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Dear CIGAs,
Have you protected yourself?
90-Year-Old Madoff Victim Back at Work
Thu Feb 19, 10:31PM ET
A 90-year-old Calif. man has been forced to abandon his retirement after losing all his life savings in the alleged Madoff Ponzi scheme. Ian Thiermann lived through the Great Depression and says he’ll get through this financial crisis too.
Click here to watch the video…
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
The following is for those of you that puh-puh the concept that massive hedge funds only need to recall that allegedly Mr. Soros ran a raid of the Asian currencies that not only killed them but also threw most of Asia at one time into a deep recession.
The idea that major hedge funds do not have enough money to move currency markets, especially the Cando, Swiss and Kiwi, borders on beyond silly.
Paul Volcker: The banking world needs more Canadas
Posted: February 17, 2009, 1:15 PM by Kelly McParland
Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman who is now a member of President Barack Obama’s advisory team on the economy, spoke in Toronto recently as part of the Grano Speakers series.
His topic, of course, was the extent of the crisis facing the U.S., and particularly what brought it about. (Solving it is another issue). He is the latest to suggest Canada is in far better shape, and has been far better served by the structure of its banking system, than the U.S., Europe and other regions.
"It’s interesting that what I’m arguing for looks more like the Canadian system than the American system," Volker said, pointing to strong banks focused on traditional commercial banking practices — taking in money and providing credit — that operate separately from the high-risk financial highwire acts that brought down Wall Street, and for which Volker has little respect.
Here is the speech in full:
I really feel a sense of profound disappointment coming up here. We are having a great financial problem around the world. And finance doesn’t work without some sense of trust and confidence and people meaning what they say. You take their oral word and their written word as a sign that their intentions will be carried out.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
It is officially "Out of Control." Are you in control?
Soros sees no bottom for world financial "collapse"
Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:19pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
"We witnessed the collapse of the financial system," Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. "It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."
His comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama.
Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
And Hedge Funds, how dare they?
EU leaders back sweeping financial regulations
By PATRICK McGROARTY, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 10 mins ago
BERLIN – European leaders backed sweeping new regulations for financial markets and hedge funds at a summit Sunday in Berlin as politicians and nations scrambled to tame the global economic crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted heads of state and finance ministers from Europe’s largest economies to try to establish a common European position on economic reforms before an April 2 summit of the Group of 20 nations.
"All financial markets, products and participants including hedge funds and other private pools of capital which may pose a systematic risk must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation," Merkel said in a statement released on behalf of the summit members, following the talks.
Top officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands and Czech Republic agreed on seven key points during their one-day meeting in Berlin, the statement said.
"A clear message and concrete action are necessary to engender new confidence in the markets and to put the world back on a path toward more growth and employment," Merkel said.
But the call for blanket global regulation was sure to be resisted by the financial industry and may not be entirely welcomed by other members of the G-20, which in addition to European nations includes the United States, China, Japan and developing nations like India and Brazil.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Back in the 1960s the US courts at the request of the US IRS embargoed the assets of Union Bank of Switzerland, looking for US tax evaders.
A GRAND JURY was called, apparently to intimidate any US person found to have made transfers of monies or negotiable securities to Switzerland. UBS at that time was prepared to sacrifice their US assets to protect their clients. The Grand Jury questioned many accounts of people who had moved to Switzerland, had dependent family living or going to school there, did legitimate overseas business, and people who had committed no crime at all. All uncovered transferees were called to the Grand Jury.
What is interesting here is the question of why do so many nations keep their gold at the New York Federal Reserve Bank?
World War Two is over.
In World War Three the battlefield is everywhere.
Swiss party wants to punish U.S. for UBS probe
Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:53am EST
ZURICH, Feb 21 (Reuters) – The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) called on Saturday for retaliation against the United States over a U.S. tax probe into the country’s biggest bank UBS that threatens prized banking secrecy.
The populist SVP, the country’s biggest party, said Switzerland should not take in any detainees from the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which the Swiss government said last month it could consider to help shut the camp down.
Switzerland should also reconsider its policy of representing the United States in countries where it has no diplomatic presence, the parliamentary SVP said in a statement.
The SVP said gold stored by the Swiss National Bank in the United States should be repatriated and Switzerland should ban the sale of U.S. funds in the country to protect Swiss investors after the failure of U.S. regulators.
The SVP has one minister in the seven-member Swiss government which is made up of the biggest four parties, but its populist policies have shaken up usually consensual Swiss politics.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Recall our advice here on JSMineset.
To those of you that do not have financial privacy, under no circumstances and certainly not via the internet should you seek to accomplish secrecy. You will neither get privacy or your money back, nor will you own any gold anywhere.
You will get a visit from your Inland Revenue Special Agent.
Yes, those that went early are not among the 19,000, the 52,000 nor in the undertow of the pirates of the Caribbean.
Antigua pledges to cooperate on bank investigation
By Clifford Krauss
Sunday, February 22, 2009
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua: Having seized control of Robert Allen Stanford’s two banks in recent days, Antiguan government officials are now pledging to work closely with U.S. regulators to investigate their offshore banking system, long suspected by U.S. officials of being a center for laundering money from around the region.
"We need to investigate our own backyard to see if it needs cleaning up," Attorney General Justin Simon said during an interview.
That acknowledgement came as a break from statements only last week by local bank regulators that the financial system was absolutely clean even as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Stanford of engaging in an $8 billion fraud involving high-yielding certificates of deposit sold by an offshore bank here.
A run on both the onshore and offshore banks Stanford operated in Antigua began last week after a U.S. judge froze the assets of Stanford Financial Group, the Houston-based company through which the offshore bank sold the certificates. U.S. investigators are examining the possibility that Stanford was involved in a Ponzi scheme.
Concerned that the Antiguan economy, which is already hurting from a downturn in tourism due to the global economic crisis, could suffer further from a financial breakdown, government officials have taken actions that are unprecedented for the country’s largely unregulated banking system.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
The real question is who will tell Kucinich to stand down.
Kucinich: Who Told SEC to "Stand Down" on Stanford Probe?
Chairman of Domestic Policy Subcommittee Opens Inquiry
Washington, Feb 20 -
Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today sent a letter to Ms. Mary Schapiro, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting documents that could reveal which government agency told the SEC to "stand down" rather than take enforcement action against the Stanford Group in October 2006 as has been reported by the New York Times.
Recent media reports have indicated that the SEC was aware of improprieties at Stanford Financial Group as early as October 2006, but withheld action at the request of another government agency.
In a report published in the February 17th edition of the New York Times, an SEC official said that an inquiry had been opened on Stanford in October of 2006. According to the Times report, an associate regional director of enforcement said the SEC "stood down" on its investigation as a result of the intervention of another federal agency.
Stanford is now the focus of an $8 billion fraud investigation and, presumably, an earlier inquiry would have spared many Stanford investors and triggered similar inquiries into other funds which lacked transparency.
"The SEC’s recent filing against Stanford stemmed from the 2006 SEC inquiry that had been apparently shelved at the request of the unnamed agency. If this is true, we must find out why the SEC delayed enforcement, and if there were other cases where other government agencies intervened to block enforcement,” Chairman Kucinich said.
"If the SEC did indeed begin an inquiry in 2006 and was called off by another agency, our subcommittee will demand that the SEC reveal the name of that agency which told it not to enforce federal laws which protect investors," said Chairman Kucinich.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This is going to open a can of political worms as it deals with the nefarious takeover of Mexico in process and nearing completion.
"While Mexico’s current narco war, which has claimed 7,000 lives in two years, has been billed as one "between cartels", it is, on the ground, something closer to an anarchic scramble between street-level gangs to whom dealing and smuggling have been "outsourced", while the Gulf Cartel and its peers concern themselves with a takeover of the Mexican economy and all-out war against what is left of the Mexican state the cartels do not control."
FBI investigates possible links with Mexico drug gang
Ed Vulliamy and Paul Harris in New York
The FBI is probing possible money laundering linked to Mexico’s infamous narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel in its investigation of Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford, US law enforcement sources have told the Observer.
An FBI source close to the investigation would not give exact details but confirmed the agency was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford’s banking activities. Reports in the US have said Mexican authorities have detained one of Stanford’s private planes as part of an investigation into possible links to the Gulf Cartel. It has been alleged cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is one of the most violent criminal organisations in the world.
Sources in the US Drug Enforcement Administration also confirmed that while the investigations into Stanford’s affairs were "with the FBI and Securities Exchange Commission, there may well have been a trail connecting his Mexican affairs to narco-trafficking interests. So far as we understand from information partially in the public domain, this has pertained to the Gulf Cartel, and items found aboard a private light aircraft. I think we’ll find that any possible drug-related trail and SEC priorities are not all in the same frame."
Asked whether the aircraft seizures were an isolated incident in the overall investigation, the official said: "It’s not going to be as if they would check every plane. Any connections to the narcos would have been followed for some time, and US law enforcement has been working with Mexico’s banking regulators on a vast range of investigations, including Stanford’s interests, for some time.
"This would not be the first investigation like this following trans-border investments to lead to narco-traffic interests."
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
A Sunday closing?
Oregon-based Silver Falls Bank closed by FDIC
2/22/2009 9:17 AM ET
(RTTNews) - Silver Falls Bank, based in Silverton, Oregon State in the US is the latest bank to be closed by the US Regulators, falling prey to the deteriorating financial turmoil in the world’s largest economy, the US. This is the 14th bank to be closed by the US Financial Regulators in this year.
On Friday, the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services closed the Bank and named the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, as the Receiver. As as is the case with regard to closure of financial institutions, public have not been intimated through advance notice regarding the closure of the Silver Falls Bank.
The FDIC has stated that at the end of February 9, Silver Falls Bank had $131.4 million in assets and $116.3 million in deposits. Heavy dependence on commercial construction loans, which, of late, have been not performing or turned bad, forcing the FDIC to acquire the bank.
Another Bank in the Oregon State, Citizens Bank of Corvallis has agreed to assume deposits from Silver Falls Bank.
FDIC further stated that all the three offices of Silver Falls Bank would open on Monday, 23 October 2009, and conduct normal business activities in the name of Citizens Bank. The automated teller machines will be functioning normally and the customers need not panic, the FDIC added.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
What OTC derivatives do not do to the financials, attorneys will.
Whatever is left is going to leak out due to lousy business.
Only when accounting rules are altered to allow the banks to fabricate new false asset values will their fortunes change as the markup of worthless garbage to fake values produces earnings.
Big banks set to report on first quarter amid a rising tide of anxiety
TORONTO — Now that the bosses of Canada’s big banks have had their pay haircuts for 2008, how are they doing so far in 2009?
Investors will find out this week and next, as the Big Five report on the first quarter of their banking year which began in November.
Expectations are muted, given the state of the economy and the results will suffer by comparison with year-ago profits.
But at the same time investors are wondering whether Canada’s banks – solidly capitalized and in rude health compared with their shrivelled competitors in the United States and Europe – will fling aside caution and snap up assets at rock-bottom prices.
"This is probably the one opportunity in history for Canadian banks to stand out from their global peers," Bank of Nova Scotia analyst Kevin Choquette declared in a recent survey.
