Tag Archives: Credit Suisse

March 16, 2023 · 18:07

Oh boy, there was more

It all started 4 days ago when I wrote ‘I honestly don’t get it’. I comprehended the stage just fine, it is the lack of comprehension of greed, what people will do to fill their own pockets at the expense of everything and everyone. You see Basel III was published in 2010 after the first meltdown, it was extended to 2015 with extensions going as far as January 2023. So 13 years and the whining bitches (aka banks) still will not learn. SVB is merely one example and the actions by congress made perfect sense. Now we have Credit Suisse and the setting changes.

It now needs (and apparently just received) 45 billion to be ‘secured’. This is a little more than the national budget of Qatar which is 53rd on a list of national budgets with 228 nations with on last place Wallis and Futuna. To give you a better picture, it is twice the amount Oman has for its citizens, they are in 68th position. They need THAT MUCH money. The issue is that big and do not talk to me about journalists or those clowns at the ICIJ. They are all about their Pandora papers and what a joke they are. 

You see, I stated in the first article the Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) and now we see the BBC give us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64964881) giving us “After Credit Suisse shares plunged on Wednesday, a major investor – the Saudi National Bank – said it would not inject further funds into the Swiss lender”, it matters and I will get back to this. In the mean time The Guardian gives us “The bank had been forced to delay the publication of its annual report last week after a last-minute call from the US Securities and Exchange Commission relating to what Credit Suisse described as the “technical assessment” of revisions to cashflow statements going back to 2019. The bank said those discussions had now been concluded” I believe it is more, I personally believe that was why Yellen got involved in day one. I think the SVB and others have too many bonds and they are not ready to mature yet and with interest up these things are making banks bleed money and they are bleeding a lot. You see, there is an estimated total of TWENTY THREE THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS in US government bonds floating around and I reckon the SVB and Credit Suisse are now in levels of pain, they had too many of those. As such the outstanding part, not merely these two represent $23,000,000,000,000 and no one can cover it they are all stretched beyond thin. This is what I expect is happening and I warned for this as early as 2016, there is a point of no return and the banks are way past that. Putting your IP in the USA is about to become one of the most expensive jokes tech firms have faced in well over half a century.

Could I be wrong?
Yes, that is the case, but that can be tested quite easily. You see, if you make a tally of where all these US government bonds were and you set that tally in a mineable solution especially with pre 2016 and past 2016 when Dodd-Frank got cancelled you will learn a few things and this is what I saw on day one, but weirdly enough the media is not going there (neither is the ICIJ), so you get to wonder why.

Oil in the family
now we get back to the Saudi National Bank. In this I agree with Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. Oil is a commodity, there is no cap, if you need oil more and more, you are working from the wrong business plan and if that relies on exceeding your budget by over 30 trillion dollars you get what’s coming to you. In addition I would add the Republican Party making small talk stating that they need to pull away from Ukraine, I lose the little sympathy I had left for them. The US has slammed Saudi Arabia again and again, in some cases with the assistance of a United Nations essay writer. There is only so much people will take. They had the option to help Saudi Arabia create a nations defence strategy, they bailed out and now China is there. They made fake promises and most were not kept and now we see banks asking Saudi Arabia (in Oliver Twist style) can we have some more please? 

As such we see event after event and now that things are on the rails, the train has speed and they just ran out of rails. This is early and before I expected it, but I never considered the impact of Russia being stupid and attacking the Ukraine, it merely escalated things. 

America has two options, does it become part of China or part of Russia. It seems that the Republicans want to be part of Russia, the rest I do not know, but we are now in the process of the final financial act. And my evidence? Investigate the CET1 setting of EVERY bank (especially the two in trouble) and then look at where the bonds are and how many of these bonds are/were with the SVB and Credit Suisse. I have no doubt they both have too many. Then consider Basel III and see how many banks hold up at that point. They were warned for 13 years, so let them rot, let them collapse and let the investors and share holders take the fall and live life in minimum wage. 

And in all this, too many of the media are all about flaming and not doing too much about it, merely pushing towards bailouts. That time has gone as I personally see it. 

All whilst the Australian Financial Review gives us a mere 45 minutes ago “The failure of Silicon Valley Bank has exposed fresh divisions on Capitol Hill over banking reform, as US lawmakers from both parties trade blame for the lenders’ collapse and squabble over future legislation to shore up the financial system” squabble on something that was shown 13 years ago. Still think I am wrong? 

Enjoy the money you have, there might be a lot less soon enough.

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March 5, 2022 · 05:46

Where are we heading?

That is the stage we comment on and most comment on events in Europe, most would and that is not bad. But something happened in Lebanon that got my attention (something is always happening there). You see, many might have noticed ‘UAE set to be put on money laundering watchdog’s ‘grey list,’ report says’ (source: CNBC), we are given quotes like “The Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to combatting money laundering and illicit cash flows, is set to put the United Arab Emirates on its “grey list” over concerns that the Gulf country isn’t sufficiently stemming illegal financial activities”, now I am not debating it, it might be true, it might not. I cannot lay claims to events I have no data on. But whilst we see that, Reuters also gives us (at https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/lebanese-bank-closes-over-30-british-held-accounts-after-uk-ruling-depositors-2022-03-04/) ‘Lebanese bank closes over 30 British-held accounts after UK ruling-depositors’ group’. There we see “A Bank Audi official told Reuters the bank was “asking that the UK residents apply the terms applicable to anyone opening a new account: no international transfers, no cash withdrawals””, so just to help me out. You create a bank account and you are not allowed to withdraw cash? How does that make the bank a bank? And we also get “More than $100 billion remains stuck in a banking system paralysed since 2019, when the economy collapsed due to decades of unsustainable state spending, corruption and waste”, as such my question becomes what on earth is the Financial Action Task Force doing monitoring banks? First Credit Suisse, through state sponsored hacking and now we see Bank Audi. Two elements showing a massive cash stage running into the hundreds of billions. So what the hell is the Financial Action Task Force doing? Why are they not investigating banks? We see the mention of Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the mention of nations, not banks. Banks are seemingly flying below the radar and we see an alleged flaccid response from action groups. Oh and it would be nice to see specifics. Not some journo’s BS approach towards emotional garbage. I discussed this in ‘The presumption is mine’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/21/the-presumption-is-mine/) where I wrote “so all that space on what amounts to 0.03% of the entire amount. Just like the ICIJ, shortsighted and a waste of time. So we get repeated invitations to explain 0.03% of what is such a massive leak? Is anyone waking up yet?”, now if the FATF did its job and also gives us why the UAE needs to be on a grey list and NOT the bank it becomes a different story, optionally an acceptable one. That same setting applies to Switzerland, home to 242 banks and Credit Suisse. Oh, and before I forget the data leak never explained (it never will) why such harsh methods needs to be applied to the other 242 banks. No one ever asked that question, not other authorities, not the wannabe journalists either. Is that not weird too?

We need to see where we are going and what games certain parties are playing. I saw the Credit Suisse for nothing but a simple fishing expedition. A chumming exercise by the NSA (most likely culprit) to get some of the fish out there. And no one saw that? I am clever, but I am not that clever (compared to self proclaimed clever people), which (as I personally see it) implies orchestration. 

Am I right, am I wrong? I also ask that question from myself. The Switzerland setting alerted me to weirdness of it all, the UAE draws the setting to the surface. The UAE and its 20 local and 30 foreign banks. Yes that is also the case, so the FATF better come with a very good and very large folder with evidence on a whole range of banks. And before you think the UAE does nothing, we saw a week ago “The government confiscated assets worth $625m last year.” As such I hope that the FATF can prove its setting of “concerns that the Gulf country isn’t sufficiently stemming illegal financial activities” it seems that the UAE has proven activities, so is the FATF merely blowing its own horn? Perhaps it needs to look into the Audi bank and a few other banks too and several of them are not in Switzerland or the UAE. When we see quotes like “About $227.8 million money laundering in USA in 2020 according to our calculation that based 2020 Money Laundering Offense Report”, so how much did the US confiscate? Just asking.

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February 24, 2022 · 03:27

Red flags

We all have them, we all see them, it is what comes next that matters. For me it was a visit to the introduction of a cyber course. There were so many red flags it was weird. The first flags came two days before the presentation, two emails to set the stage, one with the option to delay payment to six months after the course was done, the first sales pitch. Now there is nothing wrong with sales pitches, but here it seems misplaced, cyber space os pedantic to say the least. So I went to that presentation, even though there were already red flags going up. Then there was the event. To be honest, it wasn’t all their fault. There were IT issues and IT couldn’t figure out what was wrong. This happens, the moment sucks, but that is part of the game. 

Then there was the space, 2 attendants, the rest via zoom.  I was one of the two, no drinks, not even water. If it is a sales pitch, you want people relaxed, so how does a thirsty presentation go? They had bought water for themselves. Then there were no handouts, in case of a training you want people have the information, hand outs are a great option for them to have the slides and make notes. The presentation was not updated and was still saying November 2021, remember I stated pedantic? Then the presentation, so much mention of “You do not need to be from IT” and then all the examples of people who were from another education, there were good parts, but so much a sales-pitch. The number of red flags were passed and I left. 

So was I wrong?
There is no indication that they weren’t what they said they were, they were in a decent place, they did this with a well known University, so this was all on the up and up, but the hairs on my neck were up, it was about revenue, it was about sales and the approach was wrong. You see the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60387324) gives some of the goods. It was titled ‘the con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency’, the BBC gave it two days ago and there we have the problem. The BBC gave us “those who had turned on their cameras didn’t know was that some of the others in the meeting weren’t real people. Yes, they were listed as participants. Some even had active email accounts and LinkedIn profiles. But their names were made up and their headshots belonged to other people.” The enforcing of a sales pitch. As such we see “the real employees had been “jobfished”. The BBC has spent a year investigating what happened.” You still think that being pedantic is something else than a virtue? Yes, we get “the job represented more than just a pay cheque – but a UK visa too. If they passed their six-month probation period, and met their sales targets, their contracts said Madbird would sponsor them to move to the UK” and there is the real pitch, exploitative slavery, hiding behind a piece of shit hiding behind “I have put 16 hours every single day for months and done the best that I could to make this work. I should’ve known better and for that I’m truly sorry.” No he isn’t and I feel that people like that should get one bullet through the back of their heads. We get “By February 2021, not a single client contract had been signed. None of the Madbird staff had been paid a penny”, we are given “Some recruits ended up leaving after a few weeks, but many stayed. Many had been there for almost six months – forced to take out credit cards and borrow money from family to keep on top of bills” that should have been a big red flag but in this world of pandemics, too many feel the pinch of desperation, but an agency that cannot pay you? That is an agency that has no real clients, no revenue and no real future at that point. We are given “a photo showing an open issue of GQ magazine, with Ali Ayad modelling a blazer in a full-page ad for Spanish fashion brand Massimo Dutti. “Hustle in silence, let your success make the noise,” read the caption.” As well as “a post claiming he had modelled for Massimo Dutti in British GQ which received 4,000 ‘likes’”, “Ali Ayad has over 90,000 followers on his Instagram – in his bio he describes himself as an “influencer”” as well as the stolen identities, I personally see a clear case for targeted killing. You see this world is changing and if State players can do the games they play, going after created leaks on Credit Suisse, hack and spell the goods through Pandora Papers, I can make a clear case that some of these exploitative nut-jobs are in the market for targeted killing. It is time that we clean the streets on both sides of the isle but not merely on red flags, that does not constitute evidence and for the Cyber setting I might be wrong, it is more than a gut feeling, it is more then small pressure point, it is more than a sales-pitch (which was never invalid) and the half dozen red flags I do not mention here is because they are personal, they are based on the corporate and university world I have faced over decades, and based on what THEIR bosses see as proper etiquette. The red flags does not mean wrong, it means that the pedantic levels I have seen in the cyber world does not constitute evidence, it does not and I know that. The BBC shows a different version, a version that it takes a year to get to a piece of shit like that. So when we see “We contacted all 42 brands Madbird had listed as former clients – including Nike, Tate, and Toni & Guy. None of those that responded had ever worked with Madbird.” We also see that this is becoming a much larger problem. And I have over 50 people for my case, some who lost thousands. I feel decently certain that the image he used is optionally not him, the stage of “Whilst Madbird and Ayad have seemingly vanished”, as I personally see it, the NSA/GCHQ better get fucking active, if players like this can play their tax the rich approach, they can also hunt down people like Ali Ayad and prove that they are serious about stopping certain crimes. The 50 people have rights and their rights were trampled upon. It was not mischief, it wasn’t some prank and it was not to do “the best that I could to make this work” it was exploitation, it was mislabeled slavery and it needs to stop. We cannot blame some of the social media on how people like this do what they do, but we can execute them. I prefer long term prison but so far Ali Ayad has vanished, and making him run in fear is better than him walking away to restart the scam somewhere else.

That is how I see it but here too is the problem. I am the problem on the relying of red flags, the setting of expectation regarding a pedantic setting, I get that, but between the two events is a borderline, I am not certain where it is, or where it should be, but that border needs to be created, governments have sat on their asses for too long and the wrong people are left with the bill of scammers, that is not completely on social media and more on governments, but that is merely how I see it and I admit, I could be wrong.

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February 22, 2022 · 10:15

The speculative rage

Yes, there is speculation, there is rage, there is the play and there are the consequences. As I stated about a day ago in ‘The presumption is mine’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/21/the-presumption-is-mine/) where I stated “so all that space on what amounts to 0.03% of the entire amount. Just like the ICIJ, shortsighted and a waste of time. So we get repeated invitations to explain 0.03% of what is such a massive leak? Is anyone waking up yet?” A stage play and the Guardian is milking it for EVERYTHING it can, but in doing so it gives a larger play away, and this is not presumption, it is speculation. Yet to see this we need to look at more than one article.

The first one is seen (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/21/revealed-king-jordan-used-swiss-accounts-hoard-massive-wealth) where we are told ‘Revealed: king of Jordan used Swiss accounts to hoard massive wealth’, all yada yada, bla bla and more emotion and the basic part of evidence is missing. What crimes did the King of Jordan commit? We get “According to a massive trove of data leaked from the bank that names both royals as account holders, one account would later be worth a remarkable 230m Swiss francs”, again and again the mention of leaked data, all whilst we need to consider there was no leak, but more about that soon. Now we see 0.28% of the total money mentioned. Then we go on with the next article (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/21/tax-timeline-credit-suisse-scandals) where we are treated to ‘Crooks, kleptocrats and crises: a timeline of Credit Suisse scandals’, we see the list and I am not debating the list, yet how much ‘effort’ did the media do when it comes to investigating players like Price Waterhouse Cooper? You see, it is not about this, or about that, we see the larger play with ‘Switzerland at risk of EU blacklist after Credit Suisse leak’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/21/switzerland-at-risk-of-eu-blacklist-after-credit-suisse-leak), and again the mention of leak. This is (a personal speculation) the EU and US needing to button down, but with a place like Switzerland, there is no stopping what they desperately need, they need revenue and they need their cup filled, the bankrupt are now desperate.

The leak never made sense. I have worked in several places where I get access to data, but never to this degree and that wasn’t even a bank, the bank laws in Switzerland are no fun for bankers. This, as I personally see it, was state orchestrated. 

To see this we need to take the quote “The fallout from a huge leak of Credit Suisse banking data threatened to damage Switzerland’s entire financial sector on Monday after the European parliament’s main political grouping raised the prospect of adding the country to a money-laundering blacklist.” We cannot get the EU to agree on anything. Consider the Politico quote on the EU and covid “The Council press office said the Nice summit took over 90 hours in a tweet Monday afternoon to rein in already spreading rumours claiming the ongoing summit could become the longest by midnight.” There has been a long standing issue on Switzerland and the EU, but times are dire and something will have to give. So when we see “A move to the blacklist would mean Switzerland would face the kind of enhanced due diligence applied to transactions linked to rogue nations including North Korea”, this is one setting, but the larger stage is that the people they want could move their fortunes to the UAE or the Bahama’s all zero tax nations. And in all this with all these articles we still have not seen any collection of data that sets the stage to 7.5%, you know why? Because that was the PWC oversight regarding Tesco, a mere $6,000,000,000 and we see less than that here. But the biggest failing is that we see no transgressions of Swiss Banking Laws. We are given “how a massive leak of Credit Suisse data had uncovered apparently widespread failures of due diligence by the bank”, it is not the leak (well that too), but it is ‘apparently widespread failures’, ONE BANK! Yet now we get “When Swiss banks fail to apply international anti-money-laundering standards properly, Switzerland itself becomes a high-risk jurisdiction”, a statement by Markus Ferber, the coordinator on economic affairs for the EPP, the EPP or sometimes referred to as the sanctimonious Christian fucks of the European Union. So we have one bank, the Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. And we optionally have ONE bank transgressing, but for this the entire nation is set on fire. And that is before some people realise that a leak of this nature is not possible under normal conditions. It requires a state player like the NSA, GCHQ or DGSE to get involved. So who was it? 

And in all this the Guardian is again and again all about emotion and less about evidence, why is that? 

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February 21, 2022 · 04:59

The presumption is mine

There is a setting that does not agree with me and I have seen this before. Yet before I do that there are two words we need to look at. The first one is speculation, it means ‘the activity of guessing possible answers to a question without having enough information to be certain’, then there is presumption ‘the ground, reason, or evidence lending probability to a belief’. So one is a guess, the other is an educated guess. It is always stronger than a guess, but it is till lacking certain levels of evidence and that is important to know.

This all started as I was just unwinding of several (too many) hours playing Horizons 2: Forbidden West. I started that second play-through without completing the first. I did this with the first game. You see, Eloy needs power and skill and running after the main quest (something I erroneously did in the first game) will not do it. You need skill points and the game is large, really really large and when you start finding adversaries that are (on land) a lot bigger than you think you will be either running for your life or running for cover. Those who go meet the challenge head on are shredded. Yet I digress (or do I)?

The Guardian gives us (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/20/credit-suisse-secrets-leak-unmasks-criminals-fraudsters-corrupt-politicians) where we see ‘Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians’. There Is one problem. You see I do not think that this is happening, the Guardian was a happy tool just to get the exclusive. So as we are given:

Massive leak reveals secret owners of £80bn held in Swiss bank
Whistleblower leaked bank’s data to expose ‘immoral’ secrecy laws
Clients included human trafficker and billionaire who ordered girlfriend’s murder
Vatican-owned account used to spend €350m in allegedly fraudulent investment
Scandal-hit Credit Suisse rejects allegations it may be ‘rogue bank’

You see, my issue is that just like the ICIJ Pandora papers farce, this is an orchestration. I cannot say by who, we can point towards the NSA or a likeminded player (GCHQ), but the setting is larger. The US and EU are close to bankrupt, they play a nice tune, but the musical instrument has not been tuned for too long. A debt surpassing $30,000,000,000,000 and the EU is set to be in debt for about €10,973,338,444,376. They need to do something and going after some specific people is a first need. You cannot overhaul finances until certain ‘progressive entrepreneurs’ (aka white collar criminals) are dealt with ad the courts take too long, the problem is two fold. In the first the ICIJ was all about tantrums and BS, not much real useful info. We saw the accusations here and there with added ‘No actual laws were broken’ additions and it was a farce from beginning to end. Basic intelligence gathering acts were ignored, basic dashboarding was cast aside, and after 304 messages I know it was a wash. It was all about the power towards a ‘tax the rich’ flame which was happily drowned in whatever they used. Now we see the scolding of Credit Suisse and there are two parts here: 

  1. In the first they are accusations, so there will be a time gap, not a short one either. But it will be a message to ALL other banks that certain people have had enough.
  2. We see “billionaire who ordered girlfriend’s murder”, which might be fine, but which of the 2,755 billionaires was it? Well, the article gives us “his Lebanese pop star girlfriend”, so it might not be that hard. 

The issue is not the article perse, it is “A massive leak from one of the world’s biggest private banks, Credit Suisse, has exposed the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes. Details of accounts linked to 30,000 Credit Suisse clients all over the world are contained in the leak, which unmasks the beneficiaries of more than 100bn Swiss francs (£80bn) held in one of Switzerland’s best-known financial institutions.”

Let me take you through the numbers. There is not one employee that has access to the 30,000 accounts, so it is the CEO, CTO, CFO, or something like that. Do you think that they are the whistleblower? Nope? Neither do I! Then there is the IT, but Credit Suisse is global, so it we get back to the CTO. One IT person does not have this kind of access without getting caught. This level of data has all kinds of security. It needs to have it. Then there is the inside part Who is the drug trafficker? Who is the corrupt? Who is the torturer? This is not set into an account, it requires data aggregation, something a way to large computer can do but leakers tend to now have that access, without getting caught. And the Swiss laws are strict, massively strict so there is doubt on the stage of “held in one of Switzerland’s best-known financial institutions” as well. The levels of security and insight cannot come from a leaker, just like with the Pandora papers. I stated that from the beginning. This was a state operator and the NSA is the most likely culprit. The USA is in too much debt, it needs to release pressures and they are out of options. So when the ICIJ strikes out, we get this. 

I have worked in data for decades and I have had less then 5 instances where I had national levels of data access, but I was monitored all the time (as one does), one protects the data it has. And I was able to do my job and aid the people involved. In an age of data being currency, do you think this is some leak? An £80bn leak no less? Then there is “leak reveals secret owners of £80bn held in Swiss bank”, a bullshit header if ever there was one. You see Swiss bank laws are strict, very strict and have been for a very long time but someone wants access and a leak would never reveal that. Such information can only come from state players, players with aggregated data on a very large level and there is every indication that the dat did not come from the bank but from other sources who transferred the funds from one to the other. The setting of ‘Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians’ debunked in mere minutes. It took me at least 4 times longer to type this all. And when we get one example where the article is so ‘huge’, we get “the leaked Credit Suisse data shows his accounts were left open until at least well into the last decade. At one point after he left Siemens, one account was worth 54m CHF (£24m). Seidel’s lawyer declined to say whether the accounts were his. He said his client had addressed all outstanding matters relating to his bribery offences and wished to move on with his life”, as well as “The lawyer did not respond to repeated invitations to explain the source of the 54m CHF. Siemens said it did not know about the money and that its review of its own cashflows shed no light on the account”, so all that space on what amounts to 0.03% of the entire amount. Just like the ICIJ, shortsighted and a waste of time. So we get repeated invitations to explain 0.03% of what is such a massive leak? Is anyone waking up yet? 

This is about something else, it always was and in this the Guardian is allowing themselves (yet again) to be the tool in all this. It is not rocket science and it took me minutes to debunk a setting that is intentionally being misrepresented by 5 writers, I did this all alone in less then an hour (including the writing), so what fairy tale will the newspapers (via a state actor) serve up next?

Charging in full frontal will get some state players shredded, so they decided on the Eloy solution, illuminate from the tall grass and stay out of sight, plenty of players eager to take that limelight.

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November 4, 2021 · 20:03

Birds of a feather

I altered the expression to a more apt and more temporary version, it is ‘Birds of a feather intersect together’. This view is based on a few different and mostly unrelated pieces of information. To see the string on this loom, we need to make a few jumps.

The first string
The first string is seen with Reuters, who (at https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/spies-lies-losses-credit-suisses-scandals-2021-11-04/) gives us ‘Spies, lies and losses: Credit Suisse’s scandals’. Here we see “Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to defrauding investors over an $850 million loan to Mozambique meant to pay for a tuna fishing fleet and is paying U.S. and British regulators $475 million to settle the case under a deal announced in October”, we see the news and we shrug. I did too, you see the people were caught, but that is not the real deal, the issue becomes all the people who get away with it and it is a massive amount of money. I recently write about about some convicted crypto scammer who when the way Victor Fleming did (a gone with the wind joke). So there is one and there are many more. 

The second string
The second string is given to us by the Dutch NOS, a string that makes me reconsider an earlier statement. They give us (at https://nos.nl/l/2404250) ‘‘Unprecedented fraud’ in Pels Rijcken case, civil-law notaries before disciplinary court’, a case with notaries is pretty unheard of, so when I saw “only one notary was responsible for the embezzlement of approximately 11 million euros. Still, several notaries of the office have to appear before the disciplinary court” I was slightly baffled and it opened a window, or a trap door to a third story, one from the past. You see, we are so set in some of our ways that the event of one is pretty amazing, it also gives us food for thought. This comes from my decades in customer service. You see, for every one complaint that makes it to our desks, there are 30 that didn’t. At times that makes sense. People do not bother, others hide the complaint, or paint over it. Yet the larger stage is there. So if one notary is seen as a culprit, how many get away with it? Now, if someone states that this is an unfair comparison, I will agree completely, but the thought remains and the thought still has merit, even if the one out of 30 is not correct. 

String number three
This takes us back, to a TV series that reigned from 1978-1986. It was the girl Dana Plato, and for many young man she was on many minds. She ended with a terrible ending, but in part it was due to an accountant, who was seen as a much larger culprit. We get “In desperation over these traumatic events, she signed over power of attorney to an accountant who disappeared with the majority of her money, leaving her with less than $150,000. She claimed the accountant was never found nor prosecuted, despite an exhaustive search, and that he had also stolen more than $11 million of other people’s money”, an issue around 1989, the culprit was never found, whether the FBI just couldn’t be bothered (because of case pressures and resources), or because the accountant was too slippery and too good. We can only guess on this part, but the larger stage is true. If numbers hold up, with the right economics degree you can become a more wealthy and more successful criminal than any cat burglar can and that is at the forefront here.

You see, the lack of regulation and proper registration is a stage whey that so called queen of Crypto got away with a massive scam, why we see victims like Dana Plato, the notary scam in the Netherlands and the events at Credit Suisse and those are but a few of a massive pool of events. Being a criminal in this day and age is too profitable and there is no turning the tide at present and seemingly not for a long time to come. The news on Crypto scams is making that clear all over the globe. A stage that was foreseen but the administrations are too busy looking at vague accusations and too often lacking clearly stated evidence and numbers by sources like the ICIJ (just an example). 

There is no present course of relieving dangers for anyone and if you do not do your homework you will lose your money with an ever decreasing chance of EVER getting. Penny back. I believe that in part the cutting corners stage that financial institutions have is part of that, it is only part and not all. There is no clear path towards solving it, because the larger players have all stretched their credit cards for too long and the larger banks see that they have a chance to make a few billions in the process, yet the resource limits that some governments have gives some players a chance to take that risk and that is the problem, birds of a feather intersect together. If three of them play individual games, one will get away and if the one makes a deal with the other two, they all go to their beach house whistling I will alway love you, you £1,000,000 voucher. And with that the financial future is close to secure. It is a setting that is unlikely to change any day soon, no matter what some fraud divisions and the FBI claim. 

A setting we are alas forced to live with, but feel free to find that one accountant the authorities missed and hang him from the highest lamp post on Wall Street as a sign of your frustration.

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January 13, 2020 · 16:02

Let’s kill all the idiots

The headline was the first thought I had when I saw ‘Roger Federer responds to climate crisis criticism from Greta Thunberg‘, my conviction became even stronger when I saw the bylines ‘Credit Suisse closely linked with fossil fuel industry‘ and ‘#RogerWakeUpNow has been trending on Twitter‘, you see, the simplest of all views is that the dumbheads calling themselves ‘climate activists’ were already low on my IQ agenda, but now they have hit rock bottom (below fascists and extreme right knuckleheads). 

I have no issue with those being stupid because they are ignorant, that happens. I know nothing of agrarian farming, I know nothing about managing herds of cows and I am fine with that, I will not offer you any advice in those directions. I am also not a firefighter, so I am at a loss as to how to best treat the shrubberies in Australia, but I know we have experts on all these matters around and when I get to it, I will ask them. 

So lets get some reality in the game, Credit Suisse Group AG is an investment bank, it has shareholders and it needs to get accounts that offer the best return on investment. There will always be firms that offer a 95% or better certainty that their investment will pay off and that is the reason a firm like Credit Suisse Group AG will entertain an appointment. Now Credit Suisse Group AG is not alone, there are hundreds of these firms and even as there are plenty of them not with the capital that runs into the trillions, it also means that they can make larger investment, investments a lot cannot make. So how is it that Credit Suisse Group AG has an optional portfolio of petrochemical industries (fossil fuel industry), well that is simple, 100% of America relies on fuel, from the 50’s onwards they set the stage where every person had a house and a car. I do not have a car, I do not need one, yet anyone living outside of a large city in America directly sees how important a car is to get around, in some cases if you do not have a car, you cannot see the neighbours, you cannot get groceries and so forth. That lifestyle was never attacked, that lifestyle was never opposed outright to the degree that it was needed. In other directions, let’s take a look at Arlanda Airport (because Greta Thunberg is Swedish), can anyone explain why 27 million passengers travel to Stockholm by plane every year? Well, that is easy, most are on vacation, and this includes 325 thousand people from the US, which was interesting as this is pretty much the population of the US, and I know for a fact that they do not all go to Sweden, so there is a lot of business travel, as well as 1 million people travelling from Luleå Airport (far north of Sweden), so we see a mingle of business people of tourists and those with all kinds of reasons and this is merely one of a thousand airports in Europe, all those planes need fuel. Even when we consider that planes and cars are only two of well over a dozen facets that require crude oil, we see a much larger setting of petrochemical needs, especially when we consider that on one route (Amsterdam – Stockholm) we see that 8 airlines setting the stage for 64 flights per week and consider that these flights should not continue when the passenger well dries up. 

We all set the stage for fossil fuel, we do it all ourselves, so when I look at the picture (at https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/12/roger-federer-responds-to-climate-change-criticism-from-greta-thunberg) where I see the text of “People demonstrate in support outside the trial of 12 activists who stormed and played tennis inside a Credit Suisse office“, how many (of those) own a car? How many will give the answer: “But I need my car!“, so in that setting how many of you all are part of this? I am all for changing the climate, but the first setting is not some BS approach that involves some tennis player, as such when we come to the BS tweet by 350.org Europe, giving us “Since 2016 @CreditSuisse has provided $57 BILLION to companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits – something that is utterly incompatible with #ClimateAction @RogerFederer do you endorse this? #RogerWakeUpNow pic.twitter.com/ED1fIvb4Cr“, why ask him? more importantly when we consider “Since 2016 @CreditSuisse has provided $57 BILLION to companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits“, consider that the local governments allowed for this and when we consider ‘fossil fuel deposits‘, consider that these people cannot be in business if no one needs deposits, which means that when we get car usage down by 50% in one nation alone they go off the map, and at that point the  Credit Suisse Group AG will give their loans to other interested and needy parties. 

That is the central point that these BS people do not get, it is the fulfilling of need and there is a large need for fossil fuels (whether valid or not). More importantly you go after the one group of people where a healthy lifestyle is important (the swiss), as such the twitter hashtag #RogerWakeUpNow is mostly bullshit, that person seems more awake than the stupid masses carrying the hashtag in their tweets. From my point of view, if 50% of the US Twitter users drop their car for at least a month (so from today until the end of February 2020) that means that there will be from today until the end of February 2020 34 million cars less on the Road in the US, anyone using their car in this timeframe should not now, not ever use the #RogerWakeUpNow hashtag, shall we agree on that? I do not want to hear any BS on ‘I needed it’, ‘my mum was sick’ or ‘the dog ate my car keys and I had to drive it to the doctor’ idiocy, if you needed your car, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution, it is a simple as that.

If we do that country by country we can get a handle of fossil fuel consumption and the need for that expansion goes away. And as we take notice of “Credit Suisse recently stated it is “seeking to align its loan portfolios with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and has recently announced in the context of its global climate strategy that it will no longer invest in new coal-fired power plants”“, we also need to consider that the Paris agreement is a watered down goal and that the US withdrew from the Paris agreements in 2017, when you realise the old lyrics ‘Money makes the world go round‘ we soon see that there are markets where that is certainly so and that there is a larger need, a need most people (especially some self revered eco warriors), they all need their car to get to places. In that move I reckon that others might not leave, but there is every indication that more than a handful of the 188 nations in that agreement are unable to keep that promise, they will not be in the group that makes it, they will merely be the signatories of an empty agreement, because an agreement that is not kept is merely an empty one. I know I will win that part because last year the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/353d0cac-ca52-11e8-9fe5-24ad351828ab) gave us “The world is on track to overshoot the targets of the Paris climate agreement and warm by 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, a level that would disrupt life around the planet“. On the 5th of November, the National Geographic (at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/nations-miss-paris-targets-climate-driven-weather-events-cost-billions/) reported that MOST countries will not be able to make the 2030 climate goals, MOST, not some, not merely the US, but MOST, and it is not merely because of fossil fuels (but it is the larger contributing factor), so those nagging dweeps all out for Roger Federer and Credit Suisse Group AG I say ‘Go home and play with yourself, if you cannot get your government to keep a promise that they went out again and again, a target that they watered down, whilst ignoring the question on “specifying what “well below” meant”, you have no right to harass a firm and a tennis player who are not part of the problem‘, Yes that is my personal view, you see if there was no need for fossil fuels, do you think an investment firm will be putting their heads on the chopping block for 58 billion? No they offered it because there was a need, you all created that need!

So let’s kill all the idiots, and as I see it; from my speculated numbers, it takes away 10%-35% of this planet’s population and that too will help stop the need of fossil fuel consumption, will it not?

So we strike two tweeters with one stone. Life can be so simple at times, why did these ‘whistleblowers’ (another hilarious title) not see that? In that regard to their lawyers I give ‘Credit Suisse never hid these numbers, so a whistleblower would not be needed, more importantly, as many nations are in denial that there is an actual climate emergency you need to prove that they are wrong in court, do you not? So good luck on the hundreds of hours you need to settle this case and good luck on getting that fee paid!‘ I feel frisky! I settled two matters with one article whilst initially ignoring that there was a second issue in play. 

Yes, I agree that there is a climate issue, I agree that much more needs to be done, but one investment bank and one tennis player are not the actual (and factual) targets that will make an actual impact that matters. From all this, we could come to the conclusion that they are all ‘grasping for visibility’ through these two parties, but is that the way to go when there is every indication that the government players are all about remaining in denial? We now see ‘Government to commit $50m for wildlife affected by bushfires as green groups call for action‘, as such you want to be positive about the actions of the Australian government, yet when you put this next to Celeste Barber (a comedian I had never heard of), we see that her appeal to Facebook raised the same amount as a donation to those hurt in the fires, one person (West Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest) is committing $70 million to this cause, two people made the Australian government dwarf on the needs of a nation, now I am a realist, I get it, the national accounting books show that Australia still has a huge debt and $50 million is not nothing, yet when two persons dwarf you by well over 2:1, you have a problem and that is also the case for the larger group of 180 nations pledging to something that they cannot achieve. This was not an issue hiden, this was out in the open, as such we see my response to such people as the carriers of BS.
Yes I believe that the Australian fire was fueled by climate change, the high temperature allowed for fires to spread fast, the temperature and drought turned wood into immediate fuel and Australia lost 15,000,000 acres to fire, a lot of it with trees. One fire was the size of Manhattan, can you imagine it, one piece of land that holds 1.6 million people, all in flames. The amount of firefighters needed, whilst there are 135 other fires as well, some of them are actually large. firefighters and army reservists are totalling towards 6,000 and still no resolution is achieved, fire is a dangerous adversary and it goes where the wind takes it. In the end, the Australian bushfires will spark more conversation on climate change, yet when we consider that a truckload of the 180 nations are not making the goals of the Paris accords and a fair amount of them are seemingly in denial of the matter, what business do we have blaming an investment firm and a tennis player for issues that we all ourselves started?

Consider that when you consider yourself tweeting #RogerWakeUpNow whilst driving your car to the next meeting you could have walked to in 15 minutes. If you claim to be too busy, then you should not have had any time to tweet, should you?

 

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October 30, 2019 · 12:03

And the news is where?

Well there was the news this morning ‘World leaders return to ‘Davos in desert’ a year after Khashoggi boycott‘, but I dealt with that 4 days ago during ‘When we say ‘Ney’ to an event‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/10/24/when-we-say-ney-to-an-event/), complete with the summit time frame, seems like such an interesting delay. Perhaps the entire Nikkei setting is rather more interesting than that. Nikkei review giving us “Mizuho and SMBC among 15 names planned for historic listing“, whilst also giving us “The roster of underwriters could change depending on where Saudi Aramco goes public“, that part will get more visibility in the stage where ‘Aramco proposes two-stage IPO, shunning London and Hong Kong‘, that partially made sense, especially as HSBC took a flounder in the last year, by itself it is not a explanation, yet the events that overlap Jamal Khashoggi and certain times events in that light have not been considered ‘fair play’ by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in that light the events shunning London would make sense. And this is the direct consequence of certain tasks made by certain elements who thought that jerking off the market because the going was good some kind of thing. Well, yes, that is exactly how I would phrase it, especially over the year when we saw Saudi Arabia being hunted and nagged in three different ways; I think it is fair to call it that. I see no reason to call it any other way. Now that the initial plans for a petrochemical location in China is ready to be mapped out at $10 billion, China will have new options whilst Saudi Arabia is opening a new vat of tactics, the US is now up in arms to sooth their longtime partner and they better pucker up. The US made sure that the Khashoggi matter got light and then the lost track of their novelty, they were not prepared for the windfall others made of it and now we are given: “The crown prince denies involvement, but told US TV last month that he took “full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia”” an issue that was out in the media, but did you not consider the cost involved? Did you think that this comes for free? Even as we were given “it triggered Saudi Arabia’s biggest diplomatic crisis since the 9/11 attacks as world leaders and business executives sought to distance themselves from Riyadh“, it does come at a cost and Aramco is the first to exact the cost of doing business, it is the first of several steps, the deals with India and China are too soon, too visible and it shows a Kingdom who was sick and tired of two faced options in oil, now that we see that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has options, now that the west is about to learn that you cannot play certain games, now they will all be about the ‘miscommunication’, they will be all about the freedom of the press even as we see that the freedom of the press is some convoluted story, some story that we tended to warn scholars about, like we see in Umberto Eco, the name of the Rose (post-glad infringed upon for this event) ““Until then I had thought each preacher spoke of the events, human or economical, that lie outside books not told of. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of white papers: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the gathering seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, annual murmuring upon an imperceptible dialogue between one vision debated on and another ones paper, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by any human mind, but the cistern of wealth merely a treasure of ill spoken events emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.””

I recently had to revisit an abbey in northern Italy so it made sense as well and the years are actually in several ways applicable. The Divine Comedy (Dante Aliegieri) finishes at this stage, the era was founded by double entry bookkeeping, the Italian bankers who designed it had no idea what impact it would have on accountancy or that the practice would survive until today. Yet, Umberto Eco placed his novella in an interesting time, Yet that time 680 years later we see that the question of wealth is very much at the heart of the matter, yet not in hands of the Christian church, it is there that we see the actions of certain members of coinage to be handled from. Feel free to disagree with me, but when you place the events as they were played over the last year and who exactly started these accusations, with the preemptive part of evidence that cannot have any further meaning, including the UN Essay by A. Callamard, can we answer in any other way that something is apparently wrong?

We merely need to look at the impeachment of a Trump card, a mere clown in the entire financial orchestra, when we see the steps allocated by intelligence and civic groups, whilst a Crown Prince was indited on paper with no resulting evidence, do you really think that it is merely a farce? Now that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has met with two events, it is stronger than ever to settle Aramco, to settle oil disputes and America might not care, but now that their own surpluses and their own economic value is now under attack, its 21 trillion dollar noose will become more than just the chain around a junkyard dog seeking a larger yard to bark in. And now it is only just that I include the bank that was around in the beginning of Umberto Eco’s tale, in 1327, from brothers financing governments the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) would grow and from its acquisitions in 2008, the hidden losses and the bailout in 2013 it never stopped being the BMPS, J.P. Morgan, Mediobanca, Banco Santander, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs had signed a pre-underwriting agreement with BMPS in July, with all kinds of assurances, several of them all now shunned in the Aramco deal.

There is part of it that I cannot prove, I am not stating that I found certain links that are personally as shallow as it gets, yet certain people made transfers to other avenues, and in those positions they would if that deal went through made huge waves, if nothing happened, then they would be in an interesting place, so we cannot go on anything that flimsy (I don’t work for the UN after all), but the time line is weirdly skewed in certain visibility graphs, one would consider that certain acts would have been ‘concidental’ top a fault if it would have happened and it would have been the savior of what would be the “the industrial plan of the bank was approved, which the bank would be re-capitalized for €8.1 billion, but only €3.9 billion would be underwritten by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (excluding additional shares that would be buyback from retail bondholders by the government), with the rest were the “bail-in” of bondholders, mandatorily converted the bond of the bank to shares” Some would ask questions on the grounds of Margrethe Vestager, yet they would be wrong, I believe that certain matters had been in the frying pan a lot longer than that. And the entire Saudi Arabia matter does not stop there, where it stops is up in the air, because both Wall Street and a wealth banker that is above all this would prefer it this way, so when some are stumping their chest giving you the goods on some deal, just be thankful that it is not your coinage that is depending on this deal.

That is the underlying sound of more than just an Aramco deal, it is all over the place and even if my view is not to be seen as the correct one, consider what evidence you are going from, I never told you the little evidence that I have based this on, for the mere reason that two or three memos could be seen as mere typo’s, but how could my story exist?

Consider that I gave visibility to certain parts weeks ago, and that I was ahead of the curve for some time, after which my interest merely grew in other directions, I had finished the puzzle, I had no real reason to watch it unfold until completion, it was merely an exercise at that moment and like all other people, I hate exercises.

Yet I left two parts out, it is not important, but it gives a larger play towards the entirety, consider Davos in the Desert 2015, who was there and who absconded, consider that this was BEFORE Khashoggi and who came out of the woodwork? That is one part; I let you figure out the second hint. Now consider what options the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has left when the table is spread the way it is, I wonder if you can see the irrefutable acts of discrimination.

 

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September 24, 2018 · 14:08

Witchcraft and/or Calculus

Well as Monday mornings go, this will be a day to try and make you giggle (actually not really). I have always been an advocate for science and common sense. I believe that there is great wisdom in applying science in most occassions, it is the easy path in defining truths. Yet, we cannot explain it all with science. We are all limited, it is a basic truth, it is what drives us forward. It also takes a while to get there scientifically, so from the Penydarren in 1804 to the Virgin Hyperloop in 2021 was not an easy trip. A little over two centuries and we have gone from 10 tonnes at 2.4 mph to 50 tonnes at 260 mph, we can see that there has been forward momentum. We all move forward, not all at the same speed, yet when we consider that I predicted on September 4th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/09/04/democracy-is-dead/) after Reuters gave me the quote “Italian bond yields edged lower on Monday after Fitch left its credit rating unchanged at BBB, revising only its outlook to negative, though mixed news flow from senior ministers and manufacturing PMI data due later this morning could mean the rally is short-lived, analysts said“, to which I gave my personal view of “we need to focus on ‘manufacturing PMI data due later this morning‘ which gives me that the rating was done ‘just in time‘ to avoid having to lower it, which implies to me that it was not a reprieve, merely the application of time management to force an upped rating“.

So as we move forward less than 3 weeks, we now see (Source: Forbes 2 days ago): “It is no surprise that Fitch has changed the outlook for Italy’s BBB credit rating to negative from stable“. It is not only ‘not a surprise’; it was clear three weeks ago that this was going to happen. The system was as I personally see it rigged, to give a false optimistic rating to a nation that did not deserve it. The question becomes: ‘Are we abandoning science for witchcraft? If that is true, then I would like to move the motion to make Rachel Riley the high priestess of all economic witches and warlocks on the planet!‘ You see if they abandon common sense, can that unruly mob get managed by someone intelligent and when we are on that setting, it better be a good looking one, so the number of optional choices dwindles down to …. one? And Rachel is her name!

What’s behind this?

You see, we have seen on how S&P played us in 2008 on a few sides and it took until 2015 until a ‘deal’ was struck and they got off with a $1.5 billion fine, so when I am stating that they got off whilst they were getting off, I might be more accurate than I am comfortable with. Moody’s got their load handed to them with a mere $864 million penalty. so whilst some sources (source: Huffington Post) give us that the The 2008 financial crisis cost the U.S. economy more than $22 trillion, we seem to forget the impact outside of it, the impact on Europe and how the overall quality of life returned to WW2 conditions (slight exaggeration),  and even as we see reported that the economy in in restoration, we all seem to forget that the quality of life compared to 20 years ago is still less then what is was in 1998 and in that setting we see Fitch play a managed setting of overly soft on some economies and delaying the downgrades by (what I personally see as) jumping the gun by hours, delaying the downgrade, so basically knowingly assisting in the selling of deflated bonds, that is how I personally see it.

So as we look back at the quote and we consider my view three weeks ago with: “This was done to stretch the game, not truly act on the reported value, if that was done the setting of ‘BBB’ could not have been maintained, it should have been dropped to ‘BBB-‘ (my speculated view). So whilst we think we are being told the truth, in my personal opinion, we are sold a bag of goods, because that is how the game is players and we are all being duped, just like in 2008” and we see again: “Fitch has changed the outlook for Italy’s BBB credit rating to negative from stable“, whilst I do not even have an economic degree, can we agree that if it was this obvious, we need to start doing something about Fitch and these like-minded credit rating parties?

In all this the bad news is nowhere near done. the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/f9fb99d0-bf23-11e8-95b1-d36dfef1b89a) gave us a mere 7 hours ago: “Italy’s technocratic finance minister Giovanni Tria is coming under renewed pressure to increase the country’s budget deficit to accommodate the expensive election promises of Rome’s populist coalition government“, we can understand that it happens. We get it that promises need to be kept and some spending can never be avoided. Yet at 132% of GDP, with a National debt of €2.3 trillion, one would consider that caution would not be the worst idea. In this, sources are treating us to: “a guaranteed universal income of €780 month for all unemployed Italians“, which in light of the cost of living is a decent idea, yet the fact that around 10.7% of the Italians are without a job, the pressure on government spending goes up and up and that means that the deficit increases and with the interests and budget issues in play, the setting of ‘BBB-‘ might have been a little overoptimistic in the end and the news is not getting better any day soon in Italy. Even as we see that the jobless rate is at a low point (lowest since 2012), poverty was up to 14%, so that number will go down, yet at the cost of the Italian governmental coffers. I get it, it is good if they can find any way to get poverty down, yet they need more, they need an actual economy and the EU is playing around in all the ponds, but they are not getting anything done here and the 3 trillion euro spending bill still needs to be paid for one way or another, so there is are long term pressures to deal with from that side as well.

In opposition

When we look in one way, we need to look in another direction as well. So as we accept the orchestration side, we need to disprove it as well (good luck with that). Yet I did look in other directions, I needed as much data as needed, and when we consider my part to downgrade on September 4th and Fitch to keep it stable (at that point) that whilst Bloomberg gave us on September 6th ‘Italian Banks’ Outlook Cut by Fitch Amid Political Concerns‘ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/italy-banks-ratings-outlook-cut-by-fitch-amid-political-concerns) with the quote: “UniCredit SpA and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA were among five Italian banks that Fitch Ratings said could have their credit ratings cut along with that of the state, should the nation’s populist government relax its predecessor’s fiscal discipline“. This is merely one of the quotes and it was clearly stated as a warning which is fair, yet we also see there: “Last week, Fitch said there was an increased chance that Italy’s government will reverse some previous structural reforms, negatively impacting the country’s credit fundamentals. It also said the relatively high degree of political uncertainty compounds the risk“, so not only was there already the prospect of negativity before the government non-reforms. There was in addition the political uncertainty. So there were already two markers staging the negative twist before the setting to ‘stable’ and the non-change was (as I personally see it) falsely given. There is also the part (which was after the stable setting) the quote “While the banks’ shares were little changed, Wednesday, they have underperformed the national stock benchmark this year, with UniCredit and Intesa both down about 15 percent. While UniCredit is more geographically diversified than the other four banks, its risk profile remains highly correlated with that of Italy“. It is another negative impact, yet the downgrade would not impact Italy for another three weeks, is that not a little too strange for comfort?

I would in addition mention the quote: “Fitch said it believes that a disorderly Brexit (UK exiting from European Union) could significantly disrupt Jaguar Land Rover’s supply chain and affect the company’s earnings and cash generation. It affirmed the long-term issuer default rating of Tata Motors’ at ‘BB+’“, so it had no issues changing the forecast ahead of schedule here, whilst Italy was given an additional 3 weeks of easy does it options. And there are no questions here?

We can accept that there are timelines and that things are done at specific moments. No one will deny that, yet knowingly (according to all the sources) to set the stage whilst the stage was unrealistic is an issue and it seems that there is a need to consider that the Three rating agencies are American companies. In all this, when we consider the past US behaviour, and the fact that there is no call to get at least one rating company added that is either UK or European based is a matter for discussion as well.

From ratings to fashion

Yet it is not all about the rating company. To see the stage I need to take one leap to the far left (or far right depending on what side you are facing). The view was encouraged when we look at the Times 2 days ago. Especially with my lack of insight, is good to take that setting to the forefront. The times started with ‘Brokers can’t wait for Burberry’s success‘ (which could be read in more than one way), yet the text gives us clearly “Burberry left visitors to London Fashion Week in no doubt of the scale of its self-confidence: “Kingdom” was the grandiose title granted to the highly anticipated debut collection of Riccardo Tisci, its new creative director“, with the added “Analysts renewed their attack on the £8.2 billion company yesterday after executives indicated that it could take three seasons for changes to provide sales with a significant boost. Credit Suisse downgraded Burberry from “outperform” to “neutral,” citing a lack of potentially stock-boosting factors on the horizon.”

Now, I am not debating the reality of the setting. Yet when we look at a place like Statista (at https://www.statista.com/statistics/263885/burberrys-worldwide-revenue/), we see that even as they are not reaching new heights, we see that they are still doing decently well (if one calls £2.73 billion revenue decent) and the year is not over yet. So yes, we do accept that revenue and profit are two very different types of cake and one must eat ones cake, doesn’t one? That was given to us by the independent last year in November, when they gave us: “adjusted operating profit soared 28 per cent to £185m from £144m a year earlier“, we do not know the profits for this year as the year is not done yet. Even if the profits are optionally lessened, it comes from a 28% high, as we see that, what exactly drives the attack on Burberry and how does it relate to the earlier non fashionable one (even though they have Ferrari, Maserati and of course the Ducati), they also have some fashionable brands and they might not be of the Burberry level, the ladies will still love the Italian stuff. When we consider ‘Analysts renewed their attack‘, it is my personal belief that there is a group of insiders in these places who seem to be pushing the planchette of the Ouija board on where they need it to be (optionally not in line where it realistically could be), which is clearly a foundation of orchestration. The problem is not merely on how it is done, the entire financial setting is one of close to zero transparency as analysts ‘hide’ behind their formula’s (read: magic spells) and refuse to give out the incantation that they are using. Now, that is partially fair enough, most magicians do not reveal their tricks, they did do that in ‘Deception‘, which is optionally why it got cancelled after one season. I touched on the subject before and it remains active because a lot of ratings do not seem to make sense, especially when you see the actions and the fact that in May Burberry did beat their forecast with 2%, and still they are under attack? The interesting part is that the media who should ask a lot more questions are not doing that, not even reporting on it and whilst we accept the Guardian giving us two months ago that sales were waning ever so slightly, we were also given “Instead, they have been shopping in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and mainland China, boosting Burberry’s sales in Asia Pacific by a mid-single-digit percentage“, as well as “Sales in the Americas grew by a high single-digit percentage as the improving US economy encouraged more consumers to buy Burberry products“. In this we could accept that analysts might decide to warn caution, the message of ‘attack’ seems too unwarranted at present, especially when it is preceding Christmas and optionally the impact of thanksgiving sales in the US. Yet is all this, we see to pussy foot around the clear dangers that the Italian markets are giving us?

In this, we need to consider that if it is all around science we need to see a lot more clarity and if they want to sell the magic like we saw last week, we might (or not) accept to some degree the dangers that Mark Carney points out. the Business Insider gave us: “Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has privately warned the UK government that a “no deal” Brexit could bring about a housing market crash and a surge in the UK’s unemployment rate, according to several reports“, this makes perfect sense. Even as I have not seen the data, there are companies overreacting and threatening that they would vacate the UK. Some will do that, it is unavoidable. There was always the premise that this would also stop new hires and there would be fewer jobs for a little while. That too makes sense. Now consider that commercial building in London is through the roof and even now we see that things are not great. They have not been great since January 2018 when the Guardian gave us: “Developers have 420 towers in pipeline despite up to 15,000 high-end flats still on the market“, so in all this there is a larger danger and we were given this in April this year with “number of empty homes in London now above 20,000”, all houses well above £1 million that for the most no one can afford. So as houses remain empty, what do you think happens to the commercial places being build? We focus on the Battersea Powerhouse and Apple new stomping grounds, whilst we need to realise that 99% of all businesses are SME’s totalling at 5.7 million of them. Where do you think they will go when houses remain empty? I am not sure that Mark Carney is wrong, he might be a little too negative, but it depends on that data he has (and the question that he was required to answer), which is going to be loads better than the data I have seen. So when we get back to the setting of politics, if given the choice by the optional ‘troll like’ person Jacob Rees-Mogg stating “Bank of England governor Mark Carney is a “wailing banshee” whose warnings about Brexit cannot be taken seriously” versus the ‘goddess’ Rachel Riley who might be known for her ‘Would you like a vowel or a consonant?‘, is no less of a math goddess, implying that the math will add up correctly is she ever replaces Mark Carney, whilst the math quality is already in doubt ahead of schedule in the peculiar case of Jacob Rees-Mogg.

It is important that we take a much deeper look at the math and even as I have great confidence in Mark Carney’s ability to do the math, we also need to consider that he has a job, a job to properly inform the government, especially when the worst case scenarios can be as dire as they would optionally be for the short term. So whilst we see the mention of “Mark Carney is a “wailing banshee” whose warnings about Brexit cannot be taken seriously“, we also see that at present 20,000 houses are not sold and some have been on the market for well over 6 months. I would suggest that JRM gives us his math and back those numbers up on a public place for everyone to scrutinise (hopefully by Rachel Riley).

The issues matter and they connect to each other, the scrutinisers seem to preload the stage in ‘their’ favour, which is understandable, yet the cold calculation formula has kept from us, so we cannot see which factors have been set on a sandwich that had been buttered too heavily; we all have a right to know those facts, do we not? In the end we accept that it is not merely about apples versus oranges and it is not about the amount of fruit we have, it is about the different scales and the setting of a stage where transparency seems to be always missing and that approach is never scrutinised giving us a growing lack of confidence as well as a level of growing mistrust in those ‘reporting’ the result; an issue that has been clearly noticed by many, and was addressed for the most by no one at all.

If you want to try magic with a money charm using green yarn and pine oil whilst chanting:

Knot of one, the spell’s begun
Knot of two, I make it true
Knot of three, prosperity
Knot of four, bring me more
Knot of five, the spell’s alive

If that does not work, try calculus and focus on spending less then you earn. Try 6 weeks of one and half a dozen weeks of the other and see which of the two gave you better results.

Have a great Monday!

 

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March 8, 2018 · 12:46

The G30 court

There is an issue, an issue that we are all missing, more for the reason that after January 17th the media is steering clear of this with all the might and options they had. I reckon that they will spin this in a setting that it is ‘uninteresting‘, but when was it ever uninteresting to look at a group of 30 that has the alleged advantage of getting their fingers into a pool that has 0% risk worth billions?

The more important part is that there was one mention, or at least only one that was found, on July 7th 2017 and November 3rd 2017, both come from Reuters, the media has become that much of a bean flicking, pole pulling grape flocked bunch of pussies as I personally see it. Yet, the fact is that even as the impact is speculated, the setting given is that a group of 30 had an optional exclusive insight in the 3 trillion dollar ECB spending. Consider that each of these 30 got a 1% portfolio, where 75% of it was set at 0% whilst the remaining 25% might have op to 3% risk, in this setting the underwritten $31 billion for each member would set a speculated sanctified security of a multiple factors of $31 billion each. An elite group of 30 all having the top of the financial services cream at zero risk with the optional massive returns none of us ever had insight to. Now I can see that a mere 0.01% of that 1% would set me up for life, and that is merely the one source, the ‘in-crowd’, now would that be the incestuous insider towards untapped ‘considerations of investment‘ and they would all be bringing their own portfolios and economic insight on how to maximise that? Adding the man (read: Mario Draghi) spending Europe’s $3.1 trillion would happily be allowed into their midst, it is merely the setting that this rigs the game towards 30 participants whilst giving a weighted disadvantage to all other bankers is still an issue not covered by anyone.

So as we saw last November ‘ECB says not its call to publish content of Draghi’s meetings with financiers‘ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-banks-ethics/ecb-says-not-its-call-to-publish-content-of-draghis-meetings-with-financiers-idUSKBN1D327U) whilst we also see “At issue is Draghi’s membership of the so-called Group of 30, where policymakers meet bankers, fund managers and academics behind closed doors to discuss economic issues. He sits alongside former and current central bankers, such as Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and the Bank of Japan’s Haruhiko Kuroda, as well as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman”

Yet even as we see “Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly had asked whether the ECB would “consider proactively informing the public of the content of these meetings” in response to “a complaint by activist group Corporate Europe Observatory, which said in January it was concerned about proximity at the G30 of ECB officials and bankers they are meant to supervise“, I cannot help but wonder what both Emily O’Reilly and Corporate Europe Observatory left unmentioned. It was also mentioned by the Dutch Volkskrant where the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) member Olivier Hoedeman added comment.

I tried to find more, so even as we have found Mario Draghi, Mark Carney, Haruhiko Kuroda and Paul Krugman as confirmed names (from the media), I initially believed that Groupe Credit Agricole (most likely Dominique Lefebvre) would be a member, I am also speculating that Peter Smith (as director of N M Rothschild & Sons) might have been a member of that group. There are a few other players, but it becomes increasingly less certain even from a speculated point of view. What does matter is that this is not merely some ‘secretive’ babble group. Even as we see last July “In a letter to Draghi that was published on Friday, European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said the meetings of the Group of Thirty, where central bankers, economists and financiers talk behind closed doors, are “not transparent” and questioned the ECB president’s membership of the club” as well as “Draghi has until September to reply to the letter in writing“, in that, the media and so called journalism stayed clear of this for the largest extent and the ECB did respond in October 2017 in the attached part. In my view, it all sounds nice but a select group of 30 with a pool of a number in excess of 6 trillion, where 30 people get first dibs on a risk bonus that goes beyond the comprehension of many and the media buries it on page 62 is a much larger issue, especially when the response on page 9 gives us “Moreover, Article 130 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union safeguards the independence of the ECB and of the members of its decision-making bodies” whilst we all know that a mere fraction of $6 trillion has been a case for shifted morals and readjusted (read: weighted morals) in many regards, there are countless hours on C-SPAN that saw those liquid morals and settings in regards to the 2008 events, so the idea of ’30’ members ending up with golden parachute the size of Australia is not that much of a leap, speculated or not. So when we look back to the 2008 events and we see in January 2017, nine years later “The credit rating agency Moody’s has agreed to pay nearly $864m to settle with US federal and state authorities over its ratings of risky mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, the department of justice said on Friday“, whilst the damage from the 2008 crash was set to top $22 trillion, we should ask the US Justice department on where the remaining 21.991 trillion is and who was supposed to pay for that. So in all this the fact that the media is steering clear from the G30 and asking, or actually not asking anything past the Reuters articles seen should give alarm bells on many sides, not merely the media.

The EU Parliament magazine (at https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/mario-draghi-under-fire-g30-membership), also gives us “CEO’s monetary and financial policy researcher Kenneth Haar said, “The Ombudsman’s decision is timely and very positive. Draghi’s involvement with the G30 was ill-advised from the start. Since 2016, when the ECB’s mandate for banking supervision was extended, the close ties between the president and the bankers’ group has become absolutely unacceptable“, or is that gave, because it is past tense and so far the media has remained silent since January 17. It seems to me (extremely speculative) that these 30 members are either connected or involved with the shareholders, stakeholders or advertisers in the media, because the media seems to be at all times protective of these three groups, whilst merely informing on those three groups in a filtered way, or to the smallest degree unless it was already out there in the field. The fact that this group has such a global hold is an issue and I might have been a lot less speculated on this, but the lack of transparency as well as the fact that we see “Tyga Gives Kim Kardashian A Hilarious Spelling Lesson On Social Media” and other Kim Kardashian on a daily basis, whilst the media remains silent on the speculated distributors of no risk trillions is a weird setting, especially when those sources have their fingers in thousands of billions. So when we see the BBC with: ‘Is it time we all unfollowed Kim Kardashian?‘, we might wonder whether it is yea or nea, yet there is a speculated 99.9999% likelihood that the G30 members will not make the cut towards monitored inclusion on following, I am certain that the first one that acts on that is has a boss who is likely (again speculated) to get a quick phone call from a shareholder, stakeholder or large advertiser to wonder if they have any grasp on their staff members and whether they want to manage or become managed.

Do you think that this is a stretch?

From my personal point of view I would give to you Sony (2012) issues, in regards to the change to the Terms of Service. The media ignored it, even as it would impact a group of 30 million consumers. Most of those players merely just trivialised it via ‘there is a memo‘ on it. The rest did even less; some even ignored it all together. With Microsoft (2017/2018) we see even more (at https://www.computerworld.com/article/3257225/microsoft-windows/intel-releases-more-meltdownspectre-firmware-fixes-microsoft-feints-an-sp3-patch.html)

“You’d have to be incredibly trusting — of both Microsoft and Intel — to manually install any Surface firmware patch at this point. Particularly when you realize that not one single Meltdown or Spectre-related exploit is in the wild. Not one“, the amount of visibility (apart from marketed Microsoft Central views) is close to null, a system with no more than 17 million users is marketed and advertised to the gills, so the media seems to steer clear, merely two examples in a field that is loaded with examples.

Back to the group

So as I gave the speculated view earlier on the ‘whom’, we can see the full list (at http://group30.org/members), these members are according to the website:

  • Jacob A. Frenkel, Chairman, JPMorgan Chase International
  • Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy Prime Minister, Singapore
  • Guillermo Ortiz, Chairman, BTG Pactual Latin America ex-Brazil
  • Paul A. Volcker, Former Chairman, Federal Reserve System
  • Jean-Claude Trichet, Former President, European Central Bank
  • Leszek Balcerowicz, Former Governor, National Bank of Poland
  • Ben Bernanke, Former Chairman, Federal Reserve System
  • Mark Carney, Governor, Bank of England
  • Agustín Carstens, Former Governor, Banco de México
  • Jaime Caruana, Former Governor, Banco de Espana
  • Domingo Cavallo, Former Minister of Economy, Argentina
  • Mario Draghi, President, European Central Bank
  • William C. Dudley, President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
  • Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., President and CEO, TIAA
  • Arminio Fraga, Founding Partner, Gavea Investimentos
  • Timothy Geithner, President, Warburg Pincus
  • Gerd Häusler, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Bayerische Landesbank
  • Philipp Hildebrand, Vice Chairman, BlackRock
  • Gail Kelly, Global Board of Advisors, US Council on Foreign Relations
  • Mervyn King, Member, House of Lords
  • Paul Krugman, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, CUNY
  • Christian Noyer, Honorary Governor, Banque de France
  • Raghuram G. Rajan, Distinguished Service Professor of Finance
  • Maria Ramos, Chief Executive Officer, Barclays Africa Group
  • Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics, Harvard University
  • Masaaki Shirakawa, Former Governor, Bank of Japan
  • Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University
  • Tidjane Thiam, CEO, Credit Suisse
  • Adair Turner, Former Chairman, Financial Services Authority
  • Kevin Warsh, Lecturer, Stanford University Graduate School of Business
  • Axel A. Weber, Former President, Deutsche Bundesbank
  • Ernesto Zedillo, Former President of Mexico
  • Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor, People’s Bank of China

They also have senior members, which is interesting as they are younger than at least one of the current members, as well as the fact that most of the members in the current, senior and emeritus group have multiple titles.

  • Stanley Fischer, Former Governor of the Bank of Israel
  • Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor, Bank of Japan
  • Janet Yellen, Former Chair, Federal Reserve System

And the Emeritus members:

  • Abdlatif Al-Hamad, Former Minister of Finance and Planning, Kuwait
  • Geoffrey L. Bell, President, Geoffrey Bell and Associates
  • Gerald Corrigan, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
  • Guillermo de la Dehesa, Chairman, Aviva Grupo Corporativo
  • Jacques de Larosière, Former Director, IMF
  • Richard A. Debs, Former President, Morgan Stanley International
  • Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics, Harvard University
  • Gerhard Fels, Former Member, UN Committee for Development Planning
  • Toyoo Gyohten, Former Chairman, Bank of Tokyo
  • John Heimann, Senior Advisor, Financial Stability Institute
  • Sylvia Ostry, Former Ambassador for Trade Negotiations, Canada
  • William R. Rhodes, President and CEO, William R. Rhodes Global Advisors
  • Ernest Stern, Former Managing Director; The World Bank
  • David Walker, Former Chairman, Barclays
  • Marina v N. Whitman, Professor; University of Michigan
  • Yutaka Yamaguchi, Former Deputy Governor, Bank of Japan

So this group of 30 is slightly larger and in the group each of these members would have the power and economic impact to tell any member of the Fortune500 what to do, or better stated and more important ‘what not to do!‘ It is in that instance that we see the first impact. A game that now looks as I personally see it rigged in several ways; so even as I was allegedly wrong about Dominique Lefebvre or a direct peer, we see Christian Noyer. So in my view, in a 2015 French article on the issue of “Who will succeed Christian Noyer as head of the Banque de France?“, we see “Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, seems to have had the idea to see his right arm go. Benoît Coeuré would be an important ally for the Italian in the Council of the Governor“, yet in the light of the G30, it seems to me that such a discussion would have been set into a pre-emptive conclusion of who would needed to have been made king in that castle. When we see that in light of a previous article, namely ‘The Global Economic Switch‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/06/the-global-economic-switch/), were well over 500 billion is to be invested and grown, in addition to the fact that the SAMA has oversight to well over 2 trillion dollars, how come that they do not have a seat at the table? In the same way that the Rothschild’s are not there, but they might be ‘represented‘ through Bernanke or Frenkel, whilst it is not impossible that Mario Draghi might be giving them the low-down to some degree, yet the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with that much money on the ladle of expansion, that they are not part of it. In a world where that group is about (according to their own website) “The Group of Thirty, established in 1978, is a private, non-profit, international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia. It aims to deepen understanding of international economic and financial issues, and to explore the international repercussions of decisions taken in the public and private sectors“, where the foundation of Saudi Arabia has been the power of OPEC and the power to instil the push to be a global player in many fields, in that sight in represented value that the repercussions of decisions are set at, to see the Bank of Israel yet not some link to SAMA (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority) makes equally less sense in the line of thinking that the ‘about‘ section gives us, which makes me wonder what these members are about. they might be all about that, yet what else they are about, or what else they have a useful value in gives rise to my train of thought on where this train with less than 55 occupants is heading off to, and more so, in light of the power that these ‘30’ members have, the fact that the G30 is not the cover talk of many newspapers, especially the Financial Times is beyond me, because anyone coming to you with ‘No News’ or outdated news, or even worse that there is no real issue in play is clearly told what not to write.

It seems to me that not only is there more in play, the personal speculated view that I have in light of learning more and more about the G30 merely confirms my suspicions, as well as the insight that I am getting (a speculated one) where the media is steering clear from all this is a much larger issue. To what and in which direction is one I am not willing to go into, because I know that the ice is wafer thin at this point and skating on water is a realistic ‘no no’, yet the feeling that these members are getting a first view and optionally the option to dip their cups on plenty into a grape juice barrel of risk-less profit is one that I feel is very much in play. This G30 group is networking on an entirely new level, one that I have never seen before. This is not some kingmaker into presidency; this is a long term group where the optional billions will keep on flowing for decades to come. And this all in a setting of non-transparency, because this goes way beyond the 3 publications in 2016 and of course all those papers published before that. In the 2016 publication ‘Shadow Banking and Capital Markets: risks and opportunities‘, (at http://group30.org/images/uploads/publications/ShadowBankingCapitalMarkets_G30.pdf), we see in the conclusion on page 49: “Moreover, growing leverage across the global Economy can create important risks to macroeconomic stability even if the financial system itself is more resilient. And two developments are particularly concerning: the growth of emerging market foreign currency debt and the rapid growth of Chinese leverage accompanied by a proliferation of shadow banking activities are ominously reminiscent of precrisis developments in the advanced economies“, which is in view of the experts would be nothing new, yet resources available and the 36 exhibits and the recommendations would have been available to the G30 group much earlier than anyone else. In that light, we need to wonder not merely on the setting, in Exhibit 36 we see mortgage losses and the fact that there is the US, Canada and Europe, so in that light the fact that the fourth one is the Netherlands, is that not odd? In light of several settings, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, any of these four would have made perfect sense, so why the Netherlands? Exhibit 33 might have been a reason for this, yet in equal measure the absence of Scandinavia and Italy in this setting now adds to the questions. I think it is not merely choice and presentation, the absence of those players give rise to questions, perhaps even speculated questions and as there are none to be given, it makes me wonder what else is missing, what other data was filtered because in the light of data and presentation there is one golden rule I have always kept in the back of my mind.

The Analyst shows you which investment needs to be made, the presentation makes you look forward to the invoice.

So what invoice is the G30 group making you look forward to and where did it need to go? Two questions with optionally very different results, and in that setting, whilst you know the impact the European economy has had over the last 15 years, whilst we also know that Mario Draghi has been spending $3 trillion, in that setting the G30 does not make the news?

Who is getting fooled by all this and who is getting fooled by making sure that you do not get to notice this?

It is a much larger playing field that is from whatever point of view you have a field of inclusion, or a field of exclusion, yet in all this there are questions that are not asked at all, questions that even I am not asking because I decided to go into technology, engineering and law whilst giving a pass on the Economic subjects. Yet the Financial Media is not asking them either and that is an issue, especially in light of that ‘secretive‘ group set to a stage of networking inclusion, or is it networking through filtered exclusion?

I’ll let you decide on that.

 

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