Treasure Islands, Crown Colonies, Empire Tax Havens

[vanlose kid]

yo, antiaristo, if you're out there. hope you're well. God bless.

*

[vanlose kid]

just throwing some stuff from other threads and sources that seem to connect in some way to the "bigger picture" and to some of the details of antiaristo's life (as in how they got to him).

Title: The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee

Author: Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Obviously, despite my name, I am a woman. I am also an American, living and working in New Zealand for the past eight years as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. I am also a first time author.

I am absolutely thrilled (and a little surprised) that The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee has won a 2011 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award. I took the title of my memoir from a famous quote by the early 20th century German activist Rosa Luxemburg: “The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is.”

Luxemburg’s astute observation of the fog of lies and deception that surrounds modern institutions of power has been an inspiration for the past 30 years of my life – which has been dedicated to social activism.

What My Book is About

In essence my book describes how I wound up in New Zealand. It describes how intense harassment between 1987 and 2002 led a 54 year old psychiatrist, single mother and social activist, to close my 25 year Seattle practice to begin a new life in New Zealand. In a way it is an account of my incredible naivete about the way the US political system operates. From my perspective, my frightening encounter with US intelligence began quite innocently when I used my financial and social position, as a doctor, to assist two former Black Panthers who were occupying an abandoned school to transform it into an African American Museum.

What I found most painful was the harsh and brutal way my fundamental assumptions about personal liberty and democratic process were destroyed. What began as unrelenting phone harassment and illegal break-ins, progressed to six attempts on my life and an affair with an undercover agent who railroaded me into a psychiatric hospital.

Although the promotional material for my book focuses mainly on my own experiences, my main motivation for writing it was the murder of a postal worker and union activist, Oscar Manassa. As I recount in my book, prior to his death, Manassa also experienced extensive covert harassment. His death was a personal epiphany – as I recognized that Americans who challenge powerful government or corporate interests are denied the protection of the US criminal justice system. The Seattle police were blocked from undertaking a homicide investigation when the US Postal Inspectors (who unbeknownst to many Americans are actually an intelligence arm of the federal government) seized the evidence file.

It has been my lifelong dream to pressure Congress into launching an investigation into Oscar Manassa’s murder, as well as those of 20-plus other postal workers who died of violent and suspicious “suicides” in the late eighties and early nineties.

As my book describes, the two year crusade I undertook to identify and expose Oscar’s killers made me an “expert” in the some of criminal activities US intelligence is notorious for – illegal narcotics trafficking and arms dealing, money laundering, and covert assassinations of both foreign and domestic leaders and activists.

Sadly I also discovered that the US government, via CIA funding of so-called “left” foundations, has deeply infiltrated Seattle’s progressive movement. This occurred when the exposure of a mutual friend as a government agent led to the breakdown of my oldest and closest friendship.


http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/about-the-author/

Review by Emily Jane Hills Orford

http://www.allbooksreviewint.com/

Sept 2010
Title: The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee

Author: Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Do you feel safe in your house at night? Have you ever wondered about those annoying, middle-of-the-night phone calls that you thought were just a random wrong number? Have you noticed someone following you? Frightening? Yes! Imagine having this happen relentlessly for years: phone calls at all hours of the day and night; people following you; people pretending to be your friend, your client, your patient; people breaking into your house; people threatening your life; people ending the lives of people you have come to know through your practice and your volunteer activities. These things are frightening enough without the added phone taps and tampering with the television cable so that the programming is altered to implement a direct personal assault on an individual’s mental health. This and more happened to an American psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall. Not only did these threats affect her safety and that of her daughter, they also affected her psychiatric practice and had her committed to the psychiatric ward, induced with countless drugs and labelled as being psychotically paranoid and manic depressive. Why? It all started when she tried to help transform an abandoned school in Seattle into an African American Museum.

Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall is a captivating storyteller. Her memoir, The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee, chronicles thirty years of her life as she tried to maintain her psychiatric practice in Seattle, Washington, while raising a daughter and being actively involved in several volunteer groups that rigorously sought to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Her fight to bring research on safe AIDS treatment to the fore in the 1970s struck a raw-nerve in certain government departments. Her fight to defend African Americans abused by the system, abused by the police, resulted in greater harassment. She also lobbied for basic health care insurance for all Americans; helped establish and support, both financially and physically, the African American Museum; and she was frequently sought to financially back those who were wrongly accused in the Seattle justice system. Her views on American politics may have seemed radical to many; but hearing her story, from her point-of-view, one begins to wonder if there isn’t a conspiracy out there to block the so-called ‘freedom of speech’ right and condemn those who dare to question it.

Dr. Bramhall continued her practice in Seattle, despite the continual harassment and death threats, for thirty years. She had no desire to uproot her daughter during her early school years. After her daughter moved away to university, Dr. Bramhall made her decision to immigrate. She accepted a posting in New Zealand, and made the move. She is currently practicing child and adolescent psychiatry in New Plymouth.

The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee is an almost shocking memoir about what lies beneath the world as we want to see it. The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee is highly recommended by Allbooks reviewer, Emily-Jane Hills Orford, Allbooks Reviews.

viewtopic.php?p=377455#p377455

UNPERSON

A Life Destroyed
Denis Lehane

‘The CIA’s out to get me!’ is every paranoiac’s cry, yet Denis Lehane is no madman. He was an Irish award-winning journalist. Yet, in 1984, he refused to work undercover for the CIA and MI5 who, in revenge, spread rumours that he was insane, an alcoholic and a serial rapist who had tried to murder his two girlfriends. Certified insane in London and later in Dublin, he was put away in an asylum for life. When a television reporter rang Lehane, in his captors’ hearing, to say that CNN were making a major documentary about him, he was hastily released, the programme cancelled and its maker sacked from the network.

Denied any trial, Ireland deported its own citizen, dumping him in London with £5 in his pocket. He was to live on the streets, in cardboard boxes, until he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of terrorism, forbidden to choose any lawyers, tried in his absence and condemned to a psychiatric prison. Here he was tortured, beaten and left disabled, in lifelong pain, with a broken spine, until a hereditary Peer was to spring him free.

Denis Lehane will never recover, yet slowly, painfully and bravely, he has spent long years writing this book. If anyone thought that such events described within could not happen here, read this powerful, horrifying, yet profoundly moving account. Weep, and think again.



http://www.quartetbooks.co.uk/bookpages/unperson.html

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edit.

Sunday 14th June 2009

Unperson



Unperson: A Life Destroyed, by award-winning Irish journalist Denis Lehane, is a timely indictment of governmental malfeasance and police brutality. With the country’s police force currently making headlines for all the wrong reasons – the death of Ian Tomlinson being only the latest in a string of events that have provided fodder for commentators and even inspiration for artists – the book couldn’t be more relevant.



In 1984, Lehane refused to work undercover for the CIA and MI5. As a result, he was falsely accused of being insane, an alcoholic and a serial rapist who had tried to murder his two girlfriends. He was duly put away in an asylum for life.



But when a television reporter rang Lehane, in his captors’ hearing, to say that CNN were making a major documentary about him, he was hastily released, the programme cancelled and its maker sacked from the network.



Denied any trial, Ireland deported its own citizen, dumping him in London with £5 in his pocket. He was to live on the streets, in cardboard boxes, until he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of terrorism, forbidden to choose any lawyers, tried in his absence and condemned to a psychiatric prison. Here he was tortured, beaten and left disabled, in lifelong pain, with a broken spine, until a hereditary Peer was to spring him free.

Denis Lehane will never recover; yet slowly, painfully and bravely, he has spent long years writing this book. If you thought things have changed in the 25 years since the beginning of Lehane’s truly awful ordeal, just look at any newspaper, switch on the television – and think again.Posted by The Watchman at 20:46

Comment


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http://www.quartetbooks.co.uk/blog.html

[JackRiddler]

.

Okay, are you saying that antiaristo is the Denis Lehane of "Unperson" -- but presumably not the two-N Dennis Lehane of "Shutter Island"? Is that right?

.

[vanlose kid]

.

Okay, are you saying that antiaristo is the Denis Lehane of "Unperson" -- but presumably not the two-N Dennis Lehane of "Shutter Island"? Is that right?

.

nope, sorry, same methods, "same" operatives, used on the same type of people, Elmer (upthread), Lehane, Bramhall, and John Cleary (antiaristo).

if you remember a number of people had trouble listening to antiaristo, especially, when it came to the way "they" treated him, and because of that questioned a great deal of what he had to say re his own personal experiences and "the bigger picture". (more and more of the bigger picture seems to be playing out like he said it would. -- remember he popped up at the beginning of your Wall Street mega-thread? and that he started the Fed is losing control thread?)

but what sparked this line of thought was a remark from wintler2 to this post one Elmer by me, here.

to which:

Rudolf Elmer: "..How can a minority in the banking world manipulate the opinion of an entire country? What is this? The mafia? This is how it works. Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland: this whole bloody system is corrupt."[that's stuff antiaristo was saying way back when.]

Thanks Vanlose Kid, thats a keeper. Elmer doesn't seem to have been cowed by adversity, and i reckon we do him a favour by keeping his name in circulation.

and i remembered the stories antiaristo told about his own situation when he started rocking the boat, e.g. how he snuck back into the UK to visit and when he got to the door his wife told him 3 different police forces had been by looking for him and had said he had gone insane (that's from memory, so don't cite me on it, i'm paraphrasing).

so i'm dumping this stuff here and have been searching for antiaristo's own accounts of the matter and looking into names he's mentioned over time, but the RI search engine is really hard to work with.

this thread? it's all his fault basically.



*

edit: part of what i'm trying to do here is to keep John Cleary's name in circulation, to look into the stuff he was talking about (he was the first person i thought of when i read the articles in the OPand decided to post them) and, if i can, piece his story together 'cause dude was all over this board.

trying to make sense of things too.

if that makes sense.

*

[dqueue]

Here's the Guardian today with a morsel regarding Rudolf Elmer. In effect, they clearly say Elmer plans to pass some "insurance" to WikiLeaks. He implies a earlier such data swap, details of which remain secret to this day. Interesting.

Elmer's story does intrigue. Thank you for getting this thread underway. Likewise for antiaristo. I, too, miss his contributions.

Cheers.

Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks
He will disclose the details of 'massive potential tax evasion' before he flies home to stand trial over his actions
The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".

Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.

Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.

Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".

Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."

"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."

Elmer was held in custody for 30 days in 2005, and is charged with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at Julius Baer.

Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also.

"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."

The names on the CDs will not be made public, just as a much shorter list of 15 clients that Elmer handed to WikiLeaks in 2008 has remained hitherto undisclosed by the organisation headed by Julian Assange, currently on bail over alleged sex offences in Sweden, and under investigation in the US for the dissemination of thousands of state department documents.

Elmer has been hounded by the Swiss authorities and media since electing to become a whistleblower, and his health and career have suffered.

"My understanding is that my client's attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally," says Elmer's lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America's leading experts in tracking offshore money. "Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That's why he went to WikiLeaks."

That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".

Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."

Julius Baer has denied all wrongdoing, and rejects Elmer's allegations. It has said that Elmer "altered" documents in order to "create a distorted fact pattern".

The bank issued a statement on Friday saying: "The aim of [Elmer's] activities was, and is, to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in mind, Mr Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully acquired, respectively retained, documents to the media, and later also to WikiLeaks. To back up his campaign, he also used falsified documents."

The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues.

[dqueue]

Today, Marcy Wheeler writes about Rudolf Elmer providing WikiLeaks with over 2000 offshore bank account details. She notes Elmer's attorney, Jack Blum, seemingly well-credentialed on large-scale financial crimes. She writes (and quotes), in-part:

That’s interesting enough. But I’m equally interested because of who Elmer’s lawyer is: Jack Blum. Blum explains why Elmer has resorted to leaking this to Wikileaks.

“My understanding is that my client’s attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally,” says Elmer’s lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America’s leading experts in tracking offshore money. “Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That’s why he went to WikiLeaks.”

Calling Blum, “one of America’s leading experts in tracking offshore money” doesn’t convey the degree to which Blum’s investigations–perhaps most famously of BCCI–exposed the ties of the very powerful to corrupt money. After Blum’s Senate investigation of BCCI got too close to the Democratic fixer Clark Clifford, he was fired; he had to bring his work to NY’s DA and the press to reveal what he had found.

In a book review for HuffPo last year, Blum described how important it is to map the networks that run our world, yet noted that doing so has gotten more difficult since he first started investigating such things.

[vanlose kid]

Here's the Guardian today with a morsel regarding Rudolf Elmer. In effect, they clearly say Elmer plans to pass some "insurance" to WikiLeaks. He implies a earlier such data swap, details of which remain secret to this day. Interesting.

Elmer's story does intrigue. Thank you for getting this thread underway. Likewise for antiaristo. I, too, miss his contributions.

Cheers.

thanks, and for chipping in.

here's the Guardian link: http://m.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/ ... pe=article

followed by the ZH take. (is this what Assange has been talking about re banks?)

*

Julius Baer Whistleblower To Expose 2,000 High Net Worth Tax Evaders To The World
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/15/2011 23:09 -0500


Two years ago when the US bailed out UBS and Switzerland from a brief but potentially terminal liquidity crisis, it succeeded in extracting a historic pound of flesh: it forced UBS to declassify thousands of bank accounts of US tax evaders which was the first nail in the centuries-old concept of Swiss bank secrecy. Today, Rudolf Elmer, a former COO of one of the biggest Swiss banks, Julius Baer, may have just nailed the last, and with that set off a chain reaction that will force a huge outcry against pervasive global tax fraud (but likely achieve nothing ultimatel). According to the Guardian, tomorrow Elmer will hand over details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals and corporations" to WikiLeaks which will make him "the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history." And since among those exposed will be "approximately 40 politicians" expect all hell to break loose as photos of Assange having a underage orgy with Al Qaeda members are suddenly made public to diffuse what is bound to be another huge (if brief - after all human kind cannot bear very much reality).

From the Guardian:

British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".

Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.

This is interesting: after all it was Zero Hedge that about 18 months ago suggested that all financial professionals should be very concerned: after all, all it takes is one sloppy firing, or one departure without the appropriate non-disparagement and non-truth telling clause, and all hell could break loose as those who were part of the inner sanctum suddenly find themselves on the outside... and wanting revenge. Elmer is just first of many. In the meantime, we hope that every single hedge fund, starting with that particular one in Stamford and going all the way down, has made plans regarding termination of its employees. All it takes is one person who believes they may have been wrongfully terminated to approach the SEC themselves, or, even worse, some blog or alleged terrorist organization with a penchant for disclosing the truth...

More on what will soon be the biggest case of exposed international tax fraud:

Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".

Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."

"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."

Below is Elmer's more verbose explanation of why the game of mutual assured secrecy works...until it doesn't.

"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."

What is interesting is that Elmer has penetrated not only onshore Swiss accounts, but offshore ones, namely those located in the Caymans, which as everyone knows is the primary base of operations for tax evading "offshore" hedge fund LPs:

That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".

Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."

Yet just like with cablegate, the end result of all this imminent disclosure will be merely the confirmation of what everyone has already long suspected: that nobody rich pays taxes, and all US, and world, politicians are massively corrupt. And therefore, no criminal charges will be filed against anyone. Expect of course Assange, who will soon be branded a threat to US national security.

Unfortunately, US society, having lost all forms of checks and balances. has gotten to a point where no incremental information will do anything to even dent the ponzi lie. After all, the simplest observations is that Madoff is in jail for life, while sacrifices are made on Ben Bernanke's altar each and every day. And they say gold is a religion...

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/julius ... ders-world

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[vanlose kid]

Lloyds of London and the basic scam blueprint:

....

Just to be clear. My take on the scene is that I caught these same highly organized criminals back in 1994 when they tried to defraud me and two hundred others at the place I worked. My life since then has been "on the run".

I KNOW how powerful they are.*

When I saw how those same people had pulled the Lloyds fraud I tried to warn many persons in the US Government of what was coming.

I refer you to my two warnings to Janet Reno, then US Attorney General, in April and May of 2000.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... 1668#81668

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... 1669#81669

... I'm not sure that "pyramid" is the best metaphor in this fraud.

This one is all about passing-off of bad paper as good. Passing-off CDOs as AAA bonds.

The equivalent archetype is counterfeiting.

Passing out as gold coins that are in fact 50 percent gold and 50 percent silver.

You will have heard of Gresham's Law:

Bad money drives out good.

That's what has happened in the mortgage securities market. It has frozen up because NOBODY knows which securities are pure gold, and which securities are only 50 percent gold.

So they have stopped buying. The "bad" money has driven the "good" money out of the marketplace.


And Freddie and Fannie are NOT the victims of a pyramid. What happened with these two is that they positively GORGED themselves on fake coins. They morphed into the two largest hedge funds in the world.

Look at their balance sheets.
They are stuffed full with COMMERCIAL mortgage backed securities, with ALT A backed securities and with SUBPRIME backed securities.

ALL OF WHICH LIE OUTSIDE OF THEIR CHARTERED MISSION...

viewtopic.php?p=214772#p214772

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Lloyd's Of London Falling Down
Monday, Feb. 28, 2000 By John Greenwald

Hoping to earn income to help pay for her children's tuition, Dona Evans invested in Lloyd's of London in 1987. The legendary insurance giant was recruiting fresh capital--in fact, Lloyd's was desperate for it--and Evans jumped at the chance to become a Lloyd's Name, as the elite 300-year-old institution calls its investors. In Britain, being a Name was a sure thing; you became economic royalty, even if you weren't one of the many Names who held real titles.

Still, Evans was worried about reports that Lloyd's was facing a rising tide of claims from asbestos-industry workers who were dying of lung diseases--cancer and asbestosis--caused by exposure to the building material. Tut, tut, said a Lloyd's executive who dismissed the risk and explained that while the Names "were of course liable in theory for losses right down to their cufflinks, in practice it never happens because it's all reinsured."

Fast-forward to the present. Lloyd's has indeed been rocked by ruinous asbestos claims, and managed to survive only with the help of a pliant Parliament. But a stone-broke Evans has lost her home. Thousands of Names have been wiped out financially. Some committed suicide. Even such notables as brokerage founders Charles Schwab and Dan Lufkin have been exposed to the loss of millions in what has been called the biggest and baldest swindle in history, perpetrated behind the clubby doors of the world's most respected insurance organization.

Evans is fighting it out, party to a huge lawsuit born of Lloyd's alleged perfidy, which comes to trial in London next week. The suit was filed on behalf of dissident Names who have refused to join a 1996 settlement, claiming that Lloyd's, facing insurmountable losses, duped them by concealing the billions of dollars of asbestos claims it knew to be in the pipeline. "I believed I could trust Lloyd's to look after my interests in much the same way I would trust my bank," says Evans, who lives in London. As a result, she says, "I pledged my house and lost everything."

Lloyd's denies any wrongdoing and will defend itself vigorously. The insurance behemoth "has never been found guilty of fraud," says spokesman Adrian Beeby. Lloyd's has already beaten back a welter of legal actions in Britain. But it faces more charges on this side of the Atlantic. The U.S. Attorney in New York City has made Lloyd's the target of an intensive criminal investigation. And in a pivotal case due for trial early next year before a California state court in Los Angeles, a father and two daughters who lost heavily in Lloyd's have brought allegations of fraud that closely parallel the London charges.

TIME's European edition last week published a 23-page investigative report on Lloyd's by author David McClintick, whose books include the 1983 best seller Indecent Exposure, about embezzlement and power games at Columbia Pictures. The TIME report lends some support to assertions that top Lloyd's execs were aware of the devastating impact that the asbestos claims were likely to have, even as Lloyd's was feverishly recruiting unsuspecting new Names to help absorb the losses.

The TIME investigation tracked the alleged conspiracy through the labyrinthine structure of Lloyd's, which is not an insurance company like, say, Allstate, but a vast insurance exchange that evolved from Edward Lloyd's wharfside coffeehouse in the 17th century. As then, members bid for underwriting business, although today they do so from a four-story-high, block-square trading room in London. These underwriters form syndicates that are in turn backed by Names--investors who range from British notable Camilla Parker Bowles to U.S. business tycoons like Lufkin and Schwab, columnist Robert Novak, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and smaller fry like Evans. Names are required to risk their entire personal wealth when they back Lloyd's policies in exchange for the right to a slice of underwriting profits. Atop the whole shebang sits the Council of Lloyd's, a ruling body of 18 exchange members who regulate the market.

It's this Council that has orchestrated a conspiracy for more than two decades, says Sir William Jaffray, the lead Name in the upcoming London trial. "By the late 1970s," he told TIME, "the Committee [Council] of Lloyd's knew they were facing a crisis, and by 1982 the hierarchy knew that Lloyd's was bust. The only way they could keep going was to suppress the asbestos information, cook the books to ensure they were still showing profits, and go after new investors."

Evidence in a number of lawsuits indicates that many new recruits wound up on syndicates that were heavily exposed to asbestos claims, allowing key insiders--including Murray Lawrence, a future chairman of Lloyd's, who would serve from 1988 to 1990--to quietly lay off their own risks. "It has been a classic Ponzi scheme, in my opinion," British investor John Finlay told a House of Commons committee in 1995.

Lloyd's troubles began in the U.S., in Beaumont, Texas, where in 1969 a dying insulation installer named Clarence Borel sued 11 asbestos companies for failing to warn him about the hazards of handling the material. Four years later, a federal appeals court held the companies liable. The lawyers did the rest, opening the floodgates to damage claims that would eventually bring down huge asbestos companies like Johns Manville Corp., which restructured itself after a trip through bankruptcy court. The insurer of last resort--the party most exposed to the torrent of claims--was Lloyd's of London.

To withstand the financial exposure, the Jaffray suit says, Lloyd's launched its biggest recruitment drive ever. Veddy British recruiters fanned out across the U.S., enlisting the aid of big brokers like E.F. Hutton (now part of Citigroup) to line up prospects. The number of Names soared from about 6,000 in the mid-1960s to 14,000 in 1978 and exceeded 34,000 by the late 1980s. These were discount Names too, Lloyd's having lowered the net worth needed to become a Name to substantially below $1 million. The lower bar gave entry to investors such as Shirley Cook, a third-grade teacher from Texas, and Elizabeth Bencsics, the wife of an electrician in New Mexico, who lost big chunks of their life savings. "At school we were taught that there was nothing more honorable than Lloyd's of London," Bencsics says. "I was thrilled to be part of it."

Yet by the early 1980s Lloyd's had begun to fear not only the onset of asbestos losses but future litigation arising from the recruitment drive. Its answer was to persuade Parliament to grant the company immunity from lawsuits by the Names--something the lawmakers might not do were they to get wind of the insurer's financial problems. And so, according to the London suit, Lloyd's duly set out to cook the books. The complex scheme allegedly involved closing the books prematurely on growing losses to conceal them.

That was good enough for an unwitting Parliament, which in 1982 gave Lloyd's its exemption from future lawsuits. The insurer could thenceforth be held liable for damages only if a plaintiff could prove "bad faith," something that is difficult to establish under British law.

The Bank of England was less awed by Lloyd's than Parliament. In fact, it grew alarmed by what it was hearing and in that same year launched a top-secret inquiry into Lloyd's. The bank concluded, in a letter to Lloyd's chairman, Peter Green, that if the insurer collapsed, it would threaten the entire British banking system. As an insider told TIME: "This was a significant factor behind the continued recruitment, or indeed the increased rate of recruitment, of Names."

In an effort to stabilize Lloyd's worsening condition, the Bank of England exerted its influence to have an outsider, Ian Hay Davison, named chief executive officer in 1983. But the real power remained with chairman Green, a richly corrupt official who in 1986 was found guilty by a tribunal of Lloyd's members of "gross negligence" and "discreditable conduct." Davison lasted only two years as Lloyd's CEO, and later published a bitter book describing the experience.

By the late 1980s the signs of trouble at Lloyd's had surfaced enough to alert investors. News accounts noted that a growing number of Lloyd's Names were cashing in their investments. Lloyd's finally acknowledged the extent of the asbestos calamity in 1991, when it reported a loss of $980 million. The jarring news accompanied a cash call to unlucky Names who had backed the affected syndicates. Lloyd's reported loss climbed to $3.85 billion in 1992, in part as a result of disasters ranging from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to the San Francisco earthquake of 1989. The 1993 loss was even more dismal: $4.4 billion.

The disclosures of Lloyd's true financial condition set off a frenzy of lawsuits and government probes on both sides of the Atlantic. British police were swamped by reports of fraud. "We were hearing the same thing from every direction," a senior law-enforcement source told TIME. "There was worry that the whole insurance business of the U.K. could collapse." In Washington the Securities and Exchange Commission launched two separate investigations of Lloyd's in 1991, only to halt both a year later in what former chairman Richard Breeden describes as deference to British court actions.

The growing legal storm lashed Citibank in New York, where some $12 billion of Lloyd's North American reserves were on deposit. Paul Cohen, a supervising examiner for the New York State insurance department, declared in 1995 that the reserves were "seriously deficient" and "unlikely to cover all losses" at Lloyd's. Cohen accused Citibank of permitting Lloyd's to shift assets from the accounts of Names who owed nothing to pay the obligations of those Names who did--in violation of the Names' contracts with Lloyd's and trust agreements with Citibank. Citibank declined comment, citing pending litigation.

In Britain, Lloyd's has been protected by its own act of Parliament and by an abiding fear of the insurer's still formidable clout. "Lloyd's has more power than the government," says a knighted landowner and victim of a bad Lloyd's investment. "We are scared. People are frightened. This is not the England I knew."

Even as Lloyd's deflected the lawsuits, it hounded its Names to pay the price. Some did. Roy Bromley, a ruined Name, balanced a shotgun on the ledge of open French windows at his London home and shot himself in the chest. Richard Burgoyne shot himself at his home in 1993--his wife and two sons, ages 8 and 11, found his body in their living room. Estimates of Lloyd's-related suicides range from a dozen to more than 30. The gentlemen at Lloyd's acknowledge only seven.

Reeling from financial pressure and haunted by the specter of suicides, thousands of Names agreed to a 1996 settlement Lloyd's concocted in response to legal actions and growing public outrage. Called Reconstruction and Renewal, the settlement created a reinsurance company known as Equitas that assumed responsibility for all of Lloyd's pre-1993 obligations. At the same time, Lloyd's reduced and capped the pre-1993 debts of Names who agreed to pay up and waive all claims against the company. But this global deal has raised more questions than it has answered. A committee of the House of Commons derided it as little more than a scheme "to shore up an institution reeling from past failings." Today the structure of the settlement looks fragile, its future in doubt and its legality under fire.

Lloyd's too is struggling mightily. It is a shadow of its former self, with estimated losses of nearly $200 million for 1998 and 1999 combined. Corporations now account for 80% of Lloyd's capital, leaving the Names to play only a minor role. But even with this corporate cash, Lloyd's capacity to write insurance is lower today than it was in 1990. Meanwhile, Lloyd's share of the worldwide insurance market has fallen from 10% at the beginning of the 20th century to less than 2% today. Even the insurer's name has been diminished. No longer the sonorously alliterative Lloyd's of London, since 1997 it has been just Lloyd's.

The company publicly exudes confidence, the stiffest of upper lips. "Our future vision is of a Society containing strong, well-managed, increasingly independent businesses operating to very high standards," says a recent Lloyd's brochure titled Priorities for Growth 2000-2003.

Very nice, that, but Lloyd's now faces a trial that threatens to expose its darkest doings. "Finally, Lloyd's is in the dock and will have to answer the tough questions it has been dodging for years," says former Name Clive Francis, a retired Royal Air Force pilot. How well Lloyd's responds to those questions could determine whether the institution that once was part of the very bedrock of Britannia has any future at all.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 99,00.html

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[vanlose kid]

The curious tale of Anglo Irish Bank and its Austrian deposits

Written by Kathleen BarringtonBusiness & EconomySep 13, 2010

Anyone who watched the RTE documentary Freefall last week was left in no doubt that Sean FitzPatrick’s Anglo Irish Bank was insolvent by September 29, 2008 due to a lack of access to bank funding and a flight of depositors.

So why, if Anglo Irish Bank was so desperate for cash, did FitzPatrick, its then chairman, take the curious decision at that time to sell his Austrian private bank, which had long been an important source of deposits for him?

On September 5, 2008, Anglo announced it had agreed to sell its Austrian private banking subsidiary to listed Swiss banking group Valartis.

The press release conveyed the impression that the subsidiary was rather unimportant, pointing out that it contributed just one per cent of Anglo’s pre-tax profits and that it had net assets of just €76 million.

But that impression was at odds with previous messages coming from the bank. In fact, Anglo’s Austrian business was at one stage considered so important that, in 2001, Anglo invited local board member Anton Stanzel to join the main Anglo group board. Stanzel was a former director general of the Austrian Ministry of Finance and a director of Casinos Austria International, the gaming and entertainment group.

The importance of the subsidiary from a deposit-gathering perspective was frequently highlighted in Anglo Irish Bank’s annual reports, including the 2006 annual report. It said that: ‘‘A primary source of funding is the Bank’s personal and corporate deposit-taking operations, located in Ireland, Britain, the Isle of Man and Austria.”

Indeed, the 2006 annual report made clear that, far from planning to close its deposit gathering business, Anglo Irish Bank was planning to expand it. ‘‘In early 2007,we will expand this operation with the opening of a new corporate deposit-taking facility in Jersey,” the 2006 annual report stated. Anglo subsequently changed its strategy, and decided to sell its Isle of Man trust operations and its Swiss private bank. It said it was doing this in order to focus on its core secured lending business in Ireland, Britain and the US.

But it is nevertheless surprising that Anglo would have persisted in selling the Austrian business in September 2008, at the very time that it was in dire need of funds due to the credit crunch and the flight of its depositors.

Deposits are generally a cheaper source of funding for banks than borrowing on the interbank market, particularly in the middle of a credit crunch.
Private banks such as Anglo’s Austrian subsidiary typically offer deposit, loan, asset management services and other investment opportunities.

While Anglo has said it did retain its Vienna-based treasury operation, which also gathers deposits, it is clear that the sale of the private bank resulted in the loss of a big chunk of deposits. Indeed, a close reading of Anglo Irish Bank’s 2009 annual report confirmed that the sale of Anglo’s Austrian private banking business resulted in the loss of €600 million in retail deposits.

The report said that Anglo Irish Bank realised a profit of €49 million from the sale of the Austrian operations to Valartis for €141 million. It also disclosed that Anglo provided Valartis with a €24 million loan to part fund the purchase.

In short, FitzPatrick chose to sell an Austrian bank with a €600 million deposit book in September 2008, even though the bank was under enormous pressure on the funding front. Remember, it was in the six months leading up to September 2008 that Irish Life & Permanent controversially assisted Anglo in creating the impression that Anglo’s balance sheet was stronger than it actually was.

Indeed, it seems that FitzPatrick was so anxious to flog the Austrian business that he was even prepared to lend Valartis some of the money to buy the business from him.

So what do we know about the customers of Anglo’s former Austrian subsidiary in Vienna?

Well, the Valartis annual report reveals that the Austrian operation manages about 1.6 billion Swiss francs (€1.25 billion) for about 4,000 private banking clients.

Those clients can now remain very private indeed, far away from the scrutiny of the Irish state which stepped in and nationalised Anglo Irish Bank in January 2009 in the wake of revelations about FitzPatrick concealing large loans from his shareholders.

One of the big advantages of having money on deposit with an Austrian bank is that the identity of depositors cannot be disclosed to the authorities, as Austria enjoys certain derogations from the EU Savings Directive. This was and remains a key attraction for those who deposit funds in Austria. Valartis has indicated that it will continue to vindicate those privacy rights.

‘‘The bank secrecy in Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein is an important factor for our private and institutional clients who value the confidentiality and security that bank secrecy offers. The attacks on banking secrecy have intensified. [color=#BF0000]In a world of increasing transparency, but also a diminishing private sphere, we will continue to defend our clients’ rights within the law to privacy and confidentiality,”[/color] Valartis said in its annual report.

The importance of privacy is also highlighted by Valartis in its brochures. ‘‘Financial privacy is of the utmost importance to many investors. In addition, strict banking secrecy laws make Austria one of the few jurisdictions within the EU able to offer traditional banking confidentiality and privacy.”

Valartis made it clear that it wasn’t just targeting Austrians, but foreigners as well. ‘‘We focus on international clients and have many years’ experience working with families and their international structures. We work closely with top lawyers, accountants and tax specialists around the world. Many of our clients use structures such as trusts or offshore corporations since these provide flexible options in terms of asset protection, confidentiality and succession planning.”

Let’s hope those clients don’t include any Irish depositors who might owe money to Anglo, to other struggling Irish banks or to the Irish taxpayer.
The decision to sell Anglo’s Austrian subsidiary was subject to regulatory approval by the Austrian regulator. But it appears that neither the regulatory authorities in Austria nor in Dublin placed any obstacles in the way of the deal. The sale of Anglo’s Austrian business was completed on December 19, 2008, the day after FitzPatrick resigned as chairman after his dodgy loan dealing had been uncovered.

http://journalist.ie/2010/09/the-curiou ... -deposits/

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[dqueue]

Well, Rudolf Elmer had his day in court this morning. The Judge ruled that he did violate Swiss bank secrecy laws. He was ordered to pay a fine; however, the Judge imposed no jail term.

Now, ZeroHedge reports that Swiss authorities have arrested Rudolf Elmer on new charges relating to the recent supposed leak of data to WikiLeaks (via Julian Assange at a London-based press conference two days ago).

What I wonder is: how do the Swiss authorities know there was any data on those discs?

[vanlose kid]

Will Repatriation Of The Offshore Cash Hoard Lead To A Dollar Surge: Goldman's Take On A Second Homeland Investment Act

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/21/2011 17:56 -0500


With Goldman's economic team having been subsumed by the Koolaid borg, lately we have been largely ignoring their once must read critical pieces, as the all out onslaught to prevent the ponzi collapse was started in November (we expect Hatzius to pull another 180 in April, just ahead of the May market crash which will lead right into QE 2+, but that is another story). This is a shame, because the team of Hatzius et al used to have insightful things to say. Alas, now all they do is cheerlead every single data point no matter how superficial or ugly the behind the headlines story is. Which is why we were pleasantly surprised to read the following research report by Goldman's Robin Brooks which discussed the consequence of the now seemingly inevitable tax holiday allowing multinationals to repatriate their cash without paying taxes. Following Obama's latest Wall Street corporatocratic hiring spree, we are now convinced that it is merely a matter of months if not weeks before this is announced. As such it will be a replay of the Homeland Investment Act of 2005. Oddly, this event has not be actively priced by the market. Goldman is correct that in all likelihood this will have a very dollar positive result, which likely explains precisely why the dollar has been allowed to drop so much against the euro, as the next leg will likely push the greenback well into the 1.20 range, if not lower. That this will happen just as the second round of European stress tests will only feed the flames of the EUR's collapse. The below piece examines Goldman's thinking of how this event will influence the EURUSD. Goldman, which is very client bullish on the EURUSD (and is therefore selling selling EURs in droves) states that it believes the likelihood of a HIA part 2 is very small, even as it frames the major strength the dollar would experience as a result. We agree with the latter and disagree with the former: one way or another, the Obama administration will need to get the $1+ trillion currently offshore. When that happens, watch as the EURUSD plunges to multi-year lows.


From Goldman's Robin Brooks and Alec Phillips

Another HIA as a possible catalyst for USD strength

A central part of our FX forecasts is that USD needs to fall on a broad trade-weighted basis, by between 4-5% by year-end. That said, we have been fielding a growing number of questions on whether there could be a new instalment of the 2005 Homeland Investment Act (HIA) and if this could be a catalyst for USD strength. Indeed, a number of US multinationals look to be pushing for another round of tax cuts for the repatriation of overseas profits. In today’s Daily, we discuss the potential for another HIA, or HIA2 as we call it here, as a source for USD strength.

We break the problem down into two three parts. First, we review the first HIA episode to see whether – empirically speaking – the 2005 HIA was a driver of USD strength. Once we control for interest rate differentials, which capture rising rate support for USD from a hiking Fed, HIA-related flows are not associated significantly with USD moves into end-2005. That said, we at the time observed sizeable FX flows on the back of HIA. These flows were quite concentrated and may indeed have moved USD in ways our empirics may not capture. We therefore do not dismiss HIA flows as a potential USD driver, and point here only to another possible driver for USD strength back then (a tightening Fed). Second, given this empirical evidence, we assess the potential for HIA2 to start another round of repatriation flows by US multinationals. Even allowing for the possibility that some (perhaps even a majority) of earnings retained overseas may be held in USD, the scale of US multinationals’ retained earnings abroad is such that HIA2 could result in potentially large repatriation flows. Third, and finally, against this backdrop the question becomes whether HIA2 is at all politically likely at this point – and here our reading is that it is not. Indeed, those members of Congress that made a push for the HIA in 2005 are in our understanding focused elsewhere, and – a December visit by US CEO’s with the President aside – there appears to be little political momentum in this direction.

3. A quick refresher on the 2005 HIA

We can proxy for repatriation flows by US multinationals due to the 2005 HIA by looking at repatriation flows in the US balance of payments. There is an element of judgement here, since it is unclear how much US multinationals would have repatriated in the absence of the HIA. However, if one allows for the fact that US multinationals’ distributed earnings flows averaged around $20 bn per quarter prior to the HIA, distributed earnings flows in Q1 2005 exceeded this amount by $13 bn, in Q2 by $23 bn, in Q3 by $77 bn, and in Q4 by 106 bn, for a total of estimated repatriation flows from the HIA of around $220 bn (Fig 1).

On the face of things, the associated spike in distributed earnings is indeed associated with a drop in EUR/$ (Fig 2), though this FX move could also be – empirically speaking – due to the rate differential between the US and the Euro zone moving in favour of USD, a reflection of a Fed embarked on a hiking cycle while the ECB only began hiking end-2005 (Fig 3).

Which of these two drivers matters more in explaining the USD rise into end-2005 is an empirical question, which we address here using simple regressions. We regress quarterly percent changes in EUR/$ on changes in the two-year swap rate differential and changes in the profit repatriation flow. This regression reveals the expected sign on both coefficients – stronger repatriation and higher US interest rates boost USD – but only the interest differential is significant. This result holds true whether we allow for lags in the link from FX to repatriation flows, or whether we run the regression in levels (where the sign on repatriation flows is wrong). That said, the explanatory power of all these regressions is low, and thus we put little weight on them. Indeed, back in 2005 we observed sizeable FX flows on the back of HIA. These flows were quite concentrated and may indeed have moved USD in ways our empirics may not capture. We therefore do not dismiss HIA flows as a potential USD driver, and point here only to another possible driver for USD strength back then, in the form of a tightening Fed, not to mention of course also the rejection of EU referenda in France and the Netherlands, and positioning, which may also have worked against EUR.

4. Large potential for another round of repatriation flows

US companies have accumulated substantial retained earnings abroad since the last round of repatriation in 2005. Estimating the stock of retained earnings that (a) could be repatriated in the event of HIA2 and (b) would be FX relevant is a heroic exercise at best. That said, cumulative retained earnings of US multinationals since end-2005 are around $1.2 tn. The previous HIA legislation limited repatriation to earnings reinvested abroad listed on corporate balance sheets as of roughly 1.5 years prior to enactment, in order to avoid corporate gaming of the incentive. If such a restriction applied again, for instance limiting eligible profits to those on record at the end of 2009, this would reduce the potential amount to $925 bn.

However, most firms that might repatriate funds under HIA2 are Dollar functional and tend to keep the vast majority of cash assets in USD, regardless of the tax jurisdiction. Thus the actual FX transactions resulting from repatriation would only be a fraction of total repatriation flows, and we think 10% could be a reasonable assumption based on past HIA flows. Moreover, US firms would likely not repatriate all their retained earnings overseas, even in the event of HIA2. One limiting factor that could come into play in any future repatriation regime is a stricter limitation on eligible uses of funds. In the 2004 episode, firms were required to demonstrate that eligible payments to US parent companies were used to invest in plant, equipment, research, hiring or training. However, there was no requirement that this requirement be incremental to normal investment patterns, and in most cases the requirement was not a binding restraint. If Congress were to consider another round of repatriation incentives, it seems likely that some type of incremental investment requirement would be required. This could significantly dampen appetite for profit repatriation, given that the same large US corporations that have earnings stranded overseas face minimal financing restraints domestically and thus are unlikely to want to increase investment based on the availability of funds.

But even allowing for these various things, at least conceptually the potential for sizeable repatriation flows is clearly there.

5. HIA2 is not on the political front burner

Against this backdrop the question becomes whether HIA2 is at all politically likely at this point – and here our reading is that it is not, for three reasons. First, most of the members of Congress that made a push for the HIA in 2005 do not appear to be particularly focused on it this time around. Instead, most of the recent discussion of a repatriation tax holiday appears to be generated by companies seeking another round of relief—including CEOs meeting with the president late last year—rather than by interest on Capitol Hill.

Second, although the fiscal effects of allowing a repatriation holiday are certainly debatable, the official estimate is likely to imply a significant cost to such a proposal. For instance, the original HIA was estimated to reduce corporate tax receipts by $3.2 bn over ten years, which was comprised of a revenue increase of $2.8 bn in the first year, followed by $6 bn in reduced tax receipts in the following years. This implied flows of at least $50bn ($2.8bn/5.25% tax rate). Even if the revenue loss is offset by other factors (for instance, use of foreign tax credits would be limited if a repatriation holiday were granted), this still implies a revenue effect in the tens of billions. This could create difficulty in the current fiscal climate.

A third and somewhat related factor is the growing interest in corporate tax reform taking hold in Washington. President Obama appears likely to identify tax reform—and particularly corporate reform—as a priority in his State of the Union address on January 25 and in his budget that will follow mid-February. Likewise, congressional Republicans have also highlighted tax reform as an important issue. While corporate tax reform could create an opportunity for greater repatriation of profits on an ongoing basis, with tax reform on the horizon legislators appear less interested in near term tax changes. Indeed, in testimony in the US House this week on the subject a representative of the Business Roundtable (an umbrella group representing corporate CEOs) indicated that the group prefers to focus on a permanent reduction in the statutory corporate tax rate and reform in the treatment of overseas profits rather than another temporary repatriation tax holiday. While some individual companies hold a different view, our sense is that the appetite for one-off changes will diminish further as the debate over wholesale reform picks up.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/will-o ... and-invest

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[Joe Hillshoist]

.

Okay, are you saying that antiaristo is the Denis Lehane of "Unperson" -- but presumably not the two-N Dennis Lehane of "Shutter Island"? Is that right?

.

nope, sorry, same methods, "same" operatives, used on the same type of people, Elmer (upthread), Lehane, Bramhall, and John Cleary (antiaristo).

if you remember a number of people had trouble listening to antiaristo, especially, when it came to the way "they" treated him, and because of that questioned a great deal of what he had to say re his own personal experiences and "the bigger picture". (more and more of the bigger picture seems to be playing out like he said it would. -- remember he popped up at the beginning of your Wall Street mega-thread? and that he started the Fed is losing control thread?)

but what sparked this line of thought was a remark from wintler2 to this post one Elmer by me, here.

to which:

Rudolf Elmer: "..How can a minority in the banking world manipulate the opinion of an entire country? What is this? The mafia? This is how it works. Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland: this whole bloody system is corrupt."[that's stuff antiaristo was saying way back when.]

Thanks Vanlose Kid, thats a keeper. Elmer doesn't seem to have been cowed by adversity, and i reckon we do him a favour by keeping his name in circulation.

and i remembered the stories antiaristo told about his own situation when he started rocking the boat, e.g. how he snuck back into the UK to visit and when he got to the door his wife told him 3 different police forces had been by looking for him and had said he had gone insane (that's from memory, so don't cite me on it, i'm paraphrasing).

so i'm dumping this stuff here and have been searching for antiaristo's own accounts of the matter and looking into names he's mentioned over time, but the RI search engine is really hard to work with.

this thread? it's all his fault basically.



*

edit: part of what i'm trying to do here is to keep John Cleary's name in circulation, to look into the stuff he was talking about (he was the first person i thought of when i read the articles in the OPand decided to post them) and, if i can, piece his story together 'cause dude was all over this board.

trying to make sense of things too.

if that makes sense.

*

Thats right. Thanks for that VK. Man I'm way too drunk to do anything like that now tho. Fuck I'd forgotten all that stuff, but his name has been nagging at me since that wikileaks thing about the American bank got brought up.

Sometimes there is just too much info at this joint.

[vanlose kid]

...

Thats right. Thanks for that VK. Man I'm way too drunk to do anything like that now tho. Fuck I'd forgotten all that stuff, but his name has been nagging at me since that wikileaks thing about the American bank got brought up.

Sometimes there is just too much info at this joint.

the fact that you post here alone makes me feel better bro.

this is who i think of when i think of you.



big smiling mal ... when you're on his good side.

*

[vanlose kid]

^ ^ killer lefty.

*

[vanlose kid]

Analysts: Homeland Investment Act 2, Will it Work This Time?
By Vicki Schmelzer

NEW YORK, Jan 21 (MNI) - For the past few months, there has been increased mention of the benefits that might arise from a new tax holiday for U.S. multi-national corporations, analysts said.

Last fall and again in the new year, U.S. corporate heads have been lobbying Congress for a new Homeland Investment Act, like that enacted in 2004.

The market wonders, "Will it work this time?" and what effects such new legislation would have on the currency market and the U.S. economy, they said.

The Homeland Investment Act of 2004, quickly dubbed HIA, was a 12-month window where U.S. corporates could repatriate overseas earnings at a 5.25% tax rate instead of the normal 35% tax rate.

Over the course of 2005/2006, the HIA served to underpin the dollar at various times, as an estimated $300 billion in repatriated funds came home.

Some of the money repatriated was already in dollars, so not all of the $300 billion was converted from other currencies at the time.

Critics of HIA were furious that these repatriated funds were not, as stipulated, put to work in the economy, but rather left in company coffers.

Any new HIA2 would have to address this, analysts said.

The first Homeland Investment Act "was oversold in terms of its direct macroeconomic stimulus, but probably had a bigger punch indirectly through improved asset market conditions," said Steve Englander, global head of G-10 strategy at CitiFX.

"The HIA-1 impact on the dollar is still debated, but in retrospect the direction was unambiguously dollar positive, both via the direct repatriation of earnings which had been held abroad in foreign currencies and probably through a broader positive impact on the attractiveness of U.S. companies and markets," he said.

If a bill is passed where requirements are too onerous, "firms will simply pass on repatriation," whereas "if the terms are lax, as HIA-1, the impact on direct employment and investment will be small," Englander said.

The total flows stemming from potential repatriation are "likely to be much higher than in 2005," he said, noting that "there are estimates of up to $1 trillion kept abroad -- roughly half the cash currently held by U.S. corporates."

Englander stressed however that a portion of these flows are already in dollars and warned that this time, the non-dollar share "may be somewhat lower."

As for FX effect, if the dollar rallies too markedly in response to repatriation, global reserve managers may take advantage of the run-up to unload dollars.

"While such dollar selling by reserve managers is unlikely to fully reverse any HIA-2 induced buying, there is the risk that dollar supply and demand may be more evenly matched than investors expect or was the case in 2005," he said.

To assess potential HIA-2 effects, Goldman Sachs strategists Robin Brooks and Alec Phillips used U.S. balance of payment and HIA flow data from 2005 to estimate repatriation flows at the time.

They warned that this is a guestimate since it's not clear "how much U.S. multinationals would have repatriated in the absence of the HIA."

Allowing for the fact that "U.S. multinationals' distributed earnings flows averaged around $20 billion per quarter prior to the HIA, distributed earnings flows in Q1 2005 exceeded this amount by $13 billion, in Q2 by $23 billion, in Q3 by $77 billion, and in Q4 by 106 billion, for a total of estimated repatriation flows from the HIA of around $220 billion (thus stripping out repatriation that would have normally been done," the strategists said.

As for the FX effect of a new HIA program, they reminded that other forces served to underpin the dollar back in 2005.

"We therefore do not dismiss HIA flows as a potential dollar driver, and point here only to another possible driver for dollar strength back then, in the form of a tightening Fed, not to mention of course also the rejection of EU referenda in France and the Netherlands, and positioning, which may also have worked against the euro," the strategists said.

As for if and or when HIA2 might be announced, more than likely it would be part of larger corporate tax legislation, analysts said.

"Corporate tax reform/rate cut is key for repatriation as it creates the legislative vehicle to put the one time holiday in the bill (like in 2004 repatriation was part of the larger corporate tax bill)," said Daniel Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas Research.

There has been increased discussion about the need for a permanent change that would allow U.S. corporations to repatriate active income back to the United States tax free.

Under this scenario, "passive income would not qualify, so the provision would be more restrictive," Clifton said.

"A lower corporate tax rate alone also helps since it lowers the spread between the foreign and U.S. tax rate," he said.

Market players eagerly awaited President Barack Obama's State of the Union message next Tuesday, to see if he makes mention of what new tax reforms might be on the table.

Obama will likely mention the need "to lower the corporate tax rate as part of his competitiveness theme, but it won't be big on specifics," Strategas' Clifton said.

http://imarketnews.com/node/25409

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Tax Break for Profits Went Awry

By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: June 4, 2009
It was called the “Homeland Investment Act,” and was sold to Congress as a way to spur investment in America, building plants, increasing research and development and creating jobs. It gave international companies a large one-time tax break on overseas profits, but only if the money was used for specified investments in the United States.

The law specifically said the money could not be used to raise dividends or to repurchase shares.

Now the most detailed analysis of what actually happened — using confidential government data as well as corporate reports — has estimated what happened to the $299 billion companies brought back from foreign subsidiaries. About 92 percent of it went to shareholders, mostly in the form of increased share buybacks and the rest through increased dividends.

There is no evidence that companies that took advantage of the tax break — which enabled them to bring home, or repatriate, overseas profits while paying a tax rate far below the normal rate — used the money as Congress expected.

“Repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, employment or R.& D., even for the firms that lobbied for the tax holiday stating these intentions,” concluded the study by three economists, including a former official of the Bush administration who took part in the discussions leading to enactment of the plan in 2004.

The study, titled “Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act,” was released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It was written by Dhammika Dharmapala, a law professor at the University of Illinois; C. Fritz Foley, an associate professor of finance at Harvard Business School; and Kristin J. Forbes, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was a member of the president’s council of economic advisers from 2003 to 2005.

“The restrictions on how the money will be spent seem to have been completely ineffective,” Ms. Forbes said in an interview this week...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/busin ... orris.html

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The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act – pdf.

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say

August 3rd, 2009 | Author: Mike Ouellette
The Homeland Investment Act of 2004 allowed a one-time tax break on repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals, if the money was used for specified investments in the United States. The law specifically forbids companies from using the money for paying dividends and buying back shares. Firms responded to this law by repatriating about $300 billion from foreign affiliates and taking advantage of the tax break. But was the money used for investments in building plants or research and development – the purpose of the tax break? Not quite. About 92% of it went to shareholders, mostly in the form of increased share buybacks and the rest through increased dividends. In a report titled “Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act,” Dhammika Dharmapala, a law professor at the University of Illinois; C. Fritz Foley, an associate professor of finance at Harvard Business School; and Kristin J. Forbes, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “Repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, employment or R.& D., even for the firms that lobbied for the tax holiday stating these intentions.” However, since repatriations did happen and were used to pay shareholders, the report said shareholders may have reinvested them or used them for consumption. “Either of these activities could have an effect on U.S. growth, investment and employment,” said the report.

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