Hacked Emails Reveal Depth Of Obama’s Ties To Banks
February 27, 2012 by admin
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February 27, 2012
InfoWars
By Kurt Nimmo
As Zero Hedge rightly notes, the latest Wikileaks dump – a collection of emails hacked from Stratfor by Anonymous – is a dud. It consists of liberals whining about Obama and calling him weak for not confronting the so-called right side of the one party system that serves the bankster elite.
One comment in particular reveals that the so-called left encamped in the district of criminals remains completely and hopelessly out of touch with reality. It suggests Obama “could also tell the banks to go screw themselves.”
How is it possible Democrats still do not realize Obama is owned by the banksters and he does not tie his shoes in the morning without first consulting them? Evidence is bountiful.
Soon after Barry the CIA groomed candidate was selected and trotted out with messianic fervor, Open Secrets posted a list of his top contributors, including: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS and Morgan Stanley.
Obama is still the preferred candidate of the money masters. “Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined,” reports the Washington Post.
Reports that bankers are turning against Obama “are exaggerated and overblown,” according to one top banking exec cited by the Post. He said “it probably helps from a political perspective if he’s not seen as a Wall Street guy.”
Click here for the full report from InfoWars.
Romney and Obama Share Same Bankster Campaign Contributors
January 18, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
January 18, 2012
Prison Planet
By Kurt Nimmo
“The saying ‘politicians are all the same’ rings true here.” –KTRN
Like Obama, Mitt Romney is a wind-up doll for Wall Street and the bankers. There is virtually no difference between them despite all the fetid air from the GOP propaganda machine.
This is revealed by a quick look at Romney’s top contributors. An Open Secrets page on top Romney contributors reads like a Who’s Who of Wall Street and the financial cartel. The top contributor is Goldman Sachs, followed by Credit Suisse Group, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Barclays – major players in the Wall Street and City of London bankster constellation.
Bain Capital is also on the list. It is a “financial services” and investment firm co-founded by Romney. Bain owns the establishment media propaganda conglomerate Clear Channel, which explains why “conservative” talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin are supporting Romney, especially with the strong showing of Ron Paul in the primaries. Both Savage (real name Weiner) and Levin have gone so far as to call Paul a threat to the country.
In December, Mitt refused to release the identity of his “bundlers,” or people who gather contributions from many individuals in an organization or community and give the cash to the campaign.
In other words, the above list is only the tip of the iceberg. Romney’s lack of transparency about his bundlers indicates he is getting money from sources that want their identity concealed.
In November, it was reported that Jimmy Lee, a veteran Wall Street investment banker, and three other top executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co hosted a $2,500-per-person reception for Romney.
“I am committed to doing all that I can to help his campaign because I also believe he is the strongest challenger to President Obama,” Lee told Reuters. Lee said he has known Romney for almost all of his Wall Street career and that he made one of the first loans to Romney at Bain Capital.
Click here for the full report.
Dollar Seen Losing Global Reserve Status
June 28, 2011 by admin
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June 28th, 2011
Financial Times
By: Jack Farchy
The US dollar will lose its status as the global reserve currency over the next 25 years, according to a survey of central bank reserve managers who collectively control more than $8,000bn.
More than half the managers, who were polled by UBS, predicted that the dollar would be replaced by a portfolio of currencies within the next 25 years.
That marks a departure from previous years, when the central bank reserve managers have said the dollar would retain its status as the sole reserve currency.
UBS surveyed more than 80 central bank reserve managers, sovereign wealth funds and multilateral institutions with more than $8,000bn in assets at its annual seminar for sovereign institutions last week. The results were not weighted for assets under management.
The results are the latest sign of dissatisfaction with the dollar as a reserve currency, amid concerns over the US government’s inability to rein in spending and the Federal Reserve’s huge expansion of its balance sheet.
“Right now there is great concern out there around the financial trajectory that the US is on,” said Larry Hatheway, chief economist at UBS.
The US currency has slid 5 per cent so far this year, and is trading close to its lowest ever level against a basket of the world’s major currencies.
Holders of large reserves, most notably China, have been diversifying away from the dollar. In the first four months of this year, three quarters of the $200bn expansion in China’s foreign exchange reserves was invested in non-US dollar assets, Standard Chartered estimates.
The prediction of a multipolar currency world replacing the current dollar dominance chimes with the thinking of some leading policymakers.
Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, last year proposed a new monetary system involving a number of major global currencies, including the dollar, euro, yen, pound and renminbi.
The system should also make use of gold, Mr Zoellick added. The results of the UBS poll also point to a growing role for bullion, with 6 per cent of reserve managers surveyed saying the biggest change in their reserves over the next decade would be the addition of more gold. In contrast to previous years, none of the managers surveyed was intending to make significant sales of gold in the next decade.
Central banks have bought about 151 tonnes of gold so far this year, led by Russia and Mexico, according to the World Gold Council, and are on track to make their largest annual purchases of bullion since the collapse in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system, which pegged the value of the dollar to gold.
The reserve managers predicted that gold would be the best performing asset class over the next year, citing sovereign defaults as the chief risk to the global economy.
The yellow metal has risen 19.5 per cent in the past year to trade at about $1,500 a troy ounce on Monday, buoyed by the emergence of sovereign debt concerns in the US as well as eurozone debt woes.
Click here for the full report from FT.com
Secret Gold Swap Surprised The Market
July 12, 2010 by admin
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July 12, 2010
Telegraph
By: Garry White and Rowena Mason
The news that a mystery bank has just pawned the family jewels gave traders a jolt – nervous about the sudden transfer of almost 20pc of the world’s annual gold production and the possibility of a sell-off.
In a tiny footnote in its annual report, the bank disclosed its unusually large holding of gold, compared with nothing the year before. The disclosure was a large factor in the correction of the gold price this week, which fell below $1,200 for the first time in more than a month.
Concerns hinged on whether the BIS could potentially sell on this vast cache of bullion in the event of a default, flooding the market with liquidity. It appears to have raised $14bn for whoever’s been doing the swapping – small fry on the currency markets, but serious liquidity in the gold market.
Denominated in euros, gold has fallen 8pc since the beginning of the month and is now trading at a seven-week low of €937 per troy ounce.
The big gold exchange traded funds (ETFs) – having peaked at record inflows in May – have also been showing net outflows over the past few days.
Meanwhile, economists and gold market-watchers were determined to hunt down which bank is short of cash – curious about who is using their stash of precious metal for what looks suspiciously like a secret bailout.
At first it looked like the BIS was swapping gold with a troubled central bank. After all, the institution is the central bankers’ bank and its purpose to conduct transactions with national monetary authorities.
Central banks in the troubled southern zone of Europe were considered the most likely perpetrators.
According to the World Gold Council, central banks in Greece, Spain and Portugal held 112.2, 281.6 and 382.5 tons of gold respectively in June – leading analysts to point fingers at Portugal, or a combination of the three.
But Edel Tully, an analyst from UBS, noted that eurozone central banks would be severely limited with what they could do with the influx of extra cash – unable to transfer it straight to governments or make use of the primary bond markets.
She then listed the only other potential monetary authorities with enough gold as the US, China, Switzerland, Japan, Russia, India and Taiwan – and the International Monetary Fund.
This led to musings that the counterparty was the IMF, making sense because the lender of last resort is historically prone to cash shortages and has been quietly selling off gold in the first half of the year.
Renowned gold expert Jim Sinclair adopted this explanation. The panic came when people mistook a lease for a swap, he argues. Far from being a big release of gold into the market, it is simply a commercial arrangement between the IMF and BIS with a favourable rate of interest paid for the foreign currency.
“Gold swaps are usually undertaken by monetary authorities,” he writes on his industry blog, MineSet. “The gold is exchanged for foreign exchange deposits with an agreement that the transaction be unwound at a future time at an agreed price.
“The IMF will pay interest on the foreign exchange received. Historically swaps occur when entities like the IMF have a need for foreign exchange, but do not wish to sell the gold. In this case, gold is a leveraging device for needed currency to meet requirements.
“The many reports that characterise the large IMF gold swap as a sale of gold into the markets do not understand the difference between a swap and a lease.”
However, the day after original reports about the swaps, BIS emailed a statement saying that the swaps had not been conducted with monetary authorities but purely with commercial banks.
This did nothing to quell the sense of mystery surrounding the deal or deals. It is almost inconceivable that a single commercial bank could have accumulated so much gold alone. And cynics have suggested that the whole affair still looks like a secretive European bailout that a single country wants to keep quiet.
In this case, one or more of the so-called bullion banks – which act as wholesale market-makers and include Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, HSBC, Barclays, UBS, Societe Generale, Mitsui and the Bank of Nova Scotia – would have agreed to act on behalf of a monetary authority.
This would add an extra layer of anonymity. “So the BIS swaps look like a tripartite transaction,” writes Adrian Douglas of the Gold Anti-Trust Association. “The commercial bank or banks made a swap with a central bank or banks and then the commercial bank or banks made a swap with the BIS.”
Analysts for Commerzbank note that in the meantime, “The price of gold is tending weaker at present.”
Baltic Dry Index still falling
The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity shipping costs, has fallen for the longest period in nine years, due to lower volumes of iron ore being shipped to China.
Surplus steel means manufacturers are relying on stockpiles, rather than shipping in iron ore from abroad.
The index of freight rates on international trade routes fell 38 points, or 2pc, to 1,902 points on Friday in its 31st straight decline.
Charter rates for all types of ships fell.
Buyers angry at ‘excessive’ cocoa speculation
European cocoa buyers are so concerned about potential speculation in the market that they have written to the London commodities exchange threatening to move their trade to America.
Talks between industry participants and Liffe, the London exchange operator, will take place this week, following concerns about the price spike in June.
Futures hit a 32-year high, amid lower production due to diseased crops in Africa and higher demand.
Those who signed the letter claim there has been excessive speculation by hedge funds and want greater transparency about who is buying what and how much.
Swiss Warn UBS Bank Could Collapse
February 1, 2010 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 1, 2010
Breitbart
By AFP
Switzerland’s justice minister warned in an interview on Sunday that top bank UBS could collapse if sensitive talks with the United States over a high-profile tax fraud investigation fall through.
“The actions of UBS in the United States are very problematic. Not just because they are punishable but also because they threaten all of the bank’s activities,” Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Le Matin Dimanche newspaper.
“The Swiss economy and the job market would suffer on a major scale if UBS fails as a result of its licence being revoked in the United States,” she said.
Switzerland and the United States have negotiated an agreement under which UBS would hand over information on some 4,500 account holders to US tax police.
But a Swiss court ruling earlier this month put the deal in doubt.
Many in Switzerland, where banking secrecy is a source of pride and a key part of the economy, have accused the government of failing to protect UBS.
“We have nothing to blame ourselves for. I don’t think anyone could prove that we acted badly,” Widmer-Schlumpf said in the interview.
