadian dollar.

GM Posts Biggest Annual US Auto Loss

General Motors Corp. reported a $38.7 billion loss for 2007 on Tuesday, the largest annual loss ever for an automotive company, and said it is making a new round of buyout offers to U.S. hourly workers in hopes of replacing some of them with lower-paid help.

Fin de que el coche no vaya en este motor, senor?

UBS closes Swiss accounts of US clients

UBS caved in to mounting pressure from the US Government yesterday and announced plans to close the Swiss bank accounts of all its American customers and prepared to lift the veil of secrecy that has protected its clients for centuries.

From the bad to the really sinister

The first half of the year is over, and now all those brokerage accounts and retirement accounts will be sending out statements to hapless account holders, and it is bad news in spades. This is why (I assume) the Plunge Protection Team (composed of the US Federal Reserve, the Treasury and bank insiders) tried to drive the stock markets up on Monday, June 30 - to make those account statements look not quite as bad, and, hopefully, prevent people from dumping all of their stock and bond holdings in a desperate attempt to save something before the whole idiotic, fiat-currency, unlimited-fractional-banking thing just collapses.

Ben Bernanke’s Hush Money

FREEFALL!

Lehman Brothers - $7.2B/$6B

Goldman Sachs - $5.4B

Wells Fargo - $2.9B

National City - $200M

Royal Bank of Scotland - $3.6B/$24B

Barclays PLC - $6.4B?

Societe Generale SA- $13.7 /$8.5B

BNP Paribas SA-$2.5B/ $0 cash

Morgan Stanley - $16.1B

Merrill Lynch - $32.2B

Wachovia - $6.8B/$10.5B

Washington Mutual - $1.6B

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce(CIBC) - $5.7B

Royal Bank of Canada - $1.4B

Bank of Montreal (BMO) - $611M

Bank of America - $4.4B

JP Morgan Chase - $9.9B

Citigroup - $69.1B/$36B

Mizuho MFG - $5.4B

UBS - $45.0B/$41.5B