Tag Archives: UBS

October 31, 2025 · 15:30

Another party on the rise

That’s what I see as I took notice of the BBC article ‘City trader sues UBS for $400m after rate-rigging conviction quashed’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6ngvenxj6o). There is even a third setting on this horizon. We are given “A former trader who had his conviction quashed for “rigging” interest rates following a 10-year legal battle is suing his former employer UBS. Tom Hayes launched a legal claim for malicious prosecution against the Swiss banking giant, claiming he was the bank’s “hand-picked scapegoat” in one of the biggest scandals of the 2008 financial crisis. In July, Mr Hayes had his conviction overturned by the UK Supreme Court after it was ruled unfair. He had been jailed in 2015 for manipulating interest rates used for loans between banks.”

Quashed as unfair? This calls into question a few issues. First there is the persecution. They either had the evidence, or they did not. Then the question becomes, how this evidence was obtained. I am not on the side of Tom Hayes, Im siding with the law, but all parties must do their due diligence. And on the other side The claim that he was a ‘hand picked scapegoat’ also requires proof (of some sort). Was he a convenient altar boy? Did he break any banking law? These are questions that come to mind. 

And the setting we are given is “The filing said Mr Hayes was taking legal action in a bid to “deter and punish UBS for its role in intentionally directing the destruction of an innocent man’s life for their own selfish reasons”. His lawyers claim the global banking giant misled US authorities with the aim of branding him the “evil mastermind” behind alleged Libor misconduct in an effort to protect its senior executives and minimise regulatory fines.”

As I see it, to be branded ‘evil mastermind’ requires evidence of access and the simple facts that ‘others’ had his ears, did they? As it goes and as it tends to go, if he was a true ‘evil mastermind’ there is a lack of evidence, more a setting of assumed handed evidence through interviews. Was that the case? Then we get a much more sinister part. We are given “The complaint, filed in Connecticut, also claims UBS “gained control over the investigation into its own alleged misconduct” and conducted a “fundamentally flawed” investigation in order to pin the blame on Hayes. It added that UBS “offered Hayes up on a silver platter” to be prosecuted in both the US and the UK, and that those prosecutions were “engineered by UBS’s intentional false and misleading disclosures”.” The setting can be held as evidence. As I see it, The accusation of a “fundamentally flawed” investigation” could be investigated and seen as evidence on the whole. As well as “those prosecutions were “engineered by UBS’s intentional false and misleading disclosures”” at the time it might have been invisible, but now with time and the logs stamped as permanent it might be easier and after that amount of time, these people would have left their positions and now the UBS is on the hook. They will cry all points of mercy and that they didn’t know. But as I see it, we have in the first “senior executives and minimise regulatory fines”, that one raises the need for the fine to be upheld and even raised to at least $800 million and that is just for starters. The second setting is that the prosecution allowed a “gained control over the investigation into its own alleged misconduct” and that is, as I personally see it, on the heads of the prosecution. 

I think that Tom Hayes has a decent chance to walk away with a decent bundle of cash if he can proof even one of these accusations. The prosecution is decently tempted to withhold any assistance, but I see that as a wrongful act. They made the mess, they need to clean it up and as I see it, it is merely the first setting. You see, this comes out after 10 years. How long until someone at a bank gets to be clever and gets DML involved? That person merely needs to ask “How can I increase profit without breaking the law. What hurdles will I face?” That could get several non senior executives a pauplan that outstrips whatever they had their senior executives. A setting that some will see as amicable. So what happened in 2012 will not come to our shores twice a week. Is the prosecution ready for that? How many people will it convict allegedly innocent and after they spend their 5 year (or more) in Hotel Sing Sing, how much will these people claim at that point? It will be a while new party to come and everyone is invited to that setting.

Don’t believe me, wait for the second part of this musical because it will be awesome. The big banks self monitoring and they get to hand over billions for short sighted actions. It will be a grand new world to come. So have a great day and enjoy the payment of fines if you are due any.

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September 5, 2025 · 06:14

The alternative way

I was contemplating the issues of Data privacy and particular the issues around US customs and their intrusion on your data issues. I had a few issues with that and as America is now the least reliable side of the matter I decided on a few techniques that might allow evasion of this. This morning I decided to look a few things up and I paused at Wired (at https://www.wired.com/2017/02/guide-getting-past-customs-digital-privacy-intact/) and I got to ‘How to Enter the US With Your Digital Privacy Intact’ where my suspicions were greeted with the ideas that had not been thought of. You see I am a great fan of ‘non-repudiation’ and that gave me the idea. What if you had the greatest of data insights? What if part of this locking and unlocking the data is for example your library card? This gave me two settings. The first is the magnetic strip, you see, you never think of this and it is what YOU make of it. The first setting is that a bank card has three tracks on a magnetic strip and they are for the most employed by banks when they need it (like ATM), but that setting could be altered for YOUR needs. The second part is what the card looks like. We can use these two elements to take a new page out of a book. 

So this leaves us the corporate way and the personal way. 

As a first, we get to copy the details you need (like a contact list, app list and personal lists). The second part becomes copying hat you need to a corporate server, encrypted data that is merely there, like a backup. So how is that dat secure? Well we get to the next stage, we take one or two cards you have on you. One with a magnetic strip, one as a card (could be business card, could be staff access card, or even your library card). You will keep it on you at all time. And third a personal access number (up to 12 digits) This gives you the setting of non-repudiation.

Now we travel to a ‘no one cares where’ place in America and you pass through customs, without phones or laptops. Just a regular joey. And in the American office you go to the security office and download the essentials. Now this merely makes sense for the people who needs this. So it is not for everyone in the first stage.

You pass the credits to a scanner and there is your data, your essential data that is. Kept safe from peeking eyes, and there is a growing concern that this is becoming more and more essential. We seemingly are ‘held’ to the dangers of YOUR data, but I reckon that America is now gaining an essential need of Digital IP that they can ‘embrace’ for their broke settings soon enough. Only for you to lose the fact that your IP was hijacked and no one knows who or where. But that is the setting that I am seeing now. They need IP to survive the next year and why should they be allowed your data? At present we see nearly everyone giving us “Chinese theft of American IP currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.” But I am not so sure. We get the ‘victims’ that Nokia and other brands, all whilst Huawei is far beyond what players like Nokia and others can produce. Is there IP theft? Yes, I know there is but from fashion brands like Gucci (it might be IP brands) but the markets are making a killing on $15000 Gucci bags, now for sale in the markets at $179 dollars. As I see it, the new settings allows for America to steal what they need to avoid having to not pay their interest bills. Now this is allegedly, I have no evidence. But the setting as I see it is quite real, as such I devised a way to avoid becoming a victim. The best option is to avoid America all together. Possible for me, but not for everyone and should I get that decently paying technical support job, then I will end up working for a US firm (hopefully avoiding the US altogether) but I am not holding my breath on that. 

As such I came up with this, a first in this task. There are two settings. The first is the data and the second is the hardware. The data I describes and I am a firm believer in non-repudiation. The hardware is different. You se, the movies have this nice clean crisp solution, but we are barely there. There was Ultraviolet (2006) where we see a foam phone printed and folded. We are already at that stage where we can do that. The printed foam cover is possible, there is still the setting of the battery, but that could be overcome. We merely set the LCD print board to include the display, you won’t have a camera setting, but that wouldn’t be needed. We get the setting that the devices go back to their original platform. So you have (if needed) a camera, a battery, and whatever more you need. The printed phone will interact with it all if needed. And wouldn’t it be nice if Huawei gives you all that? American stupidity forces China to give us the next need to innovate. That is irony the size of the Titanic (in action). 

You get one republican idiot forcing the world to turn to its life long enemy (President Nixon doesn’t agree with this statement), but that is for tomorrow. There is of course the real setting. Do we still need America? They are so in denial about what is real that the current tourism news is given to you by YouTube (optionally TikTok too). 

As such my mind went wandering into the data safety setting and as the article is giving you, others have preceded me. But for now, corporations will need to adapt that same policy before they lose the data they have and personal data is currency, one that America shouldn’t possess. As such I wonder at what point these firms will avoid America altogether, setting offices up in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And now that it seems that India is turning to Russia and China for their oil, they are likely the first to change venue towards their BRICS partners. The EU and the Commonwealth are next. As such Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom will result into making these jumps, to what extent is impossible to predict. I reckon that it depends on how they are depending of America as such. It will be a fluctuating field. But what is true is that more and more people are seeing the hardships that American corporations faces. GM has shed nearly 20,000 staff from 2018 onwards. ‘Tesla to cut 14,000 jobs as Elon Musk aims to make carmaker ‘lean and hungry’’ and that is merely in the last year. In the last 2 months we were told that Microsoft is shedding 9000 jobs. That’s over 40,000 people in merely three corporations and when we seek harder answers. Only Yesterday did Fortune give us ‘Ray Dalio says ‘most people are silent’ because they’re afraid to talk about what’s really happening with the U.S. economy’, I saw this setting months ago and the media is avoiding the issues as they are allegedly being held hostage by advertisement revenues. We aren’t given the real deals and I am not sure where the real deal stands. According to the media the setting is ‘US economy has likely stalled, with 50% risk of recession in 2 years, says Barclays’ in the meantime we are also given ‘US Economy: Jobless Claims Rise, Trade Gap Widens’ and ‘Stagflation & Recession Risks Loom Large Over US Economy’ with sources like UBS (allegedly relying on hard data), UBS gives us a 93% recession risk. If this is true, how does the Barclay setting make sense? I get it, talking about issues in two years time doesn’t mean that the risk is low in the next few months (it could be 100% by November). UBS gave three red flags, so there are all indicators. And the setting of Stagflation becomes the ‘norm’ Which gives us that growth is slowing, but the prices are rising. I am merely voicing what others are saying as I am not an economist. I reckon this is the second bullet that Canada is seemingly dodging as they elected Mark Carney (formerly Marky Mark of the British Bank). I’ll take his word over President Trump’s claims any day of the week. Moody’s speaker Mark Zandi gives us “we aren’t in a recession, but on the precipice of this recession”, OK, I am willing to go along with that, but merely as it seems sincere and I have no economic degree (Mark Zandi apparently has a stack of them). The problem is that these two sources highlight a rather large issue and the media is skating around them, they are avoiding the issue to get their alleged hands on advertisement revenue. It becomes an issue to see the real data and that is where you want to pass your IP through the borders? Not in my lifetime. I am likely to get a nice bonus if I just hand my IP to China, which sounds a lot more promising than trusting that America will do right by me. According to Zandi a third of America is already in recession or close to it and when we add the Tourism numbers I am seeing a grim picture, one that makes me plan my next vacation (whenever I can afford that one) on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, UAE and not in America (ever). The Bank of America is blaming this on Tariffs (what a surprise). As such you might wander what one thing has to do with the other. The principle we are currently seeing at the America borders is the identification of HVT’s (High Value Targets), the second setting is IP. America needs trillions and one way to get these is by hijacking IP (making America the sole distributor of YOUR IP) Is that rally the way to go? Why don’t we ask the EU, Commonwealth and China on that issue? I think this is the one case where these three sides will speak (agree) in unison and I saw the setting coming over a decade ago and it is all over my blog. So why wasn’t the media this informative? I will let you decide.

But believe me that your IP and your personal DATA require protection and in a non-repudiating way. As such my mind went tinkering to what is possible and securing and keeping your data online was a first stop. I call it alternative way and that has a way of becoming the only or main way soon enough. 

Have a great day, I’m now a mere 90 minutes from breakfast.

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April 28, 2025 · 12:09

Is it reality?

That is the question I am faced with as I saw the article at CBC which I cannot continue as CBC screwed up its site giving us advertisements every inch of the article, as such Brodie Fenlon clean up your freaking site, and fire the idiot responsible for this. Yet the BBC came to the rescue and gives us (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v37z333lo) ‘Trump deep sea mining order violates law, China says’ in earnest, that article is three days old and I preferred the CBC article as it shows a little more clearly how desperate America has become for funds. I reckon that the interest on 36 trillion of debt is gnawing on the bones of America, more prevalent that gnawing has gone beyond the bones as it is starting on the bowels of America. The BBC article gives us “Donald Trump has signed a controversial executive order aimed at stepping up deep-sea mining within US and in international waters. The move to allow exploration outside its national waters has been met by condemnation from China which said it “violates” international law.” I tend to agree with China, but merely as it allows a setting where the desperate poor countries who cannot counter America and these nations are left with baubles. A setting they learned from the slave traders around 1768. You have to hand it to trump. He is giving the old scriptures a chance to prove themselves. The issue I partially have a problem with is “The administration estimates that deep-sea mining could boost the country’s GDP by $300bn (£225bn) over 10 years and create 100,000 jobs”, in the first there is no clear setting for the $300,000,000,000 revenue. If they ‘mine’ in a few wrong sports, the price if mining and the revenue of staff will cost them an easy $50,000,000,000 which implies a lost revenue base of 16%, the second part is that these jobs are mostly given to people they just evicted. Only the higher levels will get a nice dime, the rest will be done by Americans who didn’t want the job anyway and that breeds errors and often mistakes. A non-committed employee screws up the daily routine a lot more than you are happy with and that will be dozens of people. The part that I never gave the right attention is seen in ““The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it,” he added in a statement released on Friday.” The he in that quote is Jeff Watters of Ocean Conservancy, a US-based environmental group. The fact that Jeff merely got one quote implies that he has a whole lot more to say and I wonder if we will ever see that part of the equation. The larger setting is that America is now ready to start bullying its way through international waters. So what will they call those who want to intervene on their waters (or too close to it), will they suddenly be branded pirates? A larger setting that America has lost the plot and I warned for this a decade ago. Deal with your debt unless it deals with you and that seemingly seems to be happening now. It also opens a new setting. These little nations will now be ready to side with China, which is another headache for America. And that setting will give China (as a protector or these nations) an options to scuttle these miners. So $300 billion largely lost and American lives lost (at present no one cares about those). Now we get the added cost of these mining platforms and as such America gets into deeper waters. 

So the end of the BBC article gives us “A recent paper published by the Natural History Museum and the National Oceanography Centre looked at the long term impacts of deep sea mining from a test carried out in the 1970s. It concluded that some sediment-dwelling creatures were able to recolonise the site and recover from the test, but larger animals appeared not to have returned.

The scientists concluded this could have been because there were no more nodules for them to live on. The polymetallic nodules where the minerals are found take millions of years to form and therefore cannot easily be replaced.” As such we have a (non proven) stage for the desperation of Americans. This was shown half a century ago. And the fact that America is willing to ignore “larger animals appeared not to have returned” as well as “polymetallic nodules where the minerals are found take millions of years to form and therefore cannot easily be replaced”. As I personally see it, to ignore these two facts implies that America doesn’t care (or cares less) about marine life and that it will act like a carrion eater in regards to the ocean floor and take now what needs millions of years to form whispers (to me) that America is decently beyond broke and it falls to President Trump to default the larger part of 36 trillion of debt. I’m pretty sure that I made mention of that chance in the past and as I am likely proven right yet again, the question becomes why didn’t economics signal clear levels of dangers? The news now, as the Times writer (and American economist) Irwin Stelzer gives us that the economy of America is in rather good shape. So is it really? Please give us the goods on how America is doing well? It might be that the America Economy is seemingly hanging tough, but they lost billions of revenue all over the field from retail to defense contracts. They might be in denial, bit as I see it only two years ago we would never have seen ‘Italian defence and aerospace giant Leonardo has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’ a mere three months old. So how much did America lose here? I cannot set the valuer of that contract, but the quote “multiple areas of collaboration to include space industry, airframe MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul), localisation of electronic warfare systems and radars and assembly of helicopters, a focus on Combat Air and Cross-Domain Integration fields, industrialisation processes and human capital development, national supply chain in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the country’s role for Leonardo in the region as well as the global value chain.” (Source: www.leonardo.com) leaves me to believe that it is a serious amount of money, now add the new European slices and with the tariffs the loss of America is now on a threshold to fuel a larger recession than ever speculated on before, the larger players (read: Bloomberg) set this chance at the moment at 40%, as America scuttled their own retail houses (like Walmart) of cheaper goods, they need to continue without the goods, you might think it is nothing, yet 1% of the American population works there, now take out the thousands of shoppers (read: immigrants) and that 2025 revenue of US$680.99 billion will topple by at least 10%, 30% if they are not careful and what remains of that Net revenue of US$19.436 billion? You see, they either fire a whole lot of them or lose close to 40% of their business. These are personally considered numbers, so I might be wrong here to the amount of loss, but not the intention of loss and this is merely Walmart. There are several other chains facing this setting. So how good is that shape of the economy? 

I wrote a few years ago that we need to see where all these bonds are, no serious journalist ever looked into that matter it was the time around the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. I wondered how the could have happened and it was a much bigger thing. The acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS gave me pause to ponder, I figured that several banks had over swallowed on bonds which left them not dissolvent, but left their funds largely frozen as such I speculated that Credit Suisse and SVB had too many bonds and at that time the loss of value of these bonds were crippling them. At present no one really looked at this, even to debunk my train of thought and now we also see some are selling their debt of the US. The BBC touched on that on April 10th (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yrr0e7499o), so feel free to think I am crazy (always a decent stance to have) but there is ruffling in the economic oceans and the stage that the economic times are decently horrendous is not a bad thing. 

I just thought of something, did America rename the Gulf of Mexico for mining purposes? Now a bad stance, if it not for the tiny fact that the Bermuda Triangle is there too, as such how many mining platforms will operate in that region and what remains a few weeks later is anyones guess. Just me having fun with the situation. 😛

Have a great day and feel free to enjoy a coffee, it leaves you with a warmer feeling than a US bond at present will. 

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January 31, 2024 · 00:11

Forbes Foreboding Forecast

Yup, it happens. Sometimes the others are all on your train ride, but that does not make your prediction true. Yet to see this we need to take the whole image into consideration. For me I saw this come towards us like a freight train without any brakes when I wrote about it as early as September 2020. I wrote several times that these settings were a really bad setting and the outcome would not be a nice one. Then I warned that the US economy had nowhere to go, not when they insult and offend Saudi Arabia (and to some extent the UAE), as such China would gain billions in revenue. We saw last month (could have been 2 months ago), news that America was ‘worried’ about China making so much headway into the middle East. And now Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/01/29/the-us-dollar-is-finished-wall-street-legend-warns-trumps-and-bidens-china-nightmare-is-suddenly-coming-true/) gives us ‘The U.S. Dollar Is ‘Finished’—Wall Street Legend Warns Trump’s And Biden’s China Nightmare Is Suddenly Coming True’. Really? First off, this isn’t suddenly, I made mentions for almost 4 years that this stage was underway. The fact that the dollar is finished is not entirely wrong, but not to the degree we see predicted. Wall Street will take any stance to diminish that danger. People will end up with nothing, but the almighty dollar will sail on, even though the galleon it once had will be replaced by a simple sloop (as piracy goes). 

So whilst we get “The U.S. dollar is “finished as the world’s reserve currency,” analyst Richard X Bove told the New York Times just days after his retirement from a storied 54-year career as a Wall Street analyst.” I initially tend to agree. Yes the dollar as a reserve currency is pretty much a bye bye black sheep operation. It is the “Bove, who sees bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as winning in a post-dollar dominant world, predicted that China will overtake the U.S. economy” part I do not completely agree with. You see the Yuan is and will be an important part of the global economy, but China has its own skeletons to deal with. Evergrande is one and that $300,000,000,000 issue will hinder the Chinese economy to a massive degree. Not to mention the Chinese population that is hurt by that loss. I reckon that being related to Shawn Siu in China is a lot more dangerous than being a loudmouthed disrespectful American in that region, but that could merely be my take on that situation. You see, China needs both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to get the traction to push forward. Yes, they will push the dollar of its throne and Americans with their arrogance did this to themselves, but without the Middle East China has no real momentum. That was the larger station we needed to see. I tried to warn people, but to them I knew nothing. And true, I have no degrees in economy, but I have looked into numbers for decades and I have both a creative mind to see beyond the numbers and a critical mind to question any hypothesis I have. As such I saw what is now being published as ‘suddenly’. My timeline has three years of warnings of the dangers the US and its dollar were facing. I do not have the knowledge or insight to discuss or oppose the digital currency changes, but I can tell that the ego of ex-presidents with his opposition to the digital dollar will be the end of the American economy. The digital dollar would allow Wall Street to diminish the impact the slam the dollar is about to make. If that stops the damage will be enormous. I don’t think the US economy will have any cards to play. Especially now that the EU nations are vying for the same defence contracts that were once almost uniquely America alone. With France, the UK and Germany vying for whatever spending dollars they can, China might end up with a little less, but they still have a lot of billions coming their way, all billions lost to America now and the EU is trying to get a few as well, an indoor fight between the US and EU is not one they were ready for and overall the American evangelisers are now starting to be a lot more quiet. Money talks and the US has none left. Now that the Ukrainian Russian military debate is now three weeks away from two years. A short term prediction by the Kremlin is now a setting that they could actually lose. A stage not considered a year ago and that also brings a lot more problems to the EU nations as well as America. America that has been catering to Russian needs no less and that is important as the people are now a lot more eager to accept China as the new leader. This is not some Nixon fantasy, this is the case of Wall Street deciding on what is best for the world and that is not how it works. That only has any value in the delusional mind of some. So whilst we see what happens next, we see that the power players are vacating towards the UAE. Some will go to other destinations, but the mess that they are leaving behind (not all due to them) will leave the American population without anything left. So what do you think happens when the dollar collapses and 200,000,000 Americans see that their savings are gone. Do you really think they will will side with Trump and his multiple multi million lost lawsuits? Consider that no one has a clear view on how much he owns. Some state that he only has now less than 3 billion and he was dropped from the Forbes 400 list, he came up $300,000,000 short (a lot more with the lawsuits he lost). To give you some reference, Elon Musk is apparently 96 times wealthier. He has 9600% more wealth than Donald Trump and that is the person Americans pissed off, all whilst he has the foundations of a solution for the energy shortage they face. So how is ego holding up? When the UAE engages with that solution, America will come up short in funds and energy. So the ‘suddenly’ setting wasn’t there. This has been out in the open for up to 4 years. And that picture goes from bad to worse soon enough. 

Could I be wrong?
It is a fair question and I ask myself that question pretty much every day. It is not indecisiveness, it is not doubt. It is about verifying the numbers again and again from whatever reliable source I can find. Verification is everything. Richard X Bove and I got to the same conclusions via different ways and as such I wonder why others were never on that page. Why was the media not all over this? They were so ready to protect Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, but this they didn’t see? Ask yourself that question and wonder what else they got wrong and more importantly why did they get that wrong. You might come to some conclusions that will scare you. Mainly because you all worked towards your retirement, but how many funds saw the golden future that the dollar bonds brought? When that falls flat your retirement will be gone and there is no coming back from that. I think that a few banks in America, as well as Credit Suisse Group AG (now part of UBS), isn’t it interesting that none of them were properly investigated by the media? They all gave the same story, but no one looked into how many dollar bonds these banks had. It might be nothing, but I doubt it. You see, Credit Suisse was handed a $54 billion lifeline. The fact that ANY bank needed THAT MUCH money was never properly investigated and it wasn’t just them. We see all the claims, but to need a 54 billion lifeline implies that that piece of rope is made from weaved platinum threads with diamonds. When did you ever need a lifeline like that?

And these places all matters, because that is to some extent the impact that the dollar pushed for, at least that is how I personally see it. There will be plenty of people stating that I am wrong, but after 4 years I have been proven correct too many times. Let them come up with verifiable data and clear sources to prove me wrong. I dare them.

Enjoy the day, my Wednesday just started.

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May 5, 2023 · 22:14

A state of banking

Yes, the banking issues remain and they are seemingly getting worse. This is seen in the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65467019) where we are given ‘Credit Suisse: Asia investors sue Switzerland over bank collapse’, which reads funny, but that is the effect of lawsuits. Yet that article and the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65370751) named ‘£55bn withdrawn from Credit Suisse before rescue’ gave me reason to pause. This was not some setting of chance. Can you grasp how much £55,000,000,000 is? That is not some account, some people. That is the works of a few titans and someone gave THEM the heads up. So when we are given “The Swiss banking giant said 61.2bn Swiss francs left the bank in the first three months of the year” there I an issue, this is not merely a bank run. Then this many multimillionaires are running for the hills, someone set the watchtower on fire and stated, run for your life. Yes, it is highly speculative, but 55 billion pounds? That is serious cash in any economy. So when we consider the first article and we see “Already a Credit Suisse client for several years, he bought around $500,000 worth of bonds in January despite the bank having been hit by a series of scandals and compliance problems over the past few years” as well as “The type of bonds he bought from Credit Suisse are known as AT1 bonds, or contingent convertibles. They normally carry high yields for investors but are considered among the riskiest bonds that banks issue”, so in January this person decided to take a high risk setting, and in that time, or at least over the next 6 weeks when a staggering amount of billions pulled out, that person sat still? I know there is a sucker born every minute, but this comes across as the emperor of all suckers. Then we get the mother of all issues “Central to their claim is who was given priority when the bank failed. The terms of the bonds, seen by the BBC, show that bondholders are, if possible, supposed to be compensated first, after which come shareholders. But in practice, shareholders were allowed to exchange their Credit Suisse shares for UBS shares, albeit at a vastly reduced value.” There we see two parts. The first is ‘if possible’ which is a dangerous subjective term, the second is the stage of when they were alerted? How reachable were they?

Then the second article gives on tiny sliver. It is “Credit Suisse had been loss-making and had faced a string of problems in recent years, including money laundering charges.” As such, at what moment in delusional time is buying bonds in a loss making company a good idea? That is beside all the legal issues (including money laundering). In which situation (when it is not a government) are you investing in bonds in something that is losing money? Those in March (if they had done their homework) would have seen dozens of billions of pounds leaving that ‘sinking’ vessel. Only those with a peculiar sense of delusion are setting their up their portfolio in such a place. And when we see the end of the article giving us “The deal, when it was announced, valued Credit Suisse at $3.15bn (£2.6bn), whereas on the Friday before the settlement was reached it had been valued at about $8bn.” A place that is a mere 32% of its value in a week and 55 billion went the way of water whilst the bank went the way of the dodo. When a bank is a mere 8 billion and 55 billion left its shores? Even if half leaves the shores, I would be running like Forest Gump and no chocolates would be required. So I ask you are these investors that banked on governments saving their coin (and hide)? Is that what governments do now, all whilst they fail to hold banks to account?

I will let you decide, enjoy the weekend.

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April 8, 2023 · 00:07

It has holes

There are a number of issues with banks, the latest one is the one I left alone initially. It was the Credit Suisse – UBS issue. 

The initial issue are the holes, like a Swiss cheese, it has holes. In the cheese it is accepted as it is part of the process. But with banks? How many holes can we allow for? Now, the ice is thin here. I am not an economist and I am no banking person, So what do I know? Well, I know infrastructures going back to my Intelligence days, I have seen companies getting gobbled up and in some cases for all the wrong reasons, you see those parts were on paper pleasing, but the reality of it was that reality bites and that is when you feel like a Japanese guy gobbling up a live fish. That is seemingly OK, until the fish eaten is a piranha and it starts eating you from the inside out.

So lets get back to the first article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65177258) where we see ‘Credit Suisse investors angrily confront bank as chairman says sorry’. There we see Ulrich Korner in some stage of apathy. He reminded me of a Dutch political comic in one of their newspapers (a long time ago) where we see “When we get to item 4, it would be best if at least one of the board members start crying”. It felt like a farce, a joke for the stockholders who are about to lose a lot more than they bargained for. The text the BBC gives us is “The loss-making bank had already been struggling for a number of years after a series of scandals, compliance problems and bad financial bets. Mr Lehmann told investors at the Annual General Meeting that management had a plan to turn things around but had been “thwarted” by fears prompted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the US.” I personally feel like this is misdirection. I personally believe that the US bond issues are stretched on several fronts and as I wrote in previous articles, how did Credit Suisse stock up on the Basel III front? What was the safety gap? It is my personally belief that there was close to none (or at least a lot too little), and now Credit Suisse will be removed and their banks will hoist the UBS logo soon enough, especially with the scandals and bad bets that were made. 

Yet that same day, the Irish times (at https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/2023/04/05/ubs-chair-says-credit-suisse-integration-will-take-up-to-four-years/) shows us ‘UBS chair says Credit Suisse integration will take up to four years’ that is for banking in these volatile times a massive risk to take and it is not taken lightly, as such I believe that people like Janet Yellen would have been on the phone with a few people. When the American bonds go, the US economy will go and I reckon they will take the Japanese and EU economy into the abyss with them. It is a personal view and I have nothing to prove it with, but the weak response from the media implies that these sources got told to play it cool or face consequences. It is a speculation, but when we take the view I had in the past on Shareholders and stake holders, I belief that I am decently correct and it is a personal view after all.

The Irish Times also gives us “Even with downside protection in the form of government support, there’s a “huge amount of risk in integrating these businesses,” Mr Kelleher, who is from Cork, said in prepared remarks for the bank’s annual general meeting on Wednesday.” The setting is that UBS is getting the bank for three billion Swiss francs. One source tells us “How much a company is worth is typically represented by its market capitalisation, or the current stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding. Credit Suisse Group net worth as of April 06, 2023 is $2.76B.” When we see other sources we get “Total assets CHF 531 billion and Total equity CHF 45 billion” this was last year and they have a little over 50,000 staff. I reckon that the bosses there are working on their resume and I would suggest the word ‘scandal’ is written correctly, because involvement in sandal does not go over well in the financial sector. And when you see these numbers, it is all sold for 3 billion? And we see no serious questions from any media. 

So what is left of the assets? What are the bond numbers and total value per nation of bonds acquired. There is no insight of that. Just like the meltdown of 2008 no one is to blame and the US is fixing the carper so that it can hide more dirty laundry. So how long until the people realise that their economy is largely based on an empty egg shell? 

The Irish Times also gives us “Shareholders will receive one UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares held” this implies a mere 4.44% of value return for the shareholders, yes their value goes up butt this level of saturation is an issue and I reckon that more banks will follow at some point. Banks will become bad investment for the tax write off and the shareholders will lose out. Don’t get me wrong, I have no real sympathy for them, this is the outcome of shares and stocks. Sometimes you lose. But we need to look back to 2012. In the Netherlands we saw ‘SNS Reaal mulls bad bank for property operations’ (source: Reuters), it was their too big to fail operation and the people were not happy, it was a setting of real estate that was just beyond believe and now we get a similar setting but now it is not real estate, it is banks that are the bad investments and how many of them are holding bonds? The fact that the media never properly investigated this implies that I am a lot closer to the truth than even I am happy about. 

And the last part is giving us ““I understand that not all stakeholders of UBS and Credit Suisse are pleased with this approach,” Mr Kelleher said. “However, all parties, and in particular the Swiss authorities, considered this solution the best of all available options.” – Bloomberg” yes that sounds good, but I have a list (and that is just the Credit Suisse naughty list).

US tax fraud conspiracy, 2014, 2023
Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, 2015
Mozambique secret loans scandal, 2017
US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation, 2018
Climate controversy, 2018
Espionage scandal, 2019 (debatable issue)
Greensill Capital, 2021
Archegos Capital, 2021
Forex manipulations conviction, 2021
Drug money laundering scandal, 2022
Suisse secrets leak, 2022 (debatable issue, I still believe it was an NSA activity)
Russian oligarch loans documents destruction after invasion of Ukraine, 2022
Social media rumours, 2022 (debatable)

So 10 issues and 3 debatable issues, but the debatable issues do leave a mess at the front door of Credit Suisse. In all this Credit Suisse is walking around without clean hands, and the hands must always be clean. So does that warrant a CHF 550 billion downgrade? I honestly d not know and there is debate on some of these sources. I get that there will be differences in sources, but this much? This does not make sense, but it makes a lot more sense when we consider where the priority of Janet Yellen is and it is not the bank, it is the USA. Taking her away from the issues and letting it all be phrased by Bloomberg is not acceptable, not in the least. As Baby Herman states “This all smells like yesterday’s diapers”

As I personally see it, this bank issue has holes like we see in Swiss Cheese. 

Have a great day!

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