Four Prominent Bankers Found Dead Within Six Days, All Ruled ‘Suicides’, The Stock Market In Japan Is Collapsing

Top officials from JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and the Federal Reserve have all turned up dead over the course of six days.

The Manipulation of the Gold, Silver and Currency Markets

Top German Regulator: Precious Metal and Currency Manipulation Are Worse Than Libor

The New Largest Financial Scandal In History …

The Libor interest rate scandal was the biggest financial scandal in history:

Obscene wealth: World’s 85 richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest – Oxfam

Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The World Economic Forum has identified economic inequality as a major risk to human progress, impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale.

The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind

You are about to learn one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world…

It’s a secret that has huge effects for everyone who lives on this planet. Most people can feel deep down that something isn’t quite right with the world economy, but few know what it is.

Gone are the days where a family can survive on just one paycheck…every day it seems that things are more and more out of control, yet only one in a million understand why. You are about to discover the system that is ultimately responsible for most of  the inequality in our world today.

ECB’s Draghi: Knowing Too Much About Our Big Banks Could Set Off A Panic

European banks, like all banks, have long been hermetically sealed black boxes. 

If someone managed to pry open just one tiny corner, the reek of asset putrefaction that billowed out was so strong that the corner would immediately be resealed. In cases where the corner didn’t get resealed fast enough and too much of the reek spread, the whole bank collapsed, only to be bailed out by taxpayers, often in other countries; it’s easier that way.

The only thing known about the holes in the balance sheets of these black boxes, left behind by assets that have quietly decomposed, is that they’re deep. But no one knows how deep. And no one is allowed to know – not until Eurocrats decide who is going to pay for bailing out these banks. How do we know? ECB President Mario Draghi said that on Friday in Washington.

How to Boycott Wall Street

The politicians, the media, the financiers and the other supporters of the status quo are not particularly threatened by mass political movements, marches on Washington, or demands for government to do something about the situation. 

But what they do live in mortal fear of is that people will start taking the matters into their own hands and doing the only thing that it is within our direct and immediate power to do: to withdraw our money from the financial web that they have spun around us.

One of the most startling examples came at the height of the Move Your Money campaign in October 2011 when a St. Louis Police Department SWAT team was called in to barricade the doors of a Bank of America branch to physically stop a group of protesters from withdrawing their money from the bank.

The point of the boycott, of course, is not merely to starve the Wall Street fat cats, but to use our money to build up a viable alternative infrastructure.

The road from here to one in which there is a viable, healthy alternative financial infrastructure that the majority of the population will feel secure in supporting is a long and arduous one, to be sure, but there is a bright side: the revolution does not have to start in the streets of Manhattan or in London or Tokyo or other financial center. This revolution begins at home, it begins with us, and, if you so choose, it begins today. read more
hear more

The SECRET War on Truth & Whistleblowers:

'Havoc' as HSBC prepares to close diplomatic accounts

HSBC bank has reportedly asked more than 40 diplomatic missions to close their accounts as part of a programme to reduce business risks.

The Vatican's ambassadorial office in Britain, the Apostolic Nunciature, is among those said to be affected.

The head of the UK's Consular Corps told the Mail on Sunday the decision has created "havoc".

The Foreign Office has been in touch with HSBC, stepping in to help diplomats open other bank accounts.

HSBC said embassies were subject to the same assessments as its other business customers. They need to satisfy five criteria - international connectivity, economic development, profitability, cost efficiency and liquidity.

A spokesman said: "HSBC has been applying a rolling programme of "five filter" assessments to all its businesses since May 2011, and our services for embassies are no exception.

"We do not comment on individual customer relationships."

The Mail on Sunday reported that the High Commission of Papua New Guinea and the Honorary Consulate of Benin have also been asked to move their accounts within 60 days.

Bernard Silver, head of the Consular Corps, which represents consuls in the UK, told the paper: "HSBC's decision has created havoc.

"Embassies and consulates desperately need a bank, not just to take in money for visas and passports but to pay staff wages, rent bills, even the congestion charge." read more


Related:
Unmasking the embassy threat

Top Vatican bank managers resign after Monsignor's arrest

President of the Vatican bank Ernst von Freyberg poses in his office at the Vatican June 10, 2013. Picture take June 10, 2013.

Two top managers of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank resigned on Monday following the arrest of a high-ranking cleric with close ties to the financial institution, in the latest of a string of embarrassments for the Holy See.

Director Paolo Cipriani and deputy-director Massimo Tulli stepped down three days after the Vatican was rocked by the arrest of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who is accused of plotting with two other people to smuggle 20 million euros into Italy from Switzerland.

Ernst von Freyberg, a German who earlier this year became president of the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), will assume the role of bank director until a permanent replacement is appointed.

The bank has also established a new position of chief risk officer who will be charged with improving compliance with financial regulations at a bank which has long been a byword for secrecy and lack of transparency.

Scarano, 61, who worked as a senior accountant in the Vatican's financial administration, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial intermediary.

According to transcripts from a judge's report, Scarano, who is under two separate investigations by Italian magistrates in Rome and Milan, mentioned the director in phone conversations tapped by police investigators.

The judge's report, obtained by Reuters, says Scarano controlled vast amounts of money and felt he could act with impunity because of his connections to the Vatican bank.

Only last Wednesday, two days before the arrests, Pope Francis set up a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank, which has been hit by a number of scandals in the past decades.

Scarano was for years a senior accountant for a Vatican department known as APSA, whose official title is the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.


SUSPENDED

Magistrates have said there is no indication so far that the Vatican bank was directly involved in the attempt to bring the money into Italy, but that the investigation was continuing and more searches were under way.

Scarano was suspended from his duties several weeks ago when he was placed under investigation by magistrates in Salerno.

In that investigation, his lawyer Silverio Sica said wealthy friends had donated money to Scarano in order for him to build a home for the terminally ill.

According to Sica, his client wanted to use that money to pay off his mortgage so he could sell a property in Salerno and use the proceeds to build the care home.

Scarano has been accused of taking 560,000 euros in cash out of his account in the Vatican bank and giving various amounts to friends who gave him checks in exchange, apparently in a bid to cover his tracks. He then deposited the checks into an Italian bank account to pay off the mortgage.

The case against Scarano came as an embarrassment to Francis, who, since his election in March, has pointedly eschewed many of the trappings of office and sought to stress the importance of a simple life of devotion.

The IOR, tarnished by accusations of failing to meet international transparency standards intended to combat money laundering and tax evasion, is trying to clean up its image after a long history of scandals.

Its most notorious incident came in 1982 when it was enmeshed in the bankruptcy of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano, whose chairman Roberto Calvi was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge.

In 2010, Rome magistrates investigating money laundering froze 23 million euros ($33 million) held by the IOR in an Italian bank. The IOR said it was transferring its own funds between accounts in Italy and Germany. The money was released in June 2011 but the investigation continues.

The European anti-money laundering committee, Moneyval, said in a July report that the IOR still had to enact more reforms in order to meet international standards against money laundering.

The Vatican is due to give Moneyval a progress report this year.


Philip Pullella

We Shall Kill the Dollar

From Doug Hagmann of Canada Free Press comes a chilling account of what's in store for us if we continue to ignore the bare-faced warnings of the central power base

 

Chem-trails- done. Fluoride- done. GMOs- done. Forced vaccination- done. Prescription addiction- done. Endless WAR- done. Continuing racism- done. Legal Propaganda- done. Murder of true Patriots- done and continuing. Spying on everyone- done. Spying using drones- done. Gitmo lie-done. Coup on American society- done. Destruction of Christianity- doing. Installation of any other religion- doing. FEMA Camps- done. TSA intimidation- done. ALL alphabet agencies armed- done. Have I forgotten anything?

Some might be surprised to learn that the fate of America's economy has already been determined, verified and announced by the Obama White House. Yet, it has received scant attention from the corporate media. In 2011, economist Kyle Bass interviewed a senior member of the Obama administration about its planned solutions for fixing the US economy and trade deficit[ia]. Among the questions he asked was about U.S. exports and wages, but the question itself was not nearly as important as the response he received from this senior administration official. In fact, this single, seven word response clarifies everything, explains everything, and leaves little else to discuss: "We're just going to kill the dollar."

source

Everything Is Rigged, Continued: Oil Companies Raided

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. 

The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" - which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.
The inquiry also involves Platts, the world's largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month's Rolling Stone article, "Everything is Rigged." In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we're forced to trust.

"In all the over-the-counter markets, you don't really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together," Masters notes glumly.

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities - jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it.
One analyst I spoke to for that piece talked specifically about Platts (and another, similar price assessment company), noting that they "do benchmarks for the entire oil market, the entire refined products market" and "you name it" - any of these benchmarks that rely on voluntary reporting could be manipulated.

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Financial Scandal Yet

It's not clear yet exactly what is alleged to have occurred, but Europeans have long complained that retail gas prices have not seemed to match wholesale prices. In fact, complaints that wholesale prices at gas stations were noticeably slow to fall when wholesale prices fell prompted the U.K.-based Office of Fair Trading last year to conduct a cursory inquiry into possible anti-competitive behavior in the fuel markets. Early this year, they announced that they hadn't found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation. But complaints persisted.

The story is obviously hugely significant in its own right, just as the LIBOR story was. But both are even more unpleasant in conjunction with each other, and the other price-fixing scandals that have cropped up in the financial markets in the last year or two. We've had other price-fixing scandals involving gas in the U.K. and here in the U.S., just a few weeks ago, it came out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that JPMorgan Chase used "manipulative schemes" to tinker with energy prices in Michigan and California.

FERC last year also recommended a massive $470 million fine against Barclays for similar activity. (Barclays has vowed to fight the penalty.) Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, settled with FERC for $1.7 million after the commission alleged that the German bank was involved with manipulation in the California energy markets for several months during 2010.



Matt Taibbi


Related:
Everything is rigged: The Biggest price-fixing scandal ever

How The British Banking Industry Became An Organised Crime Enterprise

I know it. You know it. We all know it. It’s the elephant in the room that the subservient cowards in the mainstream media are too afraid to mention; the banking industry is run and controlled by criminals.

Among the growing mountain of evidence that has been gathered over the decades to prove this accusation, a former Scotland Yard Fraud Squad detective has now spoken out.
Speaking on BCFM radio, Rowan Boswell-Davies revealed to host Tony Gosling the depth of criminal activity within the banking industry and the lengths that the government will go to, to conceal the evidence.

Boswell-Davies, who spent 12 years on the force investigating major investment fraud as the City lawlessly regulated itself, received a sinister response when he submitted his evidence of fraud to the Parliamentary Banking Commission.

Interview with lawyer & former Scotland Yard Fraud Squad detective for 12 years Rowan Boswell-Davies who submitted evidence of widespread organised crime in the City of London under US, EU, Australian and British definitions of Organised Crime to the Parliamentary Banking Commission chaired by Andrew Tyrie. This evidence was initially ’lost’ by the Commission and after Rowan contacted Mr Tyrie they found it again.

They have suggested the evidence might have to be ‘redacted’, or blanked out, so Rowan has published it in full for the public to view online. Mr Boswell-Davies believes that unless the authorities institute a series of criminal trials and convictions of ‘blue blood’ City bankers, the ‘Princes of the City’, will continue to defraud the nation, loot and bring about an eventual collapse of the national economy and the pound.

He has identified the ‘Blue Arrow’ trial as the most important city fraud case where the message went out that it was ‘open season’ for city fraudsters, that they would never again be prosecuted. This trial had rattled the ‘self-regulating’ City criminal club and they then knocked back the police and went back to a tame, pre Sir Robert Mark, system of ‘light touch’ regulation by their friends. Rowan explains who should be arrested and put on trial, as well as why and how to do it.

Listen to the interview as he sheds light this vast criminal conspiracy.

Listen to the Second Hour Here  (Second Hour with Rowan Boswell-Davies)

Or Listen to Both Hours Here (Both Hours)



 Mick Meaney

Everything is rigged: The Biggest price-fixing scandal ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."

The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.


Matt Taibbi

Look out! The ‘BRIIICS’ are coming!

The importance of the BRICS summit cannot be overestimated partly because it represents new countries beginning to take power and partly because it heralds a new world coming into being.”

Yes, BRIIICS, with three “I”s. That’s because to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (which have just held a summit in Durban, South Africa) will soon be added Iran and Indonesia.

Iran is a stalwart moral and political leader. It stands up against Zionism. It has huge natural resources. It is making extraordinary technological progress. It will soon be a BRIIICS member.

And so will Indonesia, which has the world’s fourth largest population, a fast developing economy (around 7% per year) and, again, huge natural resources.

Already, the present BRICS have 40% of the world’s population, 30% of its land mass, and 25% of its GDP with the latter being a sharply rising figure. Other countries, like Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia, are certain to join in.

Much more important, however, is the BRICS decision to set up a new development bank for long-term infrastructure. This is intended to rival, indeed, outclass, the Western-backed institutions. The underlying rationale is simple: the BRICS are determined to challenge Western political and economic dominance and, in particular, to break the dominance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which have not served the development needs of poor countries and have generally served only to put them into ever-increasing, un-repayable debt.

All of which is excellent news. The West has exploited emerging and poor countries and everywhere has been financially and militarily aggressive. Put simply, other countries are fed-up with the West: they have had enough.

The new bank, however, has more purposes than just being a development bank. American aggression, for example, is ultimately dependent upon the US dollar being the world’s reserve and main trading currency. The BRICS are going to end that by establishing a new reserve and trading currency.

Indeed, the situation can be put even more clearly. The West has long exploited and oppressed everybody that it could but now the boot, in the traditional metaphor, is on the other foot. Political power is shifting away from the West; economic power is shifting away from the West and its moral authority has almost completely disappeared (torture, assassinations, the creeping genocide of the Palestinians and the deliberate furtherance of a vicious sectarianism have seen to that).

Significantly, the BRICS are objecting to sanctions and war threats against Iran and are strongly opposed to Zionist Israel. It will not be long they declare that Israel is a pariah state.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the BRICS summit is the proposed creation of an optic fibre cable linking all five states (with relatively easy extensions to Iran and Indonesia). Indeed, it could be that the BRICS are constructing an independent global optic fibre internet system or at least an extensive one over which they will have complete control. The BRICS are intensely aware that the USA, denying the evidence of its own sixteen intelligence agencies, is pursuing a Zionist agenda against Iran which includes excluding Iran from the SWIFT international banking system and other banking transactions. The new cable should put an end to that.

The BRICS are raising the flag of independence and are telling the West that its abuse of others has gone so far that the others are going to make their own way in life. And that will really matter because more and more Non-Aligned Movement nations will be joining the BRICS in various ways which will particularly include regional, economic, financial, military and technological agreements. An example is that China and Brazil have signed a currency swap deal under which they will be using their own currencies for half of their mutual trade i.e., the US dollar will not be involved. For a while the US dollar can be expected to remain the main trading currency – until suddenly it isn’t.

Furthermore, Africa, for example, long exploited solely for its minerals and resources with no concern for the lives of the inhabitants, is simply going to turn to those who can provide the one big thing that Africa needs – industrialisation.

The importance of the BRICS summit cannot be overestimated partly because it represents new countries beginning to take power and partly because it heralds a new world coming into being.

However, a new world is not necessarily a better world and the BRICS, becoming the BRIIICS and much more, must be careful not to incorporate, without realising, assumptions and practices stemming from corrupt old Western institutions, thinking and practices. Chief of these is thinking that it does not matter if there is huge rich-poor division. This is at the heart of corrupt Western ‘trickle-down’ economics and is a complete breach of fundamental market principle, which says that producers and consumers must be the same people i.e., real productive (and therefore consuming) power must be spread to everyone in society.

Another corrupt assumption is that interest is necessary for the spreading of real productive capacity. Interest is not necessary: it is an unnecessary tax imposed by the global financial elite merely for its own benefit. The BRIIICS must ensure that the commercial banks are controlled so that they can only lend their own money (which they can then waste, if they want to, or charge interest on it). But the main money supply, for the spreading of the real economy, must stem, interest-free, from the national bank (although it may be administered by the commercial banks making only a fair administration charge).

Jalal (making a comment on the Press TV website) writes: “This is the best thing that could happen to the world. A new power that will not let the ex-colonials have the big cake to themselves as usual. This could also be the right path to finally new world order that will contribute to free human being and lead mankind towards a more balanced and harmonious world.”

Quite right, Jalal.



Prof. Rodney Shakespeare

Euro Group Head: Looting of Bank Accounts a “Template For EU”

More deposits to be plundered

 The looting of private bank accounts to cover the gambling losses of big banks is a new template for the euro zone, according to Dutch Finance Minister and President of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Image: Wikimedia Commons

With savers in Cyprus set to have 40% of their wealth plundered in order to fund an EU bailout package, Dijsselbloem indicated that this new model of “bank restructuring” was set to be replicated across the continent.

“If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be ‘Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?’. If the bank can’t do it, then we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we’ll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders,” Dijsselbloem told Reuters.

“Uninsured deposit holders” means anyone unfortunate enough to have squirreled away more than 100,000 euros under the delusion that it wouldn’t be swiped from under their noses by EU technocrats.

His remarks helped send the euro single currency plummeting, before a spokeswoman for Dijsselbloem ludicrously attempted to re-write history and claim that he didn’t say Cyprus was a template for bank restructurings.

In reality, the minister is merely echoing what other banking chiefs have already admitted in the wake of the Cyprus crisis – that no one in Europe is safe from having their savings looted.

Hours after the announcement that Cypriot savers were set to see their deposits plundered, Joerg Kraemer, chief economist of the German Commerzbank, called for private savings accounts in Italy to be similarly plundered. “A tax rate of 15 percent on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100 percent of gross domestic product,” he told Handelsblatt.

As Zero Hedge reports, by calling the Cyprus looting a “bank restructuring” and not a “tax,” technocrats were able to bypass the democratic process.

“What Cyprus allowed was the effective usurpation of democracy – the only reason the Cypriot bailout “passed” (at least so far) is because it was structured as a bank restructuring, a financial system “resolution”, not a tax, and thus not in need of a parliamentary, democratic vote. Because as Cyprus also showed, votes to deprive depositors of cash, whether insured or uninsured, simply won’t fly.”

 Paul Joseph Watson

The EU is about war, not peace.

Nigel Farrage can tell it how it is in a few words.

In a short speech before the EU, Nigel Farrage summarizes in an excellent manner what the situation is really like in the EU. Going to war in Mali to distract everyone's attention from the increasingly worsening financial situation.

On the 4th of february 2013 France's minister of labour, Michel Sapin, said on a radio programme at the weekend: "France is totally bankrupt". Joke or not, he did say it. 

History learns that when a country's economy is in big trouble, war is the other option. Like the French 'invasion' of Mali... 

Interesting:

Iceland President: Let the Banks Fail
Belgian MP Exposes War on Terror & 9/11 False Flag

Americans buy nearly half a Billion dollars of gold and silver in January

While public officials may be ignoring the continued deterioration of our economy, job losses to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people weekly, and the unprecedented demand for government emergency support services like unemployment insurance and food assistance, Americans who sense uncertainty in the air are flocking to the safety of physical resources.

Our first point of interest is a recent report from the Federal Reserve that indicates some $114 billion dollars in cash was withdrawn from the nation’s largest banks in the last thirty days. Those holding their money at bailed out financial institutions are understandably concerned because the government’s $250,000 deposit insurance guarantee program, originally implemented to restore confidence in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, expired at the end of 2012. That and the US fiscal situation has never been worse, with one Obama official recently having said the solution to the country’s woes is to simply kill the dollar.

This suggests investors and cash savers are no longer confident in the purported safety of the country’s “too-big-to-fail” institutions.

The next obvious question then is, “where did this money go?”

Part of the mystery may have been unraveled when the US Mint released its latest sales and inventory report.

According to the mint, investors purchased nearly half a billion dollars in gold and silver in the last 30 days. There was, in fact, so much money shifting into physical precious metals in January that the mint was actually forced to cease operations because they couldn’t meet demand.

A massive 7.4 million Silver Eagles were purchased from the U.S. Mint in January,considerably higher than the previous record from early 2011.

After halting Silver coin production/sales for over a week, the Mint re-opened yesterday and demand once again surged.

Having almost doubled from the first week in January, there remains two more days before the book is closed on January’s sales.

At 140,000 ounces, the Mint has also sold the most ounces of gold in January in almost three years, suggesting the rising ‘currency wars’ are stoking people’s ongoing rotation from paper-to-physical assets as their ‘wealth’ slowing loses its value.

With a Silver Eagle trading at around $31 per ounce and the gold spot price at near all time highs of $1650, the US Mint saw some $460 million dollars shift into precious metals in the month of January alone.

What’s equally as interesting, and perhaps a harbinger of the coming chaos, is that the People’s Republic of China is also shifting a large amount of its cash reserves into physical resource based investments that include agriculture, energy, and precious metals, a move that has caused confusion among experts at the United Nations.

With the political situation in this country rapidly dwindling because of government interference on all levels, a recession for 2013 already baked into the cake, and a global economy on the brink of collapse, there is one primary motivating factor driving money into gold and silver.

Uncertainty.

As we’ve seen recently with shortages in emergency food rations and supplies, firearms and magazines, and now gold and silver, Americans are no longer confident in the stability of the system as a whole, and they are diversifying their assets into physical resources that will retain value should the global financial, economic, monetary, and geo-political systems come unhinged.

Mac Slavo

Interesting:

Who Runs The World? 

Iceland President: Let the Banks Fail 
Goldman Sachs Made 400 Million Betting On Food Prices In 2012 While Hundreds Of Millions Starved

People Worldwide claim their Sovereignty [updated, thanks to Beatrix stepping down]  

Financial Intel

HUGE assets and MONEY from the imperial families are in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Specifically, China, Japan, Indonesia.

 The new China Government is to change it all in 8 weeks time (?) so people are moving stocks...
JP Morgan is having a huge issue as all their customers are moving their Gold (AU) now QUICKLY...
All the families mentioned above and Morgan included are very nervous because everything they have falls under the Xing Dynasty.


The Real Buddha, The Empress of the Xing Dynasty Empire is nearing return and showing all parties that the thievery must stop now!
She is responsible for the rightful arrests of those in Hong Kong involved in the outright theft of the Xing Dynasty Royal Assets and the firing of many top Chinese Officials.


She is very fair in her ways and she is going to take the course that her ancestors took of assisting the people of the world.
She will stand strong and be unshakeable against those who test her will
Finally Asia will get rid of the demons they have allowed in and those inside that have become evil themselves.


The assets JP Morgan is trying to dump now in Hong Kong are well known and belong to the Xing Dynasty. They are watching every move they make and with whom.
The traders, players, and frauds think they have eight (8) weeks left (?) to play and get rich but get this, BUT, there is no eight (8) weeks, as it has already begun.


The Empress is on her way to her rightful home now, to arrive before you expect it...
HSBC close your 13th floor right now they are watching you after hours because they know this is when you do your illegal trading.
Things have started.

 Drake Bailey

source 

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