Money & Finances
July 15, 2016
Do you any longer assume that federal agencies are honest and competent? What about the powerful agency that digs into every corner of your life – the IRS? This JW Corruption Chronicles blog post will disabuse you of any notion that this agency deserves respect:
While it’s absorbed persecuting law-abiding conservative groups the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can’t seem to stop crooks from scamming it to the tune of several billion dollars in one year alone via bogus tax refunds. It’s the latest of many transgressions at the agency that’s doubled as an Obama administration tool to crack down on political adversaries.
A special IRS security feature called Taxpayer Protection Program (TPP) couldn’t prevent criminals from scamming the agency out of an eye-popping $3.1 billion in one year, according to a federal audit. TPP was implemented to curb an epidemic of identity theft that allows criminals to fraudulently get tax refunds. Supposedly, identity theft fraud is reduced through a verification process but the federal probe, conducted by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), found serious loopholes. “TPP uses single-factor authentication procedures that incorporate one of the following authentication elements: ‘something you know,’ ‘something you have,’ or ‘something you are,’” the GAO report states. “TPP’s single-factor authentication procedures are at risk of exploitation because some fraudsters obtain the PII (personally identifiable information) necessary to pass the questions asked during authentication.”
As a result thousands of bogus filers get refunds from the IRS annually, possibly more, the GAO probe found. In fact, investigators determined that the IRS may have doled out an undetermined amount of money to an unknown number of fraudsters so the true figure will never be known. This has been going on for years and the IRS has spent a chunk of change trying to combat it to no avail. In fiscal year 2015 the agency dedicated more than 4,000 full-time employees and spent about $470 million to combat refund fraud and identity theft, the GAO reports. The Obama administration requested an additional $90 million and 491 full-time employees for fiscal year 2017 to reduce improper payments as if throwing more money at the problem will solve it. The reality is that this is part of a much broader security issue at the tax agency. Earlier this year the IRS Inspector General confirmed that hackers gained unauthorized access to 724,000 taxpayer accounts, illustrating that its system is incredibly vulnerable.
The latest GAO audit exposes just one of a multitude of problems at the feared tax agency. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on IRS scandals over the years and has been a leader in uncovering the sordid details of the agency’s witch hunt of conservative groups. Judicial Watch has obtained damaging government records that show the IRS illegally colluded with another federal agency to crack down on conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election cycle. The IRS director at the center of the scheme, Lois Lerner, not only broke agency rules—as well as the law—to target conservative organizations, she also lied to Congress in an effort to cover up the wrongdoing.
Judicial Watch has also been a leader in reporting other IRS wrongdoing that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream media. This includes allowing prison inmates to fraudulently receive tens of millions of dollars in tax refunds and illegal immigrants billions by letting them improperly claim tax credits they don’t qualify for. Last summer an embarrassing federal audit exposed the IRS for awarding dozens of tax-delinquent companies with millions of dollars in government contracts. During a two-year period the IRS awarded 57 contracts worth nearly $19 million to 17 corporations that owed federal taxes during that period. This actually violated a 2012 federal law called the Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibiting government agencies from using appropriated funds to enter into a contract with a company that has certain federal tax debt or felony convictions.
As if this weren’t bad enough, IRS employees have been charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits, including food stamps, welfare and housing vouchers. IRS employees have also been singled out in various government probes as the federal workers with the highest number of tax delinquents that received bonus pay. A few years ago a federal audit revealed that at the IRS alone, staff members with violations received close to $3 million in awards on top of their regular government salary. Some got the extra cash despite being cited for using drugs, making violent threats, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits and misusing government credit cards.
But don’t you try to break the law in this way. The full wrath of the IRS will descend upon you.
by Jon Rappoport – July 29, 2016
In his recent speech in Pennsylvania, Trump clarified and intensified his anti-Globalist position. The Associated Press reports:
“‘This wave of globalization has wiped out totally, totally our middle class,’ said Trump.”
“Trump…criticized [Hillary Clinton’s] past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP trade deal], which he described as ‘the deathblow for American manufacturing.'”
“He vowed to renegotiate North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] to get a better deal ‘by a lot, not just a little,’ for American workers – and threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the deal if his proposals aren’t agreed [to].”
“Trump has vowed to bring back [US] manufacturing jobs, in part, by slapping tariffs on goods produced by [American] companies that move manufacturing jobs offshore.”
“He said the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by Bill Clinton, was a ‘disaster’…”
Trump didn’t leave much room for doubt on his anti-Globalist stance.
There are many people who have yearned to hear this rhetoric from a major Presidential candidate…but absolutely don’t want to hear it (or anything else) from Trump.
To them, he’s a fast-talking cowboy, a hustler, a bullshitter of the first order, a rank egotist, a narcissist, a racist.
Fine.
Well, we had another candidate who was a mad dog for attacking Globalism, although he didn’t go quite as far. We had Bernie Sanders. He’s gone. He’s voting for Hillary.
Too little, too late, Bernie just wrote an editorial in the New York Times. His subject: Globalism. Here’s an excerpt:
“In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed, and more than 4.8 million well-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous [Globalist] trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries…”
“We need to fundamentally reject our ‘free trade’ policies and move to fair trade. Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP].”
Sounds pretty much like Trump.
Of course, Bernie points out that this new revolution must NOT be headed by Donald Trump. It must be led by Hillary Clinton. Bernie doesn’t actually mention Hillary by name. He uses the phrase, “a new Democratic President.”
That’s because, as he well knows, the idea that Hillary will overturn free trade treaties and slam back the force of Globalism is so absurd it’s laughable. Bernie knows Hillary is the last person in America who would try to torpedo these trade deals. So he just bites his lip and writes “a new Democratic president.”
But Bernie is a straight shooter. He’s not a bullshitter. Heavens, no.
I wonder which new Democratic President Bernie has in mind? Perhaps it’s Moses coming down from the mountain with ten strategies to create jobs in America.
In past months and years, we’ve had other candidates who’ve come out strongly against Globalism—Rand Paul (didn’t have the intensity); Ron Paul (lacked intensity of delivery, and the media/GOP cut him out of debates and withdrew coverage); Ralph Nader (never had a prayer).
So, for all those people who can admit Trump is saying the right things about Globalism and making all the right promises—but hate him for various reasons—we obviously need someone else who will say what Trump is saying, get it across, attract huge crowds, and garner widespread support. Who is that? Where is he? Where is she?
Nowhere.
Therefore, let’s all vote for Hillary, right? Because at least she isn’t a bullshitter or a wild cowboy, and she can maintain stability here at home while US forces launch a few dozen wars under her guidance. No? No good? Hillary’s a…what? A demented vulture? Really?
Hmm.
Is it possible to perform some kind of surgery on Trump’s brain, so he emerges saying the same things about Globalism, but actually means them, minus the ego and the narcissism? Could his brain be shifted over from that of a hustler to a man of the people? No? No such surgery exists?
Too bad, eh? Because this real estate gunslinger is actually talking about canceling NAFTA and refusing to ratify the TPP, two cornerstones of the Globalist agenda. He’s talking about punishing US companies who shift manufacturing jobs overseas, by laying on tariffs when they export their products back to US customers.
Maybe brain-dead indoctrinated college students don’t understand what all this means, but US workers who’ve been thrown out of their jobs sure as hell do.
Trump actually makes a distinction between Globalism and what’s good for America. He doesn’t pull back from doing that. Because, after all, if you bring the lost US jobs home from the clutches of Globalists, that is, in fact, good for the people of the US, right? And therefore, it’s good for America.
But of course Trump is completely insane and he’s a major league liar, so he’s out.
How about this? A mind-control experiment in which everything Trump has been saying about Globalism is automatically transferred into the brain of LeBron James. Then LeBron shows up at the Democratic National Convention, announces his candidacy, throws down a few thundering dunks, and steals the nomination from Hillary.
Can we pull that off?
No?
Oh well. It’s only 4.8 million lost US jobs (and more coming). It’s only 60,000 US factories closed down (and more coming).
So where are we? Let’s look at the leaderboard.
On one side, we have Hillary Clinton. She’s in the pocket of Big Pharma, she’s dedicated to the advance of Globalism on every possible front (“it takes a village”), she can’t sleep at night unless US planes are bombing some helpless population.
On the other side, we have Donald Trump, who’s saying all the right things about Globalism’s attack on America, but he just happened on this rhetoric by accident, he doesn’t mean any of it, he’s lying all day and all night, he wants to change the name of the White House to Trump Tower II. We know he’s lying because Bill Maher and John Oliver say so.
I have an idea. Finally. Let’s all pledge our allegiance to HUMANITY without describing what the word means. Let’s just go with the generality. Let’s feel good about it. We’re pledged to The Human Family and The Future. Just leave it hanging out there. No need to get specific. That’s how we’ll ID ourselves. “We’re for humanity, we’re for everybody else.” See, isn’t that better?
Then we can say, “Hillary is also devoted to Humanity. She says so every chance she gets, so it’s a perfect match. Let’s give the political leadership of the country to her. And then, whatever she does, we can assert it’s because she cares. And so do we. We all care. It makes us virtuous.
And that’s all that important: giving the appearance of being virtuous.
All those factories that have closed down and all those people who are out of jobs? Screw them. They’re impediments to a much higher cause.
What are they complaining about? The government will take care of them. Right?
The government will take of everybody. That’s what caring means. Right?
We and Hillary are on the same page.
I knew it would work out.
I knew it would.
It always does.
The Presidency is a character issue. Hillary pretends she has character. Trump doesn’t. That’s all we need to know or ever will need to know.
By Maalikah Hartley – June 24, 2016
Today Britain is voting on remaining in the European Union or exiting it—taking a “Brexit.” But why would you leave the EU behind, Britain? That is just simply unpatriotic; and according to the corporate press, the EU bureaucrats, the politicians, the elitists, the international bankers, and all the cool, sexy people, it would be a disaster!!!!!!! Economic ruin will be on its way along with World War III!!!!! Just take a look at Switzerland. Their free markets and fair trade have made them one of the richest nations in Europe—are they apart of the EU? Oh, wait, I guess they’re not.
The truth is the EU has created a decline in economic growth for their member states in the last few decades, a bloated bureaucracy, crushing regulations and insane anti-democratic processes.
This wouldn’t come as much of a shock once you look into where the EU was birthed— a 1955 Bilderberg meeting. You know, the annual meeting where heads of mega corporations, international banks, media, academia, and politicians and royalty all get together to talk about nothing serious, I’m guessing, with any plans for implementation.
This year’s conference was held in Dresden, Germany from June 9th-12th (again where U.S. officials violated the Logan Act) and in 1955 the meeting also took place in Germany, in Bavaria. Leaked papers from that event (provided by WikiLeaks) talk of a “Pressing need to bring the German people, together with the other peoples of Europe, into a common market;” plans to “Arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market;” and a consensus that “It might be better to proceed through the development of a common market by treaty rather than by the creation of new high authorities.”
Paul Joseph Watson of infowars.com goes on to state:
Just two years later, in 1957, the first incarnation of the European Economic Community (EEC) was born, which comprised of a single market between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EEC gradually enlarged over the next few decades until it became the European Community, one of the three pillars of the European Union, which was officially created in 1993.
In 2009, Andrew Rettman of the EU Observer interviewed former Bilderberg chairman and Belgian businessman, Etienne Davignon, and had this to say:
A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group – an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon – could also “improve understanding” on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said.
If something is so secretive in its creation, you’d wonder why the people creating it wouldn’t want the input of the people. Now in Britain, with polling shenanigans already taking place and no exit polls being administered it is hard to see this one turning out in favor of British sovereignty. In the future, if the EU doesn’t make a massive effort to turn itself around and represent something more to the liking of a free and open democratic society, then this idea of national sovereignty may not end with just Britain.
Maalikah Hartley writes for DisillusionedDreamer where this article first appeared.
[Thank you UK for standing up for Freedom and Sovereignty. TMR]
by Robito Chatwin – June 24, 2016
In the EU referendum about whether or not the UK should remain in the European Union, the UK government warns that leaving the EU could mean 10 years of uncertainty as new trade deals are formed, and even a collapse of the UK economy with a year of recession.
Meanwhile, the news media and anti-EU politicians concentrate on the topic of immigration, leaving the general public in fear of increasing migrants who will drain the economy and swarm their towns (source).
This same fear mongering happened in Norway when they held a referendum in 1994 (source); yet Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, as non-EU members within Europe, enjoy some of the highest living standards in the world.
Iceland was also the only country to put bankers in prison instead of bail them out (source) and Norway will ban the sale of all fossil fuel-based cars in the next decade (source).
But inside the EU, a member country has the ability to influence the laws of 507 million people. Surely it makes sense to be part of a group of nations working together for a shared common good?
How The EU Works
Let’s have a look at how the EU works:
First, there is the European Parliament, where MEPs are elected by the general public to represent them; their job is to vote for or against proposed new EU laws.
Next there is the European Council, where the nations’ leaders meet; yet their job is also not to propose new legislation.
That is the role of the European Commission, which consists of 28 commissioners — one for each member country. These people are not elected but chosen by each country’s current leader. It is these unelected commissioners who create the laws, not the leaders or MEPs we vote in.
It is also important to note that the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon replaced all previous treaties as the new EU constitution; in this treaty, it is also almost impossible for any country to petition a law once it has been put in force (source).
The ERT
So where are these Commissioners getting their ideas for the laws? They come from the The European Round Table of Industrialists. The ERT consists of “around 50 Chief Executives and Chairmen of major multinational companies” and the ERT was formed with the express intention of shaping and furthering EU integration (source).
For example, in January 1985, the ERT presented “Europe 1990 – an agenda for action,” an action plan for the single market; 10 days later Jacques Delors, the new President of the Commission, gave his speech about the single market in parliament, and in June 1985, the Single Market White Paper was published, which was a copy and paste from the ERT action plan (source).
Today the ERT have a website, but in the 1990s they were extremely secretive, and in 1991 they quietly published their report called “Reshaping Europe.”
In 1997 they negotiated a trade agreement at the OECD called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which allowed corporations to sue governments if EU laws increasing environmental protection, improving labor standards, securing equal treatment for women, or taxing capital impeded on their profits (source).
The proposal was leaked and the agreement fell through, so the ERT put the agreement forward again under the name MIA at the WTO, but this time the commissioners resigned due to several counts of fraud and the MIA was also never passed (source).
Trade Agreements
Maybe you have heard about TTIP or CETA? These are new versions of this same trade agreement which now incorporate the USA and Canada, as corporations push harder than ever for their monopoly over governments to be enforced for the greater good.
Greenpeace Netherlands leaked copies of TTIP, stating, “Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents” (source).
Europe, Inc. is another non-profit report showing the dangerous liaisons between industry and EU institutions as well as other other international institutions, such as the OECD, WTO, and the United Nations.
But surely none of this really matters because we can trust the EU to ultimately make decisions that are best for the people, right?
In 2002, Marta Andreasen was employed by the European Commission as Chief Accountant, but when she approached the Commission because huge sums of EU monies were unaccounted for, the Commission fired her for “failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect.” When Marta took this to the EU court, she was found guilty of refusing to sign accounts that she believed were unreliable, and she lost her pension (source).
One month after the economy collapsed in 2008, the then President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, appointed The Independent High Level Group on Financial Supervision. But this was not a group of independent economic experts; it was a group of eight men linked to Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs — three of the US banks that caused the crisis in the first place.
For Greece, the decision was made to have the general public’s bank accounts frozen (source), withdrawals limited (source), and deposits taxed (source), and when the people of Greece voted on rejecting further loans from the EU in 2015 (source), the EU threatened to punish Greece further (source).
If corporations and banks are deciding what laws the commissioners should create, if politicians are cooperating with these corporations and banks, and if the decision-making processes by these corporations, banks, and politicians are deliberately being carried out in secret, is it enough for us to just say that this is the world we live in today? Where is the EU heading?
Within the EU itself, it is no secret that the goal is to build a superstate renamed the United States of Europe (1, 2, 3), with its own central government (source) and an EU army (source), as well as EU border and coast guards and a European CIA (source).
The EU’s CIA does now exist, Eurojust is also being given power to start criminal investigations and prosecutions, and Europol is the European Union’s police force.
Meanwhile, the EU is blocking its borders to the humanitarian crisis caused by wars that it is supporting, and it is increasingly being called “Fortress Europe” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
USA Getting Involved
The USA is also sending in a wave of military assistance to provide “a visible symbol of U.S. commitment to the region and our European allies” (1, 2, 3, 4).
Have we not learned from history that when the economic situation gets increasingly worse for the general public (1, 2, 3, 4), and people start to act out of fear towards others (1, 2), they turn a blind eye to their own government’s role in the treatment of others around the world (source), they accept the removal of all their civil rights (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and they sign up for war (source), which only increases hatred and propagates more violence (source)?
We also know from history that this situation is a potential recipe for fascism, dictatorship, and a police state (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); yet we still cling on to the notion that democracy means letting these people run things on our behalf.
A recent study by Princeton University has statistically proven that the USA is now covertly ruled by a small group of people in government, big business, media, and the intelligence services. Does the evidence presented here not suggest that this is also the case in Europe?
People say there is nothing we can do, but this system only functions because we cooperate. We blame society, but we are society. The question is, when are we going to speak out — at work, in public, on social media — and proudly shout out “no more!”?
About the Author
By Michael Snyder – June 16, 2016
You are about to see undeniable evidence that the U.S. economy has been slowing down for quite some time. And it is vital that we focus on the facts, because all over the Internet you are going to find lots and lots of people that have opinions about what is going on with the economy. And of course the mainstream media is always trying to spin things to make Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton look good, because those who work in the mainstream media are far more liberal than the American population as a whole. It is true that I also have my own opinions, but as an attorney I learned that opinions are not any good unless you have facts to back them up. So please allow me a few moments to share with you evidence that clearly demonstrates that we have already entered a major economic slowdown. The following are 15 facts about the imploding U.S. economy that the mainstream media doesn’t want you to see…
1. Industrial production has now declined for nine months in a row. We have never seen this happen outside of a recession in all of U.S. history.
2. U.S. commercial bankruptcies have risen on a year-over-year basis for seven months in a row and are now up 51 percent since September.
3. The delinquency rate on commercial and industrial loans has been rising since January 2015.
4. Total business sales in the United States have been steadily dropping since the middle of 2014. No, I did not say 2015. Total business sales have been in decline for nearly two years now, and we just found out that they dropped again…
Total business sales in the US did in April what they’ve been doing since July 2014: they dropped: -2.9% from a year ago, to $1.28 trillion (not adjusted for seasonal differences and price changes), the Censuses Bureau reported on Tuesday. That’s where sales had been in April 2013!
5. U.S. factory orders have been dropping for 18 months in a row.
6. The Cass Shipping Index has been falling on a year-over-year basis for 14 consecutive months.
7. U.S. coal production has dropped to the lowest level in 35 years.
8. Goldman Sachs has its own internal tracker of the U.S. economy, and it has fallen to the lowest level since the last recession.
9. JPMorgan’s “recession indicators” have risen to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.
10. Federal tax receipts and state tax receipts usually both start to fall as we enter a new recession, and that is precisely what is taking place right now.
11. The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index has been falling for five months in a row.
12. The employment numbers that the government released for last month were the worst that we have seen in six years.
13. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoff announcements at major firms are running 24 percent higher this year than they were at this time last year.
14. Online job postings on the business networking site LinkedIn have been declining steadily since February after 73 months in a row of growth.
15. The number of temporary workers in the United States peaked and started falling precipitously before the recession of 2001 even started. The exact same thing happened just prior to the beginning of the 2008 recession. So would it surprise you to learn that the number of temporary workers in the United States peaked in December and has fallen dramatically since then?
Earlier today, we learned that two of our biggest corporations will be laying off even more workers. Bank of America, which is holding more of our money than any other bank in the country, has announced that it is going to be cutting about 8,000 more workers…
Bank of America is expected to reduce staffing in its consumer banking division by as many as 8,000 more jobs.
The nation’s largest retail bank by deposits has already reduced the staffing in its consumer division from more than 100,000 in 2009 to about 68,400 as of the end of the first quarter of 2016, said Thong Nguyen, Bank of America’s president of retail banking and co-head of consumer banking at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference Tuesday.
And Wal-Mart has announced that it is going to be eliminating “back-office accounting jobs” at approximately 500 locations…
Walmart is going to cut some back-office accounting jobs at about 500 stores in a bid to become more efficient.
The job cuts will occur mostly at stores mostly in the West and involve accounting and invoicing workers, says spokesman Kory Lundberg. Instead, bookkeeping functions will be switched to Walmart’s home office in Bentonville, Ark. Cash at the stores will be counted by machine.
Day after day we are hearing about more layoffs like this. So why would this be happening if the U.S. economy truly was in “recovery mode”?
Even with how manipulated the GDP numbers are these days, Barack Obama is on course to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the economy grew by at least 3 percent. The truth is that our economy has been stuck in the mud ever since the end of the last recession, and now a major new downturn has clearly already begun.
And you want to know who else realizes this?
Foreign investors do.
Last month, foreign investors dumped U.S. debt at the fastest pace ever recorded…
Foreign investors sold a record amount of U.S. Treasury bonds and notes for the month of April, according to U.S. Treasury Department data on Wednesday, as investors priced in a few more rate increases by the Federal Reserve this year.
Foreigners sold $74.6 billion in U.S. Treasury debt in the month, after purchases of $23.6 billion in March. April’s outflow was the largest since the U.S. Treasury Department started recording Treasury debt transactions in January 1978.
There is no debate any longer – the next economic crisis is already here. This is so abundantly obvious at this point that even George Soros has been feverishly dumping stocks and buying gold.
We can argue about whether the U.S. economy started turning down in late 2015, early 2015 or late 2014, and it is good to have those debates.
But at the end of the day, what is far more important is what is ahead. Fortunately, our downturn has been fairly gradual so far, and let us hope that it stays that way for as long as possible.
In much of the rest of the world, things are already in full-blown panic mode. For instance, Venezuela was once the wealthiest nation in South America, but now people are literally hunting cats and dogs for food.
Absent a major “black swan event” of some sort, we won’t see that happening in the United States for at least a while yet, but without a doubt we are steamrolling toward a major economic depression.
Unfortunately for all of us, there isn’t anything that any of our politicians are going to be able to do to stop it.
*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*
Source: The Free Thought Project | by Jay Syrmopoulos
PREVIOUS POSTS:
Anonymous Posted an Astonishing List of Dead Bankers
Another JP Morgan Banker Leaps to His Death
Dead JPM Bankers: Knew Each Other, Uncovered Something
More Suspicious Deaths – Bankers and Journalists
New York, NY – In 2015 there was a popular “conspiracy theory” floating around the internet after a rash of mysterious “suicides” by high profile banking professions. What once looked like wild speculation is now beginning to resemble a vast criminal conspiracy connected to the Libor, interest-rigging scandal.
Over forty international bankers allegedly killed themselves over a two-year period in the wake of a major international scandal that implicated financial firms across the globe. However, three of these seemingly unrelated suicides seem to share common threads related to their connections to Deutsche Bank. These three banker suicides, in New York, London, and Siena, Italy, took place within 17 months of each other in 2013/14 in what investigators labeled as a series of unrelated suicides.
“In each case, the victim had a connection to a burgeoning global banking scandal, leaving more questions than answers as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths,” according to the New York Post. “But all three men worked for, or did business with, Deutsche Bank.”
Financial regulators in both Europe and the U.S. in 2013 began a probe that would ultimately become known as the Libor scandal, in which London bankers conspired to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate, which determines the interest banks charged on mortgages, personal and auto loans. The scandal rocked the financial world and cost a consortium of international banks, including Deutsche Bank, about $20 billion in fines.
David Rossi, a 51-year-old communications director at the world’s oldest bank, Italian Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which was on the brink of collapse due to heavy losses in the derivatives market in the 2008 financial crisis, fell to his death on March 6, 2013. At the time of his death, Monte Paschi was being investigated for its handling of billions in these risky derivative bets involving Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.
According to a report in the NY Post:
A devastating security video shows Rossi landing on the pavement on his back, facing the building — an odd position more likely to occur when a body is pushed from a window.
The footage shows the three-story fall didn’t kill Rossi instantly. For almost 20 minutes, the banker lay on the dimly lit cobblestones, occasionally moving an arm and leg.
As he lay dying, two murky figures appear. Two men appear and one walks over to gaze at the banker. He offers no aid or comfort and doesn’t call for help before turning around and calmly walking out of the alley.
About an hour later, a co-worker discovered Rossi’s body. The arms were bruised and he sustained a head wound that, according to the local medical examiner’s report, suggested there might have been a struggle prior to his fall.
Ultimately Italian authorities ruled Rossi’s death a suicide. Rossi’s widow, Antonella Tognazzi, protested vigorously at the suggestion her husband’s death was a suicide, telling the Italian press that her husband “knew too much.” Tognazzi pointed to the alleged suicide note from Rossi as a prime example of the suspicious nature of his death. In the note, Rossi refers to Antonella Tognazzi as Toni, but according to Tognazzi, that was not something he ever called her.
In October 2014, two Monte Paschi executives were convicted of obstructing regulators and misleading investigators by Italian authorities over the bailed-out Italian bank’s finances in the wake of the acquisition of Banca Antonveneta – which was heavily financed by Deutsche Bank.
In January of this year, Italian authorities civilly implicated three Deutsche Bank executives, including Michele Faissola, the wealth management director of the German bank — charging them with colluding with Monte Paschi in falsifying accounts, manipulating the market and obstructing justice.
Another of the mysterious deaths being revisited is that of William Broeksmit, 58, a Deutsche Bank exec was found hanging from a dog leash tied to a door at his London home in January 2014. Broeksmit was found among a mess of financial papers, with a number of notes to friends and family nearby. A Deutsche Bank colleague, Michele Faissola, was called and arrived minutes later and began suspiciously going through the financial documents and reading the suicide notes.
“Yes, he killed himself,” stepson Val Broeksmit told the NY Post. “But there’s a question: could it be suicide by extortion, could it be suicide by pressure or saying if you don’t do this, we’re going to do this? There’s a couple suspicions I have.”
Broeksmit’s stepson still wonders what his father’s colleague was searching for amongst the mess of financial documents. Adding to the suspicious nature of his stepfather’s death, Val provided the NY Post email messages revealing that prior to his death, Broeksmit had just messaged friends about his excitement for an upcoming ski vacation scheduled for one week later.
Although a clinical psychologist revealed Broeksmit had been treated due to being “very anxious about authorities investigating areas of the bank at which he worked,” his depression over the Libor scandal had subsided, as his doctor gave him a clean bill of health only a month before his death.
According to the report by the NY Post:
A month before his death, William Broeksmit wrote — in what his son says shows his anger — to fellow executives, asking why he should take the lead on the sticky matter of the upcoming Federal Reserve-mandated stress test for the bank.
He also questioned the “generous” loan-loss numbers being used by the bank, afraid that federal regulators would see the bank was losing more on loans than the books showed. Large losses could lead the feds to slap the bank with restrictions.
“Who is recommending that I do this? I am supposed to be an independent director and this puts me further into a role aligned with management,” he wrote.
New York City attorney, Calogero “Charles” Gambino, 41, was a married father of two, and Deutsche Bank’s in-house lawyer for 11 years at the bank’s downtown headquarters. Gambino primarily worked on defending the Deutsch Bank against Libor charges and other regulatory probes.
In October 2014, Gambino’s was found hanging from an upstairs balcony of his Brooklyn home, with a rope that was snaked through the banister and tied off on the newel post on the first floor. There was no note found and the family has steadfastly refused to comment on his death.
In his work as corporate counsel for Deutsche, Gambino had dealings with many of the bank’s European executives — including Michele Faissola and William Broeksmit and had intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the bank’s operations. Gambino’s death was ruled a suicide.
In the cases of Gambino, Rossi and Broeksmit, authorities seemingly never looked for, nor discovered, the apparent connections that reveal a deadly international criminal conspiracy at work.
However, authorities in Siena, Italy have recently exhumed the body of banker David Rossi, 51, and reopened their investigation into his death. They are expected to release their findings at the end of the month.
The common thread in each of these deaths is that all of the dead bankers had intimate knowledge of the international Libor scandal as it related to Deutsche Bank. It seems apparent that these men were killed to ensure their silence, thus allowing those responsible for the interest rigging scandal within Deutsche to avoid responsibility.
By TJ Martinell
One thing Californians agree on is their opposition to laws that allow law enforcement to seize and keep people’s cash and property merely for being suspects of a crime, also known as asset forfeiture (learn more here).
That’s according to a two new surveys by the Public Policy Polling. The surveys found “overwhelming statewide and local opposition” to asset forfeiture laws. Over two-thirds of voters surveyed (82 percent) opposed these laws compared to 14 percent in favor of them.
Opposition to asset forfeiture also transcended party lines. Roughly the same amount of Democrats, Republicans and independents expressed aversion to the idea that our property rights don’t apply when someone is suspected of crime – even if they’re never convicted.
Their support is not due to voter ignorance, as PPP also found that “opposition to civil asset forfeiture laws strengthens as voters learn more about them” and very few changed their minds after hearing law enforcement arguments justifying these laws. Maybe that’s because 17 percent of those surveyed knew someone who had lost property to police without a conviction.
Although California has asset forfeiture restrictions, a loophole allows local police to pass off cases to the federal government, while still getting up to 80 percent of the proceeds obtained through civil forfeiture.
A bill introduced last year in the California state Senate would rein in these practices by law enforcement agencies. After passing the Senate by a wide margin, SB 443 was hit by massive opposition and delays in the Assembly. It was pulled from the “inactive file” this week and a final Assembly vote is expected in coming days.
California residents should contact their Assemblymember and insist the loophole be closed once and for all.
There’s also a Facebook group to support SB443 – HERE.
Jon Rappoport – May 24, 2016
Trevor Timm of the Electronic Freedom Frontier dug up a very interesting nugget. It was embedded in the heralded December 2013 White House task force report on spying and snooping.
Under Recommendations, #31, section 2, he found this:
“Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate financial systems.”
Timm quite rightly wondered: why were these warnings in the report?
Were the authors just anticipating a possible crime? Or were they reflecting the fact that the NSA had already been engaging in the crime?
If this was just a bit of anticipation, why leave it naked in the report? Why not say there was no current evidence the NSA had been manipulating financial systems?
Those systems would, of course, include the stock market, and all trading markets around the world.
Well, there is definite evidence of other NSA financial snooping. From Spiegel Online, “‘Follow the Money’: NSA Spies on International Payments,” 9/15/13:
“The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL.”
“The NSA’s Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely…the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the [NSA] agency’s ‘tailored access operations’ division…”
The NSA’s “tailored access operations” division uses roughly 1000 hackers and analysts in its spying efforts.
The next step in all this spying would naturally involve penetrating trading markets and, using the deep data obtained, manipulate the markets to the advantage of the NSA and preferred clients.
The amount of money siphoned off in such an ongoing operation would be enormous.
“Looking over the shoulder” of Wall St. insiders would be child’s play for NSA.
Ditto for predicting political events that would temporarily drive markets down and provide golden opportunities for highly profitable short selling.
Like drug traffickers and other mobsters, the NSA could invest their ill-gotten gains in legitimate enterprises and reap additional rewards.
And if the Pentagon, under which the NSA is organized, requires heavy amounts of money for off-the-books black budget ops, what better place to go than their own NSA?
All in all, when you operate the biggest spying and data-gathering operation in the world, the opportunities abound. Yes, knowledge is power, when the distinctions between legal and illegal are brushed off like a few gnats on a summer day.
The Surveillance State has created an apparatus whose implications are staggering. It’s a different world now. And sometimes it takes a writer of fiction to flesh out the larger landscape.
Brad Thor’s novel, Black List, posits the existence of a monster corporation, ATS, which stands alongside the NSA in collecting information on every move we make. ATS’ intelligence-gathering capability is unmatched anywhere in the world.
On pages 117-118 of Black List, Thor makes a stunning inference that, on reflection, is as obvious as the fingers on your hand:
“For years ATS had been using its technological superiority to conduct massive insider trading. Since the early 1980s, the company had spied on anyone and everyone in the financial world. They listened in on phone calls, intercepted faxes, and evolved right along with the technology, hacking internal computer networks and e-mail accounts. They created mountains of ‘black dollars’ for themselves, which they washed through various programs they were running under secret contract, far from the prying eyes of financial regulators.
“Those black dollars were invested into hard assets around the world, as well as in the stock market, through sham, offshore corporations. They also funneled the money into reams of promising R&D projects, which eventually would be turned around and sold to the Pentagon or the CIA.
“In short, ATS had created its own license to print money and had assured itself a place beyond examination or reproach.”
In real life, with the NSA heading up the show, the outcome would be the same.
It would be as Thor describes it.
We think about total surveillance as being directed at private citizens, but the capability has unlimited payoffs when it targets financial markets and the people who have intimate knowledge of them.
“Total security awareness” programs of surveillance are ideal spying ops in the financial arena, designed to suck up millions of bits of inside information, then utilizing them to make investments and suck up billions (trillions?) of dollars.
It gives new meaning to “the rich get richer.”
Taking the overall scheme to another level, consider this: those same heavy hitters who have unfettered access to financial information can also choose, at opportune moments, to expose certain scandals and crimes (not their own, of course).
In this way, they can, at their whim, cripple governments, banks, and corporations. They can cripple investment houses, insurance companies, and hedge funds. Or, alternatively, they can merely blackmail these organizations.
We think we know how scandals are exposed by the press, but actually we don’t. Tips are given to people who give them to other people. Usually, the first clue that starts the ball rolling comes from a source who remains in the shadows.
We are talking about the creation and managing of realities on all sides, including the choice of when and where and how to provide a glimpse of a crime or scandal.
The information matrix can be tapped into and plumbed, and it can also be used to dispense choice clusters of data that end up constituting the media reality of painted pictures which, every day, show billions of people “what’s news.”
It’s likely that the probe Ron Paul was once pushing—audit the Federal Reserve—has already been done by those who control unlimited global surveillance. They already know far more than any Congressional investigation will uncover. If they know the deepest truths, they can use them to blackmail, manipulate, and control the Fed itself.
In this global-surveillance world, we need to ask new questions and think along different lines now.
For example, how long before the mortgage-derivative crisis hit did the Masters of Surveillance know, from spying on bank records, that insupportable debt was accumulating at a lethal pace? What did they do with that information?
When did they know that at least a trillion dollars was missing from Pentagon accounting books, as Donald Rumsfeld eventually admitted on September 10, 2001, and what did they do with that information?
When did they know the details of the Libor rate-fixing scandal? Press reports indicate that Barclays was trying to rig interest rates as early as January 2005.
Have they tracked, in detail, the men responsible for recruiting hired mercenaries and terrorists, who eventually wound up in Syria pretending to be an authentic rebel force?
Have they collected detailed accounts of the most private plans of Bilderberg, CFR, and Trilateral Commission leaders?
For global surveillance kings, what we think of as the future is, in many respects the present and the past.
It’s a new world. These overseers of universal information-detection can enter and probe the most secret caches of data, collect, collate, cross reference, and assemble them into vital bottom-lines. By comparison, an operation like WikiLeaks is an old Model-T Ford.
Previously, we thought we needed to look over the shoulders of the men who were committing major crimes out of public view. But now, if we want to be up to date, we also have to factor in the men who are spying on those criminals, who are gathering up those secrets and using them to commit their own brand of meta-crime.
And in the financial arena, that means we think of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as perpetrators, yes, but we also think about the men who already know everything about GS and Morgan, and are using this knowledge to steal sums that might make GS and Morgan blush with envy.
No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. But wherever we’ve gone to, the NSA is already there, and they’ve been tapping in, taking out, and using untold bits of data to stage and profit from events of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Time, in that sense, has ballooned, expanded, turned inside out, exploded, and laid itself flat on a table, for close inspection by the eyes of Surveillance Central.
Understanding this, we need to analyze what is happening in the world with a new dimension of criminal reality-maker in mind.
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
By Matt Agorist -May 24, 2016
In 2007, more than a dozen of the world’s largest banks colluded to deliberately depress the rate at which they paid out on investments. This rate is known as the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is the average of interest rates estimated by each of the leading banks in London that it would be charged were it to borrow from other banks.
Financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and credit card agencies around the world, set their own rates relative to it, and at least $350 trillion in derivatives and other financial products are tied to the LIBOR. These mega banks suppressed LIBOR, during the beginning of the collapse, to boost earnings and make their bottom lines appear healthier.
This banking conspiracy to rig LIBOR was one of the key factors in bringing about the financial collapse of 2008. The scandal was so large, in fact, that it nearly bankrupt the planet.
After the dust had cleared, multiple investors launched lawsuits against these megabanks. However, in March of 2013, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald dismissed much, though not all, of this class action lawsuit directed at the banks.
Buchwald argued in favor of the banks, saying that since the LIBOR-setting process was never meant to be competitive, the suppression of that process was not anti-competitive.
This ruling was a huge win for the banks. However, a new ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned that win.
“Appellants sustained their burden of showing injury by alleging that they paid artificially fixed higher prices,” Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote for a three-judge appeals court panel.
The revived antitrust lawsuit, according to the appeals court, could be devastating to these 16 banks, including Deutsche Bank AG, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, UBS AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“Requiring the banks to pay treble damages to every plaintiff who ended up on the wrong side of an independent Libor‐denominated derivative swap would, if appellants’ allegations were proved at trial, not only bankrupt 16 of the world’s most important financial institutions, but also vastly extend the potential scope of antitrust liability in myriad markets where derivative instruments have proliferated,” the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York said in the ruling.
As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, these megabanks have been caught over and over rigging the market, and none of them are ever held criminally liable. They simply pay a fine, aka bribe, to the United States government, and continue business as usual.
This time, however, it is not the government waging the lawsuit; it is private individuals. The sheer number of monetary assets tied to the plaintiffs in this case could deal a devastating blow to these unscrupulous bankers, and there is potential, as the appeals court stated, to bring these criminals to their knees.
Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey, said the ruling was “extremely important” because of the threat to the banks, according to Bloomberg.
However, as Carrier states, “this is far from a home run for the plaintiffs. But it does allow them to go forward with the case.”
Regardless of the outcome of this case, it will only serve to open the eyes of those who remain oblivious to the ruling class and money changers. Through the issuance of cheap money, at the expense of taxpayers, the banking system has facilitated a full-time warfare state — all the while making risky and irresponsible decisions that threaten the people’s life savings.
As Ron Paul put it, “It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this articlefirst appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.