Lets all go down and see a parade!!!
Nov 12, be there or be square.
http://www.lordmayorsshow.org/
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Sounder » Tue Nov 01, 2011 6:33 pm
by Stephen Morgan » Wed Nov 02, 2011 12:50 pm
Sounder wrote:Lets all go down and see a parade!!!
Nov 12, be there or be square.
http://www.lordmayorsshow.org/
by semper occultus » Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:22 pm
by Hammer of Los » Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:40 am
by vanlose kid » Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:19 am
Why The UK Trail Of The MF Global Collapse May Have "Apocalyptic" Consequences For The Eurozone, Canadian Banks, Jefferies And Everyone Else
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/07/2011 23:06 -0500
Reposting by popular demand, and because everyone has to understand the embedded risks in this market, courtesy of the shadow banking system.
In an oddly prescient turn of events, yesterday we penned a post titled "Has The Imploding European Shadow Banking System Forced The Bundesbank To Prepare For Plan B?" in which we explained how it was not only the repo market, but the far broader and massively unregulated shadow banking system in Europe that was becoming thoroughly unhinged, and was manifesting itself in a complete "lock up in interbank liquidity" and which, we speculated, is pressuring the Bundesbank, which is well aware of what is going on behind the scenes, to slowly back away from what will soon be an "apocalyptic" event (not our words... read on). Why was this prescient? Because today, Reuters' Christopher Elias has written the logical follow up analysis to our post, in which he explains in layman's terms not only how but why the lock up has occurred and will get far more acute, but also why the MF Global bankruptcy, much more than merely a one-off instance of "repo-to-maturity" of sovereign bonds gone horribly wrong is a symptom of two things: i) the lax London-based unregulated and unsupervised system which has allowed such unprecedented, leveraged monsters as AIG, Lehman and now as it turns out MF Global, to flourish until they end up imploding and threatening the world's entire financial system, and ii) an implicit construct embedded within the shadow banking model which permitted the heaping of leverage upon leverage upon leverage, probably more so than any structured finance product in the past (up to and including synthetic CDO cubeds), and certainly on par with the AIG cataclysm which saw $2.7 trillion of CDS notional sold with virtually zero margin. Simply said: when one truly digs in, MF Global exposes the 2011 equivalent of the 2008 AIG: virtually unlimited leverage via the shadow banking system, in which there are practically no hard assets backing the infinite layers of debt created above, and which when finally unwound, will create a cataclysmic collapse of all financial institutions, where every bank is daisy-chained to each other courtesy of multiple layers of "hypothecation, and re-hypothecation." In fact, it is a link so sinister it touches every corner of modern finance up to and including such supposedly "stable" institutions as Jefferies, which as it turns out has spent weeks defending itself, however against all the wrong things, and Canadian banks, which as it also turns out, defended themselves against Zero Hedge allegations they may well be the next shoes to drop, as being strong and vibrant (and in fact just announced soaring profits and bonuses), yet which have all the same if not far greater risk factors as MF Global. Yet nobody has called them out on it. Until now.
But first, a detour to London...
As readers will recall, the actual office that blew up the world the first time around, was not even based in the US. It was a small office located on the top floor of 1 Curzon Street in London's Mayfair district, run by one Joe Cassano: the head of AIG Financial Products. The reason why this office of US-based AIG was in London, is so that Cassano could sell CDS as far away from the eye of Federal regulators as possible. Which he did. In fact he sold an unprecedented $2.7 trillion worth of CDS just before the firm collapsed due to one small glitch in the system - the assumption that home prices could go down as well as up. Yet the real question is why he sold so much CDS? The answer is simple - in a world of limited real assets, the only way to generate a practically limitless cash flow annuity would be to sell synthetic insurance on a virtually infinite amount of synthetic underlying. Which he did. Only when it came time to pay the claims, AIG blew up, forcing the government to bail it out, and set off the chain of events where we find ourselves now, where every day could be the developed world's last if not for the ongoing backstops, guarantees and bailouts of the central banking regime.
What is greatly ironic is that in the aftermath of the AIG collapse, the UK was shamed into admitting that it was its own loose, lax and unregulated system that allowed such unsupervised insanity to continue for as long as it did. As the Telegraph reminds us, "Conservative Party Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond called for a public inquiry into the FSA’s oversight of AIG Financial Products in Mayfair. “We must not allow London to become a bolthole for companies looking for a place to conduct questionable activities,” he said. “This sounds like a monumental cock-up by the FSA,” said Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable. “It is deeply ironic,” he added, that Brown was in Brussels last week calling for tougher global financial regulation just as the scandal over the FSA’s role in one of the key regulatory failures at the root of the global panic emerged as an international issue." It is ironic because the trail in the MF Global collapse, where it is yet another infinitely leveragable product that once again comes to the fore, once again goes straight to that hub for "questionable activities" - London.
But before we explain why London is once again to blame for what was not only the immediate reason of the MF Global collapse, but could well precipitate the next global collapse, a quick look at rehypothecation.
As Reuters points out, it was not so much the act of creating "repos-to-maturity" that imperiled MF Global, but what is a secret gold mine for those privy to it - the process of re-hypothecation of collateral.[h]ypothecation is when a borrower pledges collateral to secure a debt. The borrower retains ownership of the collateral but is “hypothetically” controlled by the creditor, who has a right to seize possession if the borrower defaults.
In the U.S., this legal right takes the form of a lien and in the UK generally in the form of a legal charge. A simple example of a hypothecation is a mortgage, in which a borrower legally owns the home, but the bank holds a right to take possession of the property if the borrower should default.
In investment banking, assets deposited with a broker will be hypothecated such that a broker may sell securities if an investor fails to keep up credit payments or if the securities drop in value and the investor fails to respond to a margin call (a request for more capital).
Re-hypothecation occurs when a bank or broker re-uses collateral posted by clients, such as hedge funds, to back the broker’s own trades and borrowings. The practice of re-hypothecation runs into the trillions of dollars and is perfectly legal. It is justified by brokers on the basis that it is a capital efficient way of financing their operations much to the chagrin of hedge funds.
So far so good, assuming there was regulation, and assuming if regulation failed, that the firms that blew up as a result of their greed would truly blow up, instead of being resurrected as TBTF zombies by a government in dire need of rent collection and lobby cash (because with or without regulation, if those who fail are not allowed to fail, then the whole point of capitalism is moot). But... there is always a snag.Under the U.S. Federal Reserve Board's Regulation T and SEC Rule 15c3-3, a prime broker may re-hypothecate assets to the value of 140% of the client's liability to the prime broker. For example, assume a customer has deposited $500 in securities and has a debt deficit of $200, resulting in net equity of $300. The broker-dealer can re-hypothecate up to $280 (140 per cent. x $200) of these assets.
But in the UK, there is absolutely no statutory limit on the amount that can be re-hypothecated. In fact, brokers are free to re-hypothecate all and even more than the assets deposited by clients. Instead it is up to clients to negotiate a limit or prohibition on re-hypothecation. On the above example a UK broker could, and frequently would, re-hypothecate 100% of the pledged securities ($500).
This asymmetry of rules makes exploiting the more lax UK regime incredibly attractive to international brokerage firms such as MF Global or Lehman Brothers which can use European subsidiaries to create pools of funding for their U.S. operations, without the bother of complying with U.S. restrictions.
In fact, by 2007, re-hypothecation had grown so large that it accounted for half of the activity of the shadow banking system. Prior to Lehman Brothers collapse, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated that U.S. banks were receiving $4 trillion worth of funding by re-hypothecation, much of which was sourced from the UK. With assets being re-hypothecated many times over (known as “churn”), the original collateral being used may have been as little as $1 trillion – a quarter of the financial footprint created through re-hypothecation.
So let's see: a Prime Broker taking posted collateral, then using the same collateral as an instrument for hypothecation with a net haircut, then repeating the process again, and again... Ring a bell? If you said "fractional reserve lending" - ding ding ding. In essence what re-hypothecation, and subsequent levels thereof, especially once in the shadow banking realm, allows Prime Brokers is to become de facto banks only completely unregulated and using synthetic assets as collateral. Curiously enough it was earlier today that we also penned "ECB Confirms Shadow Banking System In Europe In Tatters" in which we explained that since ECB has to expand the eligible collateral it will accept, there is no real collateral left, meaning the re-hypothecation process in Europe has experienced terminal failure. Yet the kicker is that the "safety haircut" only occurs in the US. Not in the UK. And therein lies the rub. In the UK, the epic failure of supervision has allowed banks to become de facto monsters of infinite shadow banking fractional reserve leverage - every bank's wet dream! Naturally, Prime Brokers have known all about this which explains the quiet desire to conduct re-hypothecation out of London-based offices for every US-based (and Canadian) bank. Reuters explains:
Keen to get in on the action, U.S. prime brokers have been making judicious use of European subsidiaries. Because re-hypothecation is so profitable for prime brokers, many prime brokerage agreements provide for a U.S. client’s assets to be transferred to the prime broker’s UK subsidiary to circumvent U.S. rehypothecation rules.
Under subtle brokerage contractual provisions, U.S. investors can find that their assets vanish from the U.S. and appear instead in the UK, despite contact with an ostensibly American organisation.
Potentially as simple as having MF Global UK Limited, an English subsidiary, enter into a prime brokerage agreement with a customer, a U.S. based prime broker can immediately take advantage of the UK’s unrestricted re-hypothecation rules.
While we already mentioned AIG as an example of the lax UK-based regulatory regime, it is another failed bank that is perhaps the best example of levered failure but in the specific re-hypothecation context: Lehman Brothers itself.This is exactly what Lehman Brothers did through Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE), an English subsidiary to which most U.S. hedge fund assets were transferred. Once transferred to the UK based company, assets were re-hypothecated many times over, meaning that when the debt carousel stopped, and Lehman Brothers collapsed, many U.S. funds found that their assets had simply vanished.
A prime broker need not even require that an investor (eg hedge fund) sign all agreements with a European subsidiary to take advantage of the loophole. In fact, in Lehman’s case many funds signed a prime brokerage agreement with Lehman Brothers Inc (a U.S. company) but margin-lending agreements and securities-lending agreements with LBIE in the UK (normally conducted under a Global Master Securities Lending Agreement).
These agreements permitted Lehman to transfer client assets between various affiliates without the fund’s express consent, despite the fact that the main agreement had been under U.S. law. As a result of these peripheral agreements, all or most of its clients’ assets found their way down to LBIE.
And now we get back to the topic at hand: MF Global, why and how it did precisely what Lehman did back then, why it did this in London, and why its failure is a symptom of something far more terrifying than merely investing money in collapsing PIIGS bonds.
MF Global’s Customer Agreement for trading in cash commodities, commodity futures, security futures, options, and forward contracts, securities, foreign futures and options and currencies includes the following clause:
“7. Consent To Loan Or Pledge You hereby grant us the right, in accordance with Applicable Law, to borrow, pledge, repledge, transfer, hypothecate, rehypothecate, loan, or invest any of the Collateral, including, without limitation, utilizing the Collateral to purchase or sell securities pursuant to repurchase agreements [repos] or reverse repurchase agreements with any party, in each case without notice to you, and we shall have no obligation to retain a like amount of similar Collateral in our possession and control.”
In its quarterly report, MF Global disclosed that by June 2011 it had repledged (re-hypothecated) $70 million, including securities received under resale agreements. With these transactions taking place off-balance sheet it is difficult to pin down the exact entity which was used to re-hypothecate such large sums of money but regulatory filings and letters from MF Global’s administrators contain some clues.
According to a letter from KPMG to MF Global clients, when MF Global collapsed, its UK subsidiary MF Global UK Limited had over 10,000 accounts. MF Global disclosed in March 2011 that it had significant credit risk from its European subsidiary from “counterparties with whom we place both our own funds or securities and those of our clients”.
It gets even worse when one considers that over the years the actual quality of good collateral declined, meaning worse and worse collateral was to be pledged in these potentially infinite recursive loops of shadow banking fractional reserve lending:Despite the fact that there may only be a quarter of the collateral in the world to back these transactions, successive U.S. governments have softened the requirements for what can back a re-hypothecation transaction.
Beginning with Clinton-era liberalisation, rules were eased that had until 2000 limited the use of re-hypothecated funds to U.S. Treasury, state and municipal obligations. These rules were slowly cut away (from 2000-2005) so that customer money could be used to enter into repurchase agreements (repos), buy foreign bonds, money market funds and other assorted securities.
Hence, when MF Global conceived of its Eurozone repo ruse, client funds were waiting to be plundered for investment in AA rated European sovereign debt, despite the fact that many of its hedge fund clients may have been betting against the performance of those very same bonds.
At this point flashing red lights should be going though the head of anyone who lived through the AIG cataclysm: in effect the rehypothecation scenario affords the same amount of leverage, and potentially even less supervision that the CDS market. Said otherwise, the counteparty risk of daisy chaining defaults is on par with that in the case of AIG.
As well as collateral risk, re-hypothecation creates significant counterparty risk and its off-balance sheet treatment contains many hidden nasties. Even without circumventing U.S. limits on re-hypothecation, the off-balance sheet treatment means that the amount of leverage (gearing) and systemic risk created in the system by re-hypothecation is staggering.
Re-hypothecation transactions are off-balance sheet and are therefore unrestricted by balance sheet controls. Whereas on balance sheet transactions necessitate only appearing as an asset/liability on one bank’s balance sheet and not another, off-balance sheet transactions can, and frequently do, appear on multiple banks’ financial statements. What this creates is chains of counterparty risk, where multiple re-hypothecation borrowers use the same collateral over and over again. Essentially, it is a chain of debt obligations that is only as strong as its weakest link.
And the kicker:With collateral being re-hypothecated to a factor of four (according to IMF estimates), the actual capital backing banks re-hypothecation transactions may be as little as 25%. This churning of collateral means that re-hypothecation transactions have been creating enormous amounts of liquidity, much of which has no real asset backing.
It turns out the next AIG was among us all along, only because it was hidden deep in the bowels of the unmentionable shadow banking system, out of sight (by definition) meant out of mind. Only it was not: and at last check there was $15 trillion in the shadow banking system in the US alone, where the daisy chaining of counteparty risk meant that any liquidity risk flare up would mean the AIG bankruptcy was not even a dress rehearsal for the grand finale.
But where does one look for the next AIG? Who would be stupid enough to disclose the fact that they have essentially the same risk on their off-balance sheet books as AIG had on its normal books? Once again, we turn to Reuters:The lack of balance sheet recognition of re-hypothecation was noted in Jefferies’ recent 10Q (emphasis added):
“Note 7. Collateralized Transactions
We pledge securities in connection with repurchase agreements, securities lending agreements and other secured arrangements, including clearing arrangements. The pledge of our securities is in connection with our mortgage?backed securities, corporate bond, government and agency securities and equities businesses. Counterparties generally have the right to sell or repledge the collateral.Pledged securities that can be sold or repledged by the counterparty are included within Financial instruments owned and noted as Securities pledged on our Consolidated Statements of Financial Condition. We receive securities as collateral in connection with resale agreements, securities borrowings and customer margin loans. In many instances, we are permitted by contract or custom to rehypothecate securities received as collateral. These securities maybe used to secure repurchase agreements, enter into security lending or derivative transactions or cover short positions. At August 31, 2011 and November 30, 2010, the approximate fair value of securities received as collateral by us that may be sold or repledged was approximately $25.9 billion and $22.3 billion, respectively. At August 31, 2011 and November 30, 2010, a substantial portion of the securities received by us had been sold or repledged.
We engage in securities for securities transactions in which we are the borrower of securities and provide other securities as collateral rather than cash. As no cash is provided under these types of transactions, we, as borrower, treat these as noncash transactions and do not recognize assets or liabilities on the Consolidated Statements of Financial Condition. The securities pledged as collateral under these transactions are included within the total amount of Financial instruments owned and noted as Securities pledged on our Consolidated Statements of Financial Condition.
According to Jefferies’ most recent Annual Report it had re-hypothecated $22.3 billion (in fair value) of assets in 2011 including government debt, asset backed securities, derivatives and corporate equity- that’s just $15 billion shy of Jefferies total on balance sheet assets of $37 billion.
Oh Jefferies, Jefferies, Jefferies. Barely did you manage to escape the gauntlet of accusation of untenable gross (if not net) sovereign exposure, that you will soon, potentially as early as tomorrow, have to defend your zany rehypothecation practices. One wonders: will Sean Egan downgrade you for this latest transgression as well? All the better for Leucadia though: one more million shares that Dick Handler can sell to Ian Cumming.
Yet Jefferies is just the beginning. It gets much, much worse.
With weak collateral rules and a level of leverage that would make Archimedes tremble, firms have been piling into re-hypothecation activity with startling abandon. A review of filings reveals a staggering level of activity in what may be the world’s largest ever credit bubble.
Engaging in hyper-hypothecation have been Goldman Sachs ($28.17 billion re-hypothecated in 2011), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (re-pledged $72 billion in client assets), Royal Bank of Canada (re-pledged $53.8 billion of $126.7 billion available for re-pledging), Oppenheimer Holdings ($15.3 million), Credit Suisse (CHF 332 billion), Knight Capital Group ($1.17 billion), Interactive Brokers ($14.5 billion), Wells Fargo ($19.6 billion), JP Morgan ($546.2 billion) and Morgan Stanley ($410 billion).
And people were wondering why looking through the balance sheet of Canadian banks revealed no alert signals. It is because all the exposure was off the books! Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. As for JPM and MS amounting to nearly a trillion in rehypothecation... well, we are confident the market will be delighted to start pricing that particular fat-tail risk as soon as tomorrow.
Yet it is Reuters' conclusion that strikes home, and is identical to what we said last night about the liquidity lock up in Europe and what it means for the shadow banking system, although from the perspective of an inverted cause and effect:The volume and level of re-hypothecation suggests a frightening alternative hypothesis for the current liquidity crisis being experienced by banks and for why regulators around the world decided to step in to prop up the markets recently.
That's precisely right: the shadow banking system, so aptly named because its death rattle can never be seen out in the open, is slowly dying. As noted yesterday. But lest we be accused of hyperventilating, this time we will leave a respected, non-fringe media to bring out the big adjective guns:
To date, reports have been focused on how Eurozone default concerns were provoking fear in the markets and causing liquidity to dry up....Most have been focused on how a Eurozone default would result in huge losses in Eurozone bonds being felt across the world’s banks. However, re-hypothecation suggests an even greater fear. Considering that re-hypothecation may have increased the financial footprint of Eurozone bonds by at least four fold then a Eurozone sovereign default could be apocalyptic.
U.S. banks direct holding of sovereign debt is hardly negligible. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), U.S. banks hold $181 billion in the sovereign debt of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. If we factor in off-balance sheet transactions such as re-hypothecations and repos, then the picture becomes frightening.
And there you have it: in this world where distraction and diversion often times is the only name of the game, while banks were pretending to have issues with their traditional liabilities, it was really the shadow liabilities where the true terrors were accumulating. Because in what has become a veritable daisy chain of linked shadow exposure, we are now back where we started with the AIG collapse, only this time the regime is decentralized, without the need for a focal, AIG-type center. What this means is that the collapse of the weakest link in the daisy-chain sets off a house of cards that eventually will crash even the biggest entity due to exponentially soaring counterparty risk: an escalation best comparable to an avalanche - where one simple snowflake can result in a deadly tsunami of snow that wipes out everything in its path. Only this time it is not something as innocuous as snow: it is the compounded effect of trillions and trillions of insolvent banks all collapsing at the same time, and wiping out the developed world and the associated 150 years of the welfare state as we know it.
In this light, it makes far more sense why, as we suggested yesterday, the sanest central bank in Europe, the German Bundesbank, is quietly making stealthy preparations to get the hell out of Dodge, as it realizes all too well, that the snowflake has arrived: MF Global's bankruptcy has already set off a chain of events which not even all the world's central banks can halt. Which is ironic for the Buba - what it is doing is "too little too late." But at least it is taking proactive steps. For all the other central banks in the Eurozone, and soon the world, unfortunately the deer in headlights image is the only applicable one. And all because of unbridled greed, bribed and corrupt regulators sleeping at their job, and governments which encourage the TBTF modus operandi as the only fall back one, which in turn gave banks a carte blanche to take essentially unlimited risk.
We are all about to suffer the consequences of all three.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-uk-tr ... anks-jeffe
The shadow banking system is the infrastructure and practices which support financial transactions that occur beyond the reach of existing state sanctioned monitoring and regulation. It includes entities such as hedge funds, money market funds and Structured investment vehicles. Investment banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), but they are not SBS institutions themselves. The core activities of investment banks are subject to regulation and monitoring by central banks and other government institutions - but it has been common practice for investment banks to conduct many of their transactions in ways that don't show up on their conventional balance sheet accounting and so are not visible to regulators...
Shadow institutions do not accept deposits like a depository bank and therefore are not subject to the same regulations. Complex legal entities comprising the system include hedge funds, SIVs, conduits, money funds, and other non-bank financial institutions.
Shadow banking institutions are typically intermediaries between investors and borrowers. For example, an institutional investor like a pension fund may be willing to lend money, while a corporation may be searching for funds to borrow. The shadow banking institution will channel funds from the investor(s) to the corporation, profiting either from fees or from the difference in interest rates between what it pays the investor(s) and what it receives from the borrower.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ing_system
On Corzine - MFG in the fog of war
Submitted by Bruce Krasting on 12/08/2011 20:23 -0500
I watched Jon boy. I didn’t hear any smoking guns. That doesn’t mean there weren't any. Keep in mind that Corzine has the best lawyer (for this) that money can buy. Andrew Levander has been advising the former CEO of MFG on every word he says.
I was surprised that there was no 5th Amendment stuff. I’m sure that Levander was pushing for that. But Corzine really didn't have much of an option. If the former Senator/ Governor pled the fifth he would have been convicted in the public’s eye.
So Jon talked, but he said nothing. You can be absolutely certain that Corzine spent many hours with his lawyers fielding question that might have been asked by the congressional committee. When Corzine seemed to stutter, pause, look up at the ceiling groping for the right words to use, it was just a very well orchestrated and practiced acting job.
Jon made one response that I thought was significant. He said several times:
"I never intended to break any rules.”
This could mean anything, but consider that this canned response was formulated word for word by Levander. I think what Corzine was saying was that he may have authorized some actions in the later stages of MFG’s existence that ultimately led to the expropriation and loss of customer funds. He is trying to establish that whatever he may have said (or signed), he did not understand the consequences. Whether this is true or not, I don't know.
We might find out at some point that some clown in the treasury department at MFG asked JC a question in the middle of the panic:
“We could re-hypothecate the seg accounts and plug the gap tonight! Should we do that?”
And Jon could have looked up and said:
“Do what you can!”
The problem with the “I never intended” defense is that it doesn’t work for a CEO who should have known better.
**************************************
I recently had a conversation with an individual (we'll call him Bob) who had three MFG accounts. He, like many other customers, smelled a rat with MFG as the stock price plunged and the FINRA issues with the Euro bond positions became known.
Bob voted with his feet. He closed off all open positions. He got back to cash. Then he requested a wire transfer for the balance(s). He left a small operating balance in the accounts in order to keep them open. This fellow was small potatoes. Two of the accounts were under $20k. The other was $215k.
Wire transfers to a bank were requested.
According to Bob, the wires went out on Wednesday, October 26 (four days before BK). All three wire transfers were received on Thursday October 27.
But on Friday, October 28, the bank that had received the funds reversed the wire transfer for the larger amount. The transfers for the two smaller amounts were not reversed.
This is highly unusual. It is extremely difficult to reverse a wire transfer. Wire transfers are considered to be Immediately Available Funds or “Good Funds”. Absent a court order, the only way to reverse a wire transfer is when the remitting bank provides a letter of indemnity ("LOI") to the receiving bank. I’ve written these letters. They would look something like this:To: ABC Bank
From: XYZ Bank
Reference:Wire Transfer #123456 date 10/26/2011 for $215,000 for further credit to "Bob", Account #AB3355
We hereby request that you immediately debt the account of (Bob) for the full amount of the transfer and return the funds to us.
If you comply with this request we hereby agree to hold you free and harmless of any consequences that may arise as a result of this request.
XYZ Bank
Basically XYZ has to give ABC a blanket guarantee that they will not get hurt by the request.
Here’s the rub. I’m told that in the matter at hand, the "XYZ" bank operating on behalf of MFG was JPM.
If I’m right that a LOI was required to claw back a wire transfer, then - assuming my information is correct, and I think it is - it had to have been JPM that wrote the indemnity letter. (No one would have acted on a LOI from MFG on 10/28).
I'm speculating quite a bit. But it’s still worth considering. At this point, anything is worth considering. We are six weeks past the BK. As Corzine and all the others said today, they have no clue where the missing money is. There has been any army of forensic accountants (FBI & KPMG) toiling night and day. No one has found the money. That's crazy to me.
A possible daisy chain:
(1) MFG orders XYZ Bank to make a money transfer.
(2) XYZ makes the transfer.
(3) After the transfer has been made (or during the same day) XYZ issues a letter of indemnity (“LOI”) and obtains a refund of the transfer.
(4) The initial wire transfer is accounted for (correctly) at MFG as a reduction of the customer account liabilities (Segregated account).
(5) When the money comes back into XYZ (pursuant to the LOI) it is not credited back to the Seg./customer account. (The fog of war factor? Deliberate?)
(6) After the money has been returned to XYZ bank, it appears to be "unrestricted funds" of MFG. It gets commingled. Someone grabs the money to offset a claim. The Chinese Wall between the Seg. account and MFG corporate account has been broached. Once the money is commingled, it is impossible to figure out who owes what to whom.
A question for any of those many MFG account holders: Did any of you have a similar experience with wire transfers? If so, could you let me know? I’d love to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Bkrasting@gmail.com
Note: I'm aware that in the final days, MFG issued checks to customers that bounced. This is similar to the wire transfer issue I describe. But it is also a different kettle of legal fish. There are many reasons for a check to bounce. Checks, unlike wire transfers are not "good funds". To claw-back a wire transfer requires significant human intervention. Banks do not write LOIs without carefully considering the consequences. There's always a signature on an LOI......
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/co ... fg-fog-war
...
David Cameron is at the centre of a furious row with Nicolas Sarkozy after Paris tried to isolate the prime minister at the EU summit by suggesting that Britain is seeking to exempt the City of London from all European regulations.
In a move dismissed by officials in Brussels as an attempt to set Britain up as the fall guy, senior French figures said Cameron wanted an opt out from EU financial services regulation.
The French were said to have found themselves isolated in their attempt to limit an agreement on tough fiscal rules for the single currency just to the eurozone's 17 members. Britain said Sarkozy was distorting the British position, which is to ensure that changes to the eurozone do not harm the City of London...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... rkozy-euro
Is the City really under threat from Europe?
David Cameron goes to Brussels promising his back-benchers that he will "safeguard" the City from Europe. But what are the threats and will they be addressed at the EU summit?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/realit ... servatives
by vanlose kid » Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:27 am
by gnosticheresy_2 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:10 am
Britain, not leaving but falling out of the EU
BRITAIN did not walk out of the EU last night. But let there be no doubt about it: we have started falling out.
David Cameron finally did what British prime ministers have threatened in Europe so many times, and used his veto last night in Brussels, my BBC radio told me at dawn this morning. This is an astonishingly dramatic moment, the BBC added: the British prime minister has refused to sign up to a new EU treaty involving all 27 members, because the rest, led by France and Germany, would not grant him the safeguards he sought giving Britain powers to block unwelcome regulation of the City of London.
As a result of Mr Cameron's veto, the BBC said, 23 other countries have now agreed to seek their own fiscal pact involving deep integration around the tax and spending powers of member governments. Standing on its rights as a member of the current EU treaties, Britain argues that such a pact within a union should not be allowed to use the institutions that legally belong to the 27, such as the European Commission, the European Council or the European Court of Justice. At one point, an EU diplomat informed me in an overnight email, Mr Cameron could be heard arguing with his fellow-leaders that when members of the new club of 23 hold their planned monthly summits, they should not be allowed to use the buildings and meeting rooms of the European Council.
The BBC's exceedingly well-informed political editor Nick Robinson predicts this will lead to a long series of legal battles and rows with other EU countries, and to calls from gleeful British Eurosceptics to press on and seek a wholesale renegotiation of British relations with Europe (which they will then want put to a referendum, threatening to split the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition).
That stuff about drama and rows is clearly right. But I fear I do not see where Mr Cameron used his veto.
In my version of the English language, when one member of a club uses his veto, he blocks something from happening. Mr Cameron did not stop France, Germany and the other 15 members of the euro zone from going ahead with what they are proposing. He asked for safeguards for financial services and—as had been well trailed in advance—France and Germany said no. That's not wielding a veto, that's called losing.
Now, the EU is proposing quite a range of damaging and stupid new rules for financial markets. Anthony Browne, a chief policy aide to the Mayor of London (and key Cameron rival) Boris Johnson has a point when he writes this morning on ConservativeHome that:Faced with a choice between an EU treaty to save the euro and retaining control of regulation of the City, President Sarkozy decided to retain regulation of the City
But nobody can say they were surprised. The French government has been saying for weeks that it would not allow Britain to have a sweeping opt-out from financial services rules. Only last week, I quoted a pair of French government sources in my column, writing:France sees a strong Europe as a lever of influence. Disliking the enlarged EU of 27 countries (in which its clout is diluted), France wants to use the euro crisis to deepen integration around a core of countries that use the euro, under the political control of a handful of big national leaders. To comfort French voters, Mr Sarkozy has started talking up euro-zone integration as a shield against globalisation and bullying by financial markets.
Today’s unprecedentedly Eurosceptic Conservative Party sees a strong Europe mostly as a threat to Britain’s global leverage. Mr Cameron says he supports deeper integration within the euro zone, as long as Britain does not have to pay, loses no sovereignty and yet is not marginalised. That is not enough for Tory MPs. They want the prime minister to use changes in the EU’s architecture to secure concessions, such as opt-outs from European employment law or EU rules that harm the City of London.
French sources call it “totally unacceptable” to allow British banks to set up in deregulated competition just across the Channel. Britain wants rights of oversight over the euro zone, it is said in Paris: well, the euro zone needs oversight over the City of London. If Britain seeks to “profit” from the crisis, then rule changes can be agreed by countries that use the euro, excluding Britain
And a very big part of what happened last night was a reflection of Mr Cameron's weakness within his own party, following a rebellion over a Europe vote that saw 81 Tory MPs ignore a strict, three-line whip. What happened last night, in addition to a fight to protect the City of London, is that Mr Cameron failed to secure a deal that he felt able to sell to his deeply Eurosceptic party (with two cabinet ministers demanding a referendum on any new treaty in the last few days, and scores of MPs ready to rebel on any EU bill put through the House of Commons).
It is worth being clear about this. Mr Cameron says he refused to sign up because he was defending British national interests in the long-term. In the immediate term, he took the decision to reject a new EU treaty because he was not sure he could get it through the House of Commons.
Having failed, he walked away, empty-handed. Just three other countries walked with him—Hungary, Sweden and the Czech Republic—and one or all of them may yet end up joining the new pact. We are not very far away from a final division of the club with 26 countries on one side, and one on the other.
This moment was both predictable and predicted. Everything dates back to a first meeting between the newly-elected David Cameron and Angela Merkel in Berlin in May 2010. By chance, in my previous role as Charlemagne, I was in the chancellery that day as one of a small group of Brussels correspondents invited for briefings from the German government. Mrs Merkel badly wanted Britain to stay on the inside track of the EU, we learned, fearing that she would find herself alone in the room with France and the Club Med countries. She wanted Britain and others for balance, and was anxious not to push away allies such as Poland who in theory plan to join the euro one day and are desperate to avoid being in an outer core.
Thus Mrs Merkel wanted to push ahead with new treaties to save the euro at the level of all 27 countries. I stayed on to watch Mr Cameron's meeting and joint press conference, and heard the British prime minister explain that he wished the euro well, but could not commit Britain to any involvement in deeper integration. I wrote this:Mr Sarkozy dreams of building a new power structure round the 16 euro-zone countries. But Mrs Merkel wants economic policy to be decided by all 27 EU members, precisely because she likes to balance “Club Med” members of the euro zone with more liberal countries, including Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Poland. Yet David Cameron, the British prime minister, is adamant that deeper economic co-ordination in Europe must affect only the 16. That may be savvy British politics, but it risks pushing Mrs Merkel into France’s arms.
A year and a half later, at some time around 4am last night in Brussels, Mr Cameron pushed Mrs Merkel into the arms of the French. She went along with this, and this was predictable too. In November I wrote a column from Berlin (sorry, last quotation from myself), setting out the German view:there is frustration in Berlin at what are seen as British double-standards. Mr Cameron tells euro-zone members to do more to save their currency. Yet Britain does not offer to help and demands to be consulted on big decisions, for example on bank recapitalisation. In Brussels Mr Cameron tells the EU to beware of breaking up the single market, and stoutly defends free-trade rules that apply to all. Yet back in London, ministers talk of special opt-outs giving British business low-cost, deregulated membership of the common market.
In Berlin the belief is that rewriting single-market rules would lead to many countries demanding more protections—the opposite of what Britain wants. Belgium, for instance, might push for more workers’ rights. Facing a tough re-election fight, Mr Sarkozy last week declared that Europe should not be a “dupe” when it came to global trade, and proposed EU import taxes to help pay for European welfare systems.
Germany’s priority is rules establishing unprecedented oversight of euro-zone economies. If Britain asks too high a price for its consent, Germany will reluctantly agree to a new treaty outside the EU system. This, it is expected, would involve more than 17 countries but fewer than 27. Britain would lose its veto
Berlin offered one more, very clear message: that British Eurosceptics were wrong to declare that Britain could become the leader of the 10 countries that do not use the euro, the ten "outs". There is no club of outs, I was told, and Mr Cameron had a bruising taste of this reality at an October summit when Mr Sarkozy angrily told some of the countries outside the euro that they had no interest in siding with Britain.
What happens now? Well, British Conservative Eurosceptics divide into two broad camps. A more moderate camp have convinced themselves that EU membership is blocking the sweeping supply side reforms that they believe would propel Britain to renewed growth. They think that if Mr Cameron can only shed the influence of hand-wringing Euro-Quislings in the Foreign Office and the Liberal Democrat party, he can play hardball and renegotiate a new, low-cost, low-regulation free-rider membership of the single market.
This moderate camp is guilty, mostly, of excessive optimism.
For a fine summary of this position, look at this week's Spectator magazine, and its main editorial, headlined: "Leadership, please."
Published on the summit eve, the leader says:British Europhiles have long scorned the concept of a 'two-speed Europe', but that is, by default, what is likely to emerge from the mess. We will have a first tier bound by fiscal as well as monetary union, smaller than the current eurozone, and second tier which will be increasingly divorced from the Franco-German power axis. Ideally, the second tier should impose minimal regulations and resemble the free trade area we signed up to in 1975.
David Cameron is losing an opportunity to assert himself as leader of a wider European alliance. It could be an appealing place: promoting the free movement of goods, people and capital, but with each country retaining sovereignty and the power to set its taxes, prepare its budgets and retain a veto over rules which will be harmful to its national interest.
The Prime Minister is in a position of great strength, if only he would realise it. He is in the position that John Major was in the early 1990s, having lost a disastrous gamble to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism (another bad idea which this magazine was alone in opposing). Then, it was all too easy to portray Britain as isolated in Europe. Now, there are already ten EU nations outside the eurozone who will play no part in any fiscal union. It is a constituency begging for direction—if only David Cameron would seize his opportunity
This fantasy politics lasted all of 12 hours.
The other Eurosceptic camp are essentially pessimists. A big dose of their pessimism about the flawed initial structures of the single currency has been borne out by events: to have a grown-up debate, this needs admitting. But they are much too gloomy about the single market, which they believe is not worth the cost of Britain's EU membership. They are much too sanguine, I would add, about the costs of a break-up of the euro (one Tory MP yesterday called for the disorderly break-up of the euro, while John Redwood, a darling of the right and former cabinet minister, today urges an orderly break-up of the currency as soon as possible). This camp thinks that British influence in the EU of 27 is not worth a candle. One red-faced misanthrope, Edward Leigh, yesterday told Mr Cameron not to come back from Brussels waving a piece of paper like Neville Chamberlain. For such Tory MPs, it is always 1938.
They would like Britain, essentially, to be Switzerland with nuclear weapons. I think Britain is bigger, and better than that.
Nor do I think we would be granted the sort of Swiss deal that British Tories yearn for. Switzerland is allowed access to the single market for relatively low cost because it is small. Because Switzerland is small, its absence from the single market table does not fundamentally alter the nature of that market. A walk-out by Britain, the largest free-market minded power in Europe, would change the nature of the single market fundamentally.
I also think that Switzerland's deal with the EU is not as good as British Eurosceptics think. It is built around accepting large chunks of EU regulation without any say in order to protect Swiss bank secrecy.
Oh yes, the banks. The City of London is very important, and the EU has some bad ideas for regulating it. But I find it hard to cheer the idea that Mr Cameron took an extraordinarily big decision last night about our relations with Europe because he was so convinced he could not win arguments in Brussels about those regulations.
A final thought. If we do end up leaving the EU for the sake of the City of London (a big if) it would be ironic if some of those same banks and hedge funds then turned around and announced they were leaving Britain anyway because euro-zone rules made it impossible to work in London, and so they were off to a combination of Paris, Frankfurt, Zug and Singapore. So sorry old boy, nothing personal.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/ ... n-and-eu-0
by Stephen Morgan » Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:20 pm
by semper occultus » Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:22 pm
...Mr Cameron took an extraordinarily big decision last night about our relations with Europe because he was so convinced he could not win arguments in Brussels about those regulations...
by gnosticheresy_2 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:17 pm
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 1 hr Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
From the control room of the Eurozone - Frankfurt - I think they no longer believe that fiscal coordination is enough for monetary union...
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 1 hr Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
They cite example of Ireland Spain, Portugal as countries where private debt is what undermined stability, which is why they think that...
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 1 hr Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
.. euro area needs control over the banking systems affecting credit creation etc... IE can't have London pouring less regulated lending..
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 1 hr Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Ie €stability is not consistent with a semi-detached less regulated City operating from the haven of London, is the view... Which means
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 1 hr Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
..Britain is on the exit route from EU, because of the "need to protect" the City, which anyway may lose bulk of € business to Frankfurt
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 55 mins Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
@mattuthompson new euroised EU could not tolerate its major banks' investment arms, which EU would have to bailout, operating from UK haven
In reply to Matthew Thompson
Faisal Islam @faisalislam 49 mins Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
So I'm saying there's logic in both Sarko and Cam's position that non-EU regulated City and new euroised EU are incompatible...
by Stephen Morgan » Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:20 pm
semper occultus wrote:...Mr Cameron took an extraordinarily big decision last night about our relations with Europe because he was so convinced he could not win arguments in Brussels about those regulations...
...his decision arose because he was convinced he wouldn't win the referendum he's had to promise in the eventuality of any changes to the Lisbon Treaty to keep the eurosceptics in line...
all these structural & governmental reforms are about preventing the next crisis & do precisley f**k-all to address the current one unfolding now - the "solution" to which every-one knows & which is being prevented by ....errrrrr....Germany.
by semper occultus » Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:45 pm
Why Germany opposes a powerful euro solution
Despite rising international pressure, Merkel refuses to allow the ECB to act as the lender of last resort
www.salon.com
by vanlose kid » Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:48 pm
...
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on last week’s European Council.
I went to Brussels with one objective: to protect Britain’s national interest.
And that is what I did.
Let me refer back to what I said to this House last Wednesday.
I made it clear that if the Eurozone countries wanted a treaty involving all 27 Members of the European Union we would insist on some safeguards for Britain to protect our own national interests.
Some thought what I was asking for was relatively modest.
Nevertheless, satisfactory safeguards were not forthcoming and so I didn’t agree to the Treaty.
Mr Speaker, let me be clear about exactly what happened, what it means for Britain what I see happening next.
What happened
Mr Speaker, let me take the House through the events of last week.
At this Council, the Eurozone economies agreed that there should be much tighter fiscal discipline in the Eurozone as part of restoring market confidence.
Mr Speaker, that is something Britain recognises is necessary in a single currency.
We want the Eurozone to sort out its problems.
This is in Britain’s national interest because the crisis in the Eurozone is having a chilling effect on Britain’s economy too.
So the question at the Council was not whether there should be greater fiscal discipline in the Eurozone, but rather how it should be achieved.
There were two possible outcomes.
Either a treaty of all 27 countries with proper safeguards for Britain.
Or a separate treaty in which Eurozone countries and others would pool their sovereignty on an intergovernmental basis…
…with Britain maintaining its position in the Single Market, and in the European Union of 27 members.
We went seeking a deal at 27 and I responded to the German and French proposal for Treaty change in good faith, genuinely looking to reach an agreement at the level of the whole European Union, with the necessary safeguards for Britain.
Those safeguards – on the single market and on financial services – were modest, reasonable and relevant.
We were not trying to create an unfair advantage for Britain.
London is the leading centre for financial services in the world. And this sector employs 100,000 in Birmingham, and a further 150,000 in Scotland.
It supports the rest of the economy in Britain and more widely in Europe.
We were not asking for a UK opt-out, special exemption or generalised emergency brake on financial services legislation.
They were safeguards sought for the EU as a whole.
We were simply asking for a level playing field for open competition for financial services companies in all EU countries…
…with arrangements that would enable every EU Member State to regulate its financial sector properly.
To those who say we were trying to go soft on the banks, nothing can be further from the truth...
Britain is ruled by the banks, for the banks
Is David Cameron's kid-glove treatment of the City remotely justified, when it neither pays its way nor lends effectively?
Aditya Chakrabortty
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 December 2011 20.00 GMT
The national interest. It's a phrase we've heard a lot recently. David Cameron promised to defend it before flying off last week to Brussels. Eurosceptic backbenchers urged him to fight for it. And when the summit turned into a trial separation, and the prime minister walked out at 4am, the rightwing newspapers took up the refrain: he was fighting for Britain. In the eye-burningly early hours of Friday morning, exhausted and at a loss to explain a row he plainly hadn't expected, Cameron tried again: "I had to pursue very doggedly what was in the British national interest."
As political justifications go, the national interest is an oddly ceremonial one. Like the dusty liqueur uncapped for a family gathering, MPs bring it out only for the big occasions. And when they do, what they mean is: forget all the usual fluff about ethics and ideas; this is important.
You heard the phrase last May, as the Lib Dems explained why they were forming a coalition with the Tories. More seriously, Blair used it as Britain invaded Iraq.
But here Cameron wasn't talking about foreign policy; nor about who governs the country. The national interest he saw as threatened by Europe is concentrated in a few expensive parts of London, in an industry that would surely come bottom in any occupational popularity contest (yes, lower even than journalists): investment banking.
In its haste to depict events as Little Britain v Big Europe, the Tory press hasn't dwelt on the inconvenient details of last week's fight. But it was only after the prime minister failed to secure protection for the City from new financial regulation mooted by the EU that he told Nicolas Sarkozy to get on his vélo.
On one issue in particular, Cameron had a good case: Britain wants banks to put more money aside for a rainy day than the EU is considering. Elsewhere, he just looked unreasonable – what exactly is wrong with having international banking supervision? One reason for the euro crisis was that its members have 17 national bank watchdogs and barely anyone looking across borders.
Step back from what even EU officials were calling "arcane" details, though, and the big principle is this: the prime minister effectively stuck relations with the rest of Europe in the deep freeze in order to protect one sector of the economy.
In my recollection, no British minister in recent times has termed one industry as being of "national interest". "Vital" or "key"? Why, such words are the very currency of the MP's address to a trade association. But on the big phrase, I asked the Guardian's librarians to check the archives from 1997 onwards. They came back empty-handed.
Cameron is merely expressing more openly something Labour frontbenchers also believe: that the City is pretty much the last engine functioning in Britain's misfiring economy. Indeed, one of the Labour lines of attack against Cameron this weekend has been that he has left the City more open to regulation.
A few weeks ago, the shadow chancellor Ed Balls warned against any further taxes on financial trading within Europe. However, he said, he would urge a "Robin Hood tax with the widest international agreement". In other words, Balls will give his fullest support to something that has no chance of happening.
This is the same kind of political subservience towards the City, observed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in its report into the collapse of RBS. According to the watchdog, a major reason why Fred Goodwin wasn't checked as he drove RBS off a cliff was because of "a sustained political emphasis on the need for the FSA to be 'light touch' in its approach and mindful of London's competitive position". Had regulators been harder on the bankers, "it is almost certain that their proposals would have been met by extensive complaints that the FSA was pursuing a heavy-handed, gold-plating approach which would harm London's competitiveness".
As all British taxpayers know by now, securing the "competitiveness" of RBS has wound up costing us around £45bn.
So what is it that justifies the kid-glove treatment of the finance sector? Switch on the news and you normally hear some minister or lobbyist (come on down, Angela Knight of the British Bankers' Association) talking about the vital contribution banking makes to employment. Our tax revenue. Or the role banks ideally play in directing money to needy businesses.
These claims are repeated so often that they rarely get even the briefest patdown from interviewers, let alone backbench MPs or economists. Yet they are largely bogus, as explained in a new book called After the Great Complacence, produced by academics at Manchester University's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc). Indeed, on nearly any important measure, finance actually contributes less to Britain than manufacturing.
Take jobs. The finance sector employs 1m people in Britain. Chuck in the lawyers, the PRs and the smaller fry that swim in its wake and you are up to a grand total of 1.5m. And most of these people are not the investment bankers for whom Cameron went to war in Brussels. At the big British banks such as RBS and HBOS, 80% of the staff work in the retail business. Even if Sarkozy were to shroud Canary Wharf in a giant tricolore, those staff would still be needed to staff the branches and man the call centres. Even in its current state of emaciation, manufacturing employs 2m people.
What about taxes? Lobbyists like to point out that banks are usually the biggest payers of corporation tax, but usually omit to mention that corporation tax isn't that big a money-spinner. For their part, even leftwingers will usually assume that the bankers effectively paid for the tax credits, hospitals and schools we enjoyed under Labour.
It's not true. The Cresc team totted up the taxes paid by the finance sector between 2002 and 2008, the six years in which the City was having an almighty boom: at £193bn, it's still only getting on for half the £378bn paid by manufacturing. It would be more accurate to say that the widget-makers of the Midlands paid for Tony Blair's welfarism. But that would be a much less picturesque description.
Even in the best of times, the finance sector hasn't paid anything like as much to the state as the state has had to pay for them since the great crash. According to the IMF, British taxpayers have shelled out £289bn in "direct upfront financing" to prop up the banks since 2008. Add in the various government loans and underwriting, and taxpayers are on the hook for £1.19tn. Seen that way the City looks less like a goose that lays golden eggs, and more like an unruly pigeon that leaves one hell of a mess for others to clear up.
Ah, but what about lending? After all, this is why we have banks in the first place: to channel money to productive industries. The Cresc team looked at Bank of England figures on bank and building society loans and found that at the height of the bubble in 2007, around 40% or more of all bank and building society lending was on residential or commercial property. Another 25% of all bank lending went to financial intermediaries. In other words, about two-thirds of all bank lending in 2007 went to pumping up the bubble.
This doesn't look like a hard-working part of an economy humming along: it's nothing less than epic capitalist onanism.
If the statistics don't support the arguments for the City's pre-eminence, the public don't either. In 1983, 90% of the public agreed that banks in Britain were well run, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. By 2009, that had plunged to 19%.
In other words, both the evidence and the voters are against investment bankers. So why do the politicians cling on to them?
Part of the answer is financial. Bankers used the boom to buy themselves influence – so that, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the City now provides half of all Tory party funds. That is up from just 25% only five years ago.
Another part must be cultural. Running this government are two sons of bankers. Cameron's father was a stockbroker, Clegg's is still chairman of United Trust Bank (and famously helped his son get some work experience). For its part, Labour spent so long outsourcing all economic thinking to Gordon Brown and Ed Balls that it has long lost the ability to argue against the orthodoxy of giving the City what it wants.
In a poorer country, the cosiness of relations between bankers and politicians would be scrutinised by an official from the World Bank and disdainfully pronounced as pure cronyism. In Britain, we need to come up with a new word for this type of dysfunctional capitalism – where banks neither lend nor pay their way in taxes, yet retain a stranglehold on policy-making. We could try bankocracy: ruled by the banks, for the banks.
What are the results of bankocracy? It means that the main figures arguing for a Robin Hood tax are the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Bill Nighy. It means that opposition to the rule of banks isn't found in Westminster, but in tents outside St Paul's or among a few grizzled academics and NGO-hands – with no political vehicle to carry them. Meanwhile, the politicians declare that the national interest of Britain can be defined by what suits one square mile of it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... d-by-banks
The $30 Trillion "Problem" At The Heart Of Shadow Banking - A Teaser
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/12/2011 18:19 -0500
Frequent readers know about Zero Hedge's fascination with the murky world of "shadow banking" a topic we have been covering since late 2009, which can best be summarized as follows: the near-infinite fungibility of electronic credit-money equivalents within the infinitely interconnected modern financial system. The recent escalation in the discovery of massive broker capital deficiency courtesy of the MF Global bankruptcy as a result of a collapse in one of the numerous shadow banking funding pathways, namely rehypothecation, is just the very tip of the iceberg. Much more is coming, as shadow banking continues to be unwound day after day (we will post an update of the Q3 data later in the day). In the meantime, we go back to that one certain Citi report from September 5, 2008 which explained just how broken the financial system was that according to some, the realization, and not some ulterior deathwish, is what sparked the run on Lehman, and subsequently money market, ABCP, repos, synthetics, structured products, securities lenders, AIG, and everything else that the Fed had to step in with a roughly $30 trillion bail out. Why was it $30 trillion? Simple: because at its heart, the "shadow banking" system has a $30+ trillion diabolic funding mechanism, where when one cuts out all the fancy nomenclature, acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon, the bottom line is that there are increasingly less and less hard assets (i.e., cash-flow generating), funding ever more and more liabilities, and where one's assets are another's liabilities in a "fractional reserve" recursive loop, and which in that shadowy sub-center of modern banking - London (because New York is just for regulatory diversion)- the loop can go on literally in perpetuity.
Said otherwise, when one or more of the funding pathways in this system break, the whole backbone of what maintains modern finance can and will collapse, as was explained so vividly back in September 2008 by Citi. While we will go into far greater depth on this topic soon, we want to leave readers with a teaser schematic that explains the core relationships betweem the key actors and the primary driver of global economic "growth" over the past 3 decades - the flow of synthetic liquidity. It took the Fed every weapon in its caliber to prevent this chart from imploding (in its real world manifestations of course) in late 2008. It will take the global central banking cartel all that and much more to halt the second such implosion. Which is coming.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/30-trilli ... ing-teaser
by Hammer of Los » Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:07 am
by vanlose kid » Sat Feb 04, 2012 8:54 pm
The mystery of Lord Ashcroft and the paradise island business empire
Fresh revelations have raised a series of questions about the links between the former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft and a company responsible for luxury projects across a string of islands
Jamie Doward
The Observer, Sunday 5 February 2012
Lord Ashcroft insists he has had no interest in Johnston International since he sold it in 1999. Photograph: Steve Back / Rex Features
The company no longer exists and little is known about it in the Westminster village. Yet who controlled Johnston International, which won building contracts across the Caribbean worth tens of millions of pounds, has triggered awkward questions for the Tories, and above all for their major donor, Lord Ashcroft.
The Tory peer, who has given the party more than £10m, is spending a small fortune on lawyers and spin doctors to deal with inquiries about his relationship with Johnston, whose interests before it collapsed with debts of $30m stretched across Belize, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The company, and its relationship with politicians in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British overseas territory, plays a central role in a libel action being brought by Ashcroft against the Independent newspaper.
A BBC Panorama investigation, broadcast last Monday, suggested that the Tories' former deputy chairman had misled the stock market about his links to the firm.
And now an investigation by a court-appointed liquidator into the relationship between Johnston's parent company, a plethora of interlinked companies and Ashcroft's British Caribbean Bank (BCB), is raising as many questions as it answers. Even MPs are taking an interest in an obscure company that only a few weeks ago they had never heard of.
Last Wednesday, at Prime Minister's Questions, the Labour MP Thomas Docherty asked: "Can the prime minister guarantee that Lord Ashcroft has now told the whole truth about his connections with the building company Johnston International, or is it yet again one rule for the prime minister's rich friends and another rule for everyone else?"
Johnston was already under scrutiny even before it collapsed in 2010, leaving its employees with unpaid wages.
A government inquiry examining allegations of systemic corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands heard that the firm built Belview, a luxury waterfront mansion, for the islands' former premier, Michael Misick. The inquiry heard that to pay for his mansion, Misick, who was forced to resign in 2009 and is now battling multiple corruption allegations, all of which he denies, took out loans of almost $5m (£3.2m) from a Johnston subsidiary. The loans were then consolidated into a further loan taken out with BCB.
In 2009, at the end of the corruption inquiry, its chair, a former lord justice of appeal, Sir Robin Auld, published an official report that placed Johnston under further scrutiny.
Auld suggested that the awarding of "major construction contracts" on the islands could be a potential line of inquiry for the authorities including those "awarded to Johnston International for two new Turks and Caicos Islands hospitals, said to have been overpriced and awarded without any appropriate tender process with an initial budget of $40m and costs to date of $125m".
Auld was at pains to stress his inquiry had found no evidence to confirm any of the contracts were corrupt – only that they might be worthy of investigation.
The contracts were awarded by a Canadian healthcare company, and lawyers for Ashcroft insist that Johnston had no direct contact with the islands' government over their allocation. Ashcroft has insisted that he has had no "economic, beneficial or legal interest" in Johnston since he sold it in 1999.
However, internal company documents obtained by Panorama show that Johnston's chief executive, Allan Forrest, regularly reported to Ashcroft. One fax from Forrest to Ashcroft read: "Dear Michael, a short note to thank you for the salary increase. Much appreciated." Another, written after Forrest visited Belize, where Ashcroft made much of his money, refers to Johnston's parent company, Oxford Ventures, an obscure business based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. Forrest wrote: "The perception in Belize is that you are still in full control of Oxford's assets (which you are of course)."
There is a growing belief in the Turks and Caicos Islands that Helen Garlick, an experienced lawyer who is leading a special investigation and prosecution team in the islands, will seek to question Forrest, who was also director of Oxford Ventures when it went into administration at the same time as Johnston.
A forensic accountant, appointed by the British Virgin Islands' supreme court to trace Oxford's assets, said he would be seeking answers from the Ashcrofts in light of the Panorama investigation.
"I would like to talk to Lord Ashcroft," said Chris Johnson of insolvency experts CJA Associates Ltd. "We have seen the faxes [from Forrest to Ashcroft in the Panorama programme]. I would like to ask questions of anybody who has a relationship with Oxford in my duties as the official liquidator."
In what could prove a significant development, Johnson said last week that he had obtained a court order in the Turks and Caicos Islands allowing him to request documents held by Ashcroft's BCB banking empire relating to Oxford and its collapse.
"Legally, this enables me to seek information and to ask people for explanations," said Johnson, whose investigation is examining the role of another director of Oxford, an anonymous British Virgin Islands' firm called Northtown. The company is a former director of Bearwood Corporate Services, the business through which Ashcroft has donated millions to the Tories and which was investigated – and cleared – of making illegal payments to the party by the Electoral Commission.
An organisational chart obtained by the Observer suggests Oxford may be the ultimate parent company of as many as 40 businesses and that Northtown is the director of 20. The chart reveals Oxford Ventures' sprawling empire is byzantine, stretching across tax havens including the Cayman Islands, Belize and the British Virgin Islands to countries including Kuwait, the UK, Mexico and Canada.
Ashcroft's exact relationship with Johnston remains unclear. In 2010 the company told the Observer through its lawyers: "Lord Ashcroft has had no interest (whether legal, beneficial, economic or managerial) since 1999 when Johnston was the subject of a management buyout from a public company, which was disclosed fully."
Ashcroft's relationship with Johnston came under further scrutiny in court last week. The peer is pursuing a libel action against the Independent's former publisher for a series of stories examining how the company benefited from a property boom in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the peer is a "Belonger", a citizen entitled to certain privileges. He has built a school on the island, donated to charity and is credited with delivering much-needed jobs.
David Price, defending the paper, said that "what is being stated" about Ashcroft is "that he funded this boom, he constructed this boom, through Johnston, knowing this boom was being created through systematic corruption".
Price continued: "He [Ashcroft] is not the corrupter. The corrupter is Michael Misick."
In a letter to the Observer, lawyers for Ashcroft, who is the founder of the Crimestoppers charity and has pledged £5m to the construction of a new yacht to be used by the royal family, declined the paper's request for him to clarify his involvement with Johnston.
However, his spokesman insisted Ashcroft had "no involvement" in Johnston's "day-to-day management and the implication that it remained his company is completely wrong".
The focus on Ashcroft's Caribbean business interests comes as the peer conducts a government review of UK military bases in Cyprus. Ashcroft, whose companies have provided private jet and helicopter flights to several Conservative cabinet members, including the prime minister, David Cameron, was given the role after renouncing his status as a "non-dom". The peer's shock admission before the last election that he was someone who did not have to pay UK tax on his overseas business interests prompted a furore and embarrassed Cameron.
Now, as politicians, lawyers and liquidators seek answers over Ashcroft's relationship with a collapsed Caribbean construction company, those same business interests are once again under acute scrutiny.
ASHCROFT CV
■ Born in Sussex in 1946, Michael Ashcroft was brought up in British Honduras, now Belize. His wealth is estimated at £1.3bn.
■ Ashcroft was appointed Conservative party treasurer in 1998 by the then leader William Hague and remained in the role until 2001.
■ In 2000 he was admitted to the Lords as a Conservative working peer after promising to become a permanent tax resident of the UK. In the same year he was knighted for public service to Belize.
■ He was deputy chairman of the Conservative party from 2005 to 2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... bbean-firm
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