Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This article puts focus on the shocking exposure of a NASDAQ trading house’s Boss running a massive Ponzi scheme.
I firmly believe the scams in gold, once disclosed, are going to set your hair on fire.
These will take the form of no gold gold certificates, paper gold rather than bullion confirmed as bullion to simply taking your money, sending you a confirmation without anything whatsoever behind it.
Dr. Fekete’s warning of gold scams don’t even scratch the surface of what I assure you will surface.
Just because someone says or writes what you want to believe, don’t for a second assume the author has ethics when there is a request for your money or an offering of a gold/silver deal.
Bernie Madoff’s alleged $50bn fraud may be just a foretaste of what’s to come
First come the losses and the stupidities committed by bankers working for their own self-interest.
By Rob Cox, breakingviews.com
Last Updated: 5:47PM GMT 12 Dec 2008
Then come the rogue traders, who are unable to ‘fess up on market bets gone wrong. The last to arrive is the "bezzle".
That was economist JK Galbraith’s word for the outright frauds built up when markets are good. These can be kept hidden for as long as the lies hold up. But the truth will out.
The first big outing in the current financial crisis is an alleged scam that may cost investors as much as $50bn. It was committed, according to a US criminal indictment, by a highly respected member of the financial community, a one-time Nasdaq executive and a legendary trader in New York.
Bernard Madoff is accused of orchestrating a multi-year fraud in which generous returns were manufactured for sophisticated investors. The technique was the usual Ponzi scheme. Old investors were paid off by the new funds lured into to Madoff’s art-laden New York headquarters.
Losses of $50bn would probably make Madoff the biggest single fraudster in history. But in fairness, such an accomplishment shouldn’t come as a great surprise. In Galbraith’s model of a speculative cycle, good times spawn the excess and corruption which eventually bring them to end. The last good times were especially profitable, fertilising the ground for especially large frauds.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Scotty beam me up please.
This world is coated with abhorrent stinking slime, and is terminally disintegrating.
Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion in Lending
By Mark Pittman
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, who oversees about $14 billion at New York-based ICP Capital LLC.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
I always suspected this guy was hiding something. Actually this is a serious article that nails the foundational problem now being thoroughly assaulted by instant karma.
Blame the Bailouts on Mister Rogers?
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Mister Fred Rogers, the children’s TV star, who, beginning in 1968, started every show telling us that we were “special” just the way we were.
Blame all of those preening child-rearing experts who encouraged an excruciatingly costly culture of entitlement, a culture of narcissism, of excessive self-righteous self-indulgence, where generations grew up believing they were entitled to follow their own codes of conduct, a chronic “me first, I get what’s mine first” attitude–to the point where one survey shows one in three teenagers expect to be famous.
Better yet, blame the bailouts on everyone who forgot the most important part of the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood show, a willful ignorance that has led to a mass dereliction of civic duty, of civic vision–Rogers’ emphasis on “neighborhood.”
Blame it on a post World War II culture of “me-ism,” of individuality over community, of “I’m special, you owe me,” a culture of anything goes in this Age of Aquarius.
A mindset which has resulted in more than half of the country’s annual $14 tn in GDP, $7.8 tn, a quantum leap in fiscal debt, now being committed to bail out the economy.
Concrete proof that equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent, to quote Laurence J. Peter, author of the “Peter Principle.”
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
25 down, 2075+ to go.
Georgia, Texas Banks Seized as Foreclosures Push Failures to 25
By Margaret Chadbourn and Alison Vekshin
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Georgia and Texas banks with $544 million in deposits were closed by state regulators today, pushing the toll of failures to 25 as mortgage delinquencies and home foreclosures surge to records during a deepening recession.
Haven Trust Bank of Duluth, Georgia, was seized and sold by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to BB&T Corp. of Winston- Salem, North Carolina, which will reopen four offices northeast of Atlanta on Dec. 15 as branches, the FDIC said. Sanderson State Bank was shut by Texas regulators and its assets were sold to Pecos County State Bank of Fort Stockton, which will open Sanderson’s southwest Texas office as a branch on Dec. 15.
Acquisitions by BB&T, the fifth-best performing stock in the KBW Bank Index this year, and Pecos County were “the ‘least costly’ resolution for the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund,” the Washington-based FDIC said in a statement.
Regulators have closed the most banks in 15 years, and the annual total now exceeds the combined toll for the previous six years, with the collapses of Washington Mutual Inc. and IndyMac Bancorp Inc. among the biggest in history. The U.S. entered a recession a year ago and President-elect Barack Obama on Dec. 7 said the slump will worsen before a recovery begins.
BB&T will buy about $55 million of Haven’s $572 million in assets and pay $112,000 for the failed bank’s $515 million in deposits, the FDIC said. The agency will retain the remaining assets “for later disposition.” The deposit insurance fund, supported by fees on insured banks, will pay an estimated $200 million, the agency said.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This might make India feel good but it is a terrible implications for the world and serious risks for Israel.
You can be sure if there is an Armageddon it lives in Pakistan.
Israeli experts help India prepare commando raids into Pakistan
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
December 6, 2008, 11:45 AM (GMT+02:00)
New Delhi has asked Jerusalem to assist in the operational and intelligence planning of Indian commando cross-border strikes against Islamist terrorist havens in Pakistan – including al Qaeda, Indian counter-terror sources report.
The Indian government’s decision to embark on these in-and-out incursions in reprisal for the Mumbai outrage of Nov. 26-29 was first revealed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 375 published Dec. 4 (Indian Retaliatory Raids inside Pakistan Impending).
DEBKAfile adds: Israel is willing to help the Indians carry out punitive forays into Pakistan because it has its own scores to settle for the brutal murder of six Israelis in Mumbai’s Chabad Center by the Islamist terrorists and for the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency’s hand in the atrocity.
Security sources in New Delhi disclosed Saturday, Dec. 6, that ISI officers actively trained the terrorists on military lines and selected their targets, including two big hotels and the Jewish-Israeli center.
Indian sources told DEBKAfile that Israel was asked for assistance because its special undercover forces were long seasoned in plotting and executing reprisals for terrorist attacks; above all, they were expert in getting away after covert operations without leaving a trail. New Delhi wants its commando operations in Pakistan to be stealthy and focused, and does not propose to admit responsibility.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Most? I would say all. This is because of the interdependency of every regional bank and regional area on the spider web of financial products spun by the money center and investment banks, all without limit or any concern of the consequences to others.
Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks "bankrupt"
Thu Dec 11, 2008 1:53pm EST
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jim Rogers, one of the world’s most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded.
Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government’s $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn’t address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.
Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEHMQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz). Some of the funds are being used for acquisitions.
"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers, who is now a private investor.
"What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent," he said. "What’s happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics."
