Conspiracies

[winston]

Just like the Wine Industry sponsoring studies that shows that Red Wine is good for your heart but did not mentioned that it's bad for your liver :p

[winston]

1) Did you all noticed that those Nigerian militants have stopped bombing the pipelines ? Is it because somebody does not have any more Call options on Oil ?

2) Did you noticed that the US opened up some environmentally sensitive areas for oil exploration just after oil reached US$150 ? If Oil did not reach US$150, do you think that they would have been able to open up those places for exploration ? Who benefits from those explorations ? And did they have a hand in pumping the price up to US$150 ?

3) There was a Hedge Fund owned by one of the Investment Bank that was pumping up the price of oil, 10mins before closing on most days. That Hedge Fund is now closed down. Wonder why that Hedge Fund was pumping up the price of oil ? Who were their backers ?

Wah.... conspiracy night !

[kennynah]

did u notice...

mrt are very jammed packed almost everytime...n fares have gone up..... is it bcos they pumped up coe prices so less pple can afford cars...n take mrt instead....who will benefit from this artificially pumping up of coe prices???

[millionairemind]

Published June 18, 2009

What is the truth behind this US$134b bond caper?

By WILLIAM PESEK JR

IT'S a plot better suited for a John Le Carre novel. Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take US$134 billion worth of US bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumour mill is kicking into high gear.

Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea's cash in a Swiss vault? Bagmen for Nigerian Internet scammers? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit?

The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realise. At a minimum, it would suggest that the US risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale. The trillions of dollars of debt the US will issue in the next couple of years needs buyers. Attracting them will require making sure that existing ones aren't losing faith in the US's ability to control the dollar.

The dollar is, for better or worse, the core of our world economy and it's best to keep it stable. News that's more fitting for international spy novels than the financial pages won't help that effort. It is incumbent upon the US Treasury to get to the bottom of this tale and keep markets informed.



Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia. Yes, they could have built vacation homes amidst Genghis Khan's Gobi Desert or the famed Temples of Angkor. Bernard Madoff who? These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest US creditors.

It makes you wonder if some of the time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spends keeping the Chinese and Japanese invested in dollars should be devoted to well-financed men crossing the Italian-Swiss border. This tale has gotten little attention in markets, perhaps because of the absurdity of our times.

The last year has been a decidedly disorienting one for capitalists who once knew up from down, red from black and risk from reward. It almost fits with the surreal nature of today that a couple of travellers have more US debt than Brazil in a suitcase and, well, that's life.

Daniel Craig may be thinking this is a great story on which to base the next James Bond flick. Perhaps Don Johnson could buy the rights to this tale. In 2002, the Miami Vice star was stopped by German customs officers as he was travelling in a car carrying credit notes and other securities worth as much as US$8 billion. Now he could claim it was all, uh, research.

When I first heard of the US$134 billion story, I was tempted to glance at my calendar to make sure it didn't read April 1. Let's assume for a moment that these US bonds are real. That would make a mockery of Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano's 'absolutely unshakable' confidence in the credibility of the US dollar. Mr Yosano would have some explaining to do about Japan's US$686 billion of US debt if more of these suitcase capers come to light.

Counterfeit US$100 bills are one thing; two guys with undeclared bonds including 249 certificates worth US$500 million and 10 'Kennedy bonds' of US$1 billion each is quite another.

The bust could be a boon for Italy. If the securities are found to be genuine, the smugglers could be fined 40 per cent of the total value for attempting to take them out of the country. Not a bad payday for a government grappling with a widening budget deficit and rebuilding the town of L'Aquila, which was destroyed by an earthquake in April.

It would be terrible news for the White House. Other than the US, China or Japan, no other nation could theoretically move those amounts. In the absence of clear explanations coming from the Treasury, conspiracy theories are filling the void.

On his blog, The Market Ticker, Karl Denninger wonders if the Treasury 'has been surreptitiously issuing bonds to, say, Japan, as a means of financing deficits that someone didn't want reported over the last, oh, say 10 or 20 years'. Adds Mr Denninger: 'Let's hope we get those answers, and this isn't one of those 'funny things' that just disappears into the night.'

This is still a story with far more questions than answers. It's odd, though, that it's not garnering more media attention. Interest is likely to grow. The last thing Mr Geithner and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke need right now is tens of billions more of US bonds - or even high-quality fake ones - suddenly popping up around the globe. -- Bloomberg

The writer is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own

[LenaHuat]

Counterfeit US$100 bills are one thing; two guys with undeclared bonds including 249 certificates worth US$500 million and 10 'Kennedy bonds' of US$1 billion each is quite another.

Doesn't sound authentic to me. Firstly the arithmetics cannot be right. Secondly a Kennedy bond worth $100 million each

[millionairemind]

Friday, June 12, 2009
Zero Hedge Exclusive: Is State Street Trading For Federal Accounts?
Posted by Tyler Durden at 9:54 AM
Zero Hedge has always been fascinated by the behemoths of securities lending (or not so much lately) State Street and Bank Of New York: these firms, which allegedly had just marginal toxic exposure, were in the front lines for the TARP bailout and have traditionally been handled with velvet gloves by the administration. In fact, many would say the custodian firms are in a league of importance much higher than even Goldman or JP Morgan as with their repo activity, security lending and cash collateral reinvestment, they are the de facto center of the shadow banking system.

A Cliff notes version of the stock lenders' Modus Operandi, sent in compliments of a reader:

* In the securities lending arb, stocks and bonds are lent out by custodians and investment managers. The loan is collateralized by the borrower with cash, the lender promises the borrower a return on that cash and then invests the cash in repo and short-term debt at a spread to that promised rate of return. The sec lending market is in the trillions. This market is basically rolling overnight repo right now as it tries to dig itself out of the MTM/liquidity hole.

* Many of the Fed/Treasury balance sheet efforts have been basically attempts to supplant securities lenders. Sec lending funds were the biggest buyers of 1-3yr FRNs (hence, TLGP). Lenders were also the biggest buyers of AAA cards and autos (read TALF 1.0). They were the second-biggest buyers of ABCP after 2a7 funds (ergo AMLF). Indirectly they were the largest funder of LT2 bank debt (via SIVs MTNs). They're large repo counerparties, and did everything from short-dated CDS to liquidity put options on Canadian levered super-senior CDOs.

* Many stock lending funds, which have similar accrual accounting regimes to '40 Act money-market funds, have broken the buck but are still trading at $1. for example see the section beginning "We may be exposed to customer claims" on p.11. What does this mean? Not only are certain securities lending providers opening themselves up to significant litigation risk but, importantly, clients in stocks can't reallocate to bonds (or vice-versa), since the sec lending funds aren't letting them out (except in-kind). Finally, of course, as long as sec lenders remain hurt but unsupplanted, they stay short duration, which extracts hundreds of billions of $$ in term financing capacity out of the market. Fed won't act as a lender of last resort since they're still smarting from the AIG sec lending bail-out they didn't see coming.

It is no surprise that in order to incite a return to pre-Lehman economic levels (the administration's #1 goal bar none), not only the stock market would have to much higher from its March lows (a task largely accomplished through market increases on disappearing breadth, liquidity extraction by the likes of Goldman Sachs, and assorted last minute inexplicalbe ramp ups in the various futures and ETF markets), but also the shadow system would have to be back with a vengeance. And while new mechanisms to achieve this such as securitization replacement alphabet soups have yet to prove their efficacy, the real heart of the shadow banking system Frankenstein is and has always been the repo market.

Which is why we were greatly troubled when we learned recently on good authority that Federal representatives may have opened multiple undisclosed-type accounts with none other than State Street Global Advisors over the past few months. All of these accounts are allegedly handled by one single trader, who is cocooned and isolated from interaction with other partners.

Zero Hedge can, as of yet, not vouch for this being 100% factual and is asking readers who may have additional knowledge of the situtation to please come forward and share their views ([email protected]). If, indeed, the Federal Reserve or other derivatives of the administration, are now directly involved in trading, managing repo terms, stock lending, collateral distribution and other liquidity-crucial aspects of what was once an efficient market, then indeed this rally could be written off not merely as the biggest short covering rally of all time, but one that has been explicitly orchestrated by those who should be most impartial to an efficiently working market.

Zero Hedge is investigating.

[LenaHuat]

Counterfeit US$100 bills are one thing; two guys with undeclared bonds including 249 certificates worth US$500 million and 10 'Kennedy bonds' of US$1 billion each is quite another.

Doesn't sound authentic to me. Firstly the arithmetics cannot be right. Secondly a Kennedy bond worth $100 million each

So it was all a joke or fraud.

[winston]

By MM:-

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

1) At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves….

2) Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater….

3) After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts....

[AirFlownAussiePork]

Why M3 was abandon by the Fed.

http://www.shadowstats.com/article/aa712

[millionairemind]

Menopause, as Brought to You by Big Pharma

By NATASHA SINGER and DUFF WILSON
Published: December 12, 2009

MILLIONS of American women in the 1990s were told they could help their bodies ward off major illness by taking menopausal hormone drugs. Some medical associations said so. Many gynecologists and physicians said so. Respected medical journals said so, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/busin ... ref=global