“If one really wanted to opt out of a global banking system that far too many still regard as the way monetary transactions should be carried out, would one ask the U.N. for an alternative?

By Christina Sarich

The secret cabal’s control over international markets is becoming less of a mystery as increasing numbers of markets reveal themselves so obviously to be fixed.

Just in case you haven’t been keeping up with the ‘tin-foil’ hat conspiracies, increasingly proven to be true, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is the center of a secret global economy that has bailed out American International Group Inc., huge insurance companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., J.P. Morgan,Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others.

The secret cabal’s control over international markets is becoming less of a mystery as increasing numbers of markets reveal themselves so obviously to be fixed. The cabal cheats on the 99% with Libor interest rates, foreign exchanges, and gold, silver, and platinum price fixing. Then there’s high-frequency trading (HFT), where Wall Street banks use supercomputers to monitor incoming stock market orders, analyze their likely impact on prices, and place orders ahead of those trades to capture a bit of the price impact, called ‘stealing’ if it were properly named.

HFT data helps to explain the frenzy in today’s markets: The most aggressive firms tend to earn the biggest profits, hence the incentive to trade as quickly and as often as possible. Furthermore, these traders make their money at the expense of everyone else, including less-aggressive high- frequency traders. It is simply the latest and greatest scam on stock holders looking for real value in a company, thinking they can compete with the big guys.

Just a few weeks ago, 132 nations decided they’ve had enough of the ‘secret’ money jig we’ve all been dancing to. One of the largest coalitions of developing nations in history has urged Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, to provide, “as soon as possible…alternative options for banking services.” 132 countries, including China are done with the funny money scheme.

This comes on the heels of a mass cancellation of bank accounts in U.N. missions and those of foreign US diplomats. The G77 urges the secretary-general to review the

“U.N. Secretariat’s financial relations with the JP Morgan Chase Bank and consider alternatives to such financial institutions and to report thereon, along with the information requested.”

JP Morgan is the left arm of the cabal, along with other ‘big banks’ who were benefactors of billions in our tax money. They have shorted silver along with Citibank to increase their physical silver holdings by 500%. They are also the ‘big bank,’ along with Chase that failed to stopPonzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. Why do that? He was cut from the same clothe as their top executives.

JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon pleaded with and complained to the U.S. Justice Department a few years back but couldn’t convince the government to end its criminal probe of his bank because prosecutors couldn’t figure out just how crooked this banking system really was.

Banks like these helped crash our economies, and they are trying to do the same now, so that they can profit from it.

The problem for countries around the world is simple: Chase bank currently handles billions in accounts maintained by the United Nations and its agencies, in guess where – NEW YORK CITY.

The countries express a ‘deep concern’ over the decisions made by several other banking institutions, known puppets for the cabal, including JP Morgan Chase, in closing bank accounts for mostly developing countries. The resolution proposed, still subject to amendments cites a 1947 agreement between the US and UN, which:

 “. . .guarantees the rights, obligations and the fulfillment of responsibilities by member states towards the United Nations, under the United Nations Charter and international law.” ….”

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“The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal of a New Jersey gun owner in Drake v. Jerejian, means the state may continue to deny most residents permits to carry a handgun outside their homes. The high court’s decision to deny a hearing, issued without comment Monday, apparently allows other states to also require, as New Jersey law does, the demonstration of a “justifiable need” to carry a firearm outside the home before a permit is issued. Critics say the law grants officials virtually unlimited discretion over a citizen’s right to bear arms. New Jersey state Senator Jeff Van Drew, who wants to amend the law, says the permits are rarely granted.

“You have to fear for your life, that you’re going to be killed, in essence,” said Van Drew. “It’s virtually never done.”

The rejection of the appeal came despite the fact that, as reported at thenewamerican.com, 19 states and 34 members of Congress joined the petition for the Supreme Court to review the ruling of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the New Jersey statute. Absent the confirmation of a broader application of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the right could be threatened by federal as well as state statutes, observed Wyoming Governor Matt Mead. “If the current [Third Circuit] decision stands, states providing greater protections than New Jersey under the Second Amendment may be preempted by future federal action,” Mead warned when his state joined the suit in February. ….”

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“(Reuters) – Alibaba gave investors a closer look at the scale and growth of the Chinese e-commerce juggernaut in an initial public offering (IPO) prospectus filed on Tuesday, the first step in what could be the largest technology debut in history.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which powers 80 percent of all online commerce in the world’s second-largest economy, is expected to raise more than $15 billion, and could top the $16 billion pulled in by Facebook Inc when it listed in 2012.

The bulk of the proceeds will go to Yahoo Inc – which bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion and which must sell more than a third of its current 22.6 percent stake through the IPO. Alibaba also plans to sell new shares, people familiar with the plans have said, to bulk up a cash war chest depleted by a rash of recent acquisitions.

While the Alibaba brand is less well known in the United States than Internet companies such as Amazon.com and Facebook, the Chinese company’s listing has stirred the most excitement in Silicon Valley and Wall Street since Facebook’s record IPO. Alibaba will become the largest Chinese corporation to list in the U.S. – on either the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.

Alibaba will debut later this year in a market where high-flying tech stocks like Twitter and Amazon have fallen in recent weeks in a sell-off that has divided analysts and investors, reviving doubts about soaring tech valuations.

Still, estimates of Alibaba’s market value have soared in recent months, to even beyond $200 billion, underscoring Wall Street’s eagerness to take a crack at a massive Chinese company with robust growth.

Alibaba handled more than 1.5 trillion yuan – about $248 billion – of transactions for 231 million active users across its three main Chinese online marketplaces in 2013, more than Amazon and eBay Inc combined. It did so with 20,884 full-time workers, fewer than eBay….”

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IPO filing raises more questions

 

 

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Read M.F., Read!

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We will VMT your wallet

Video article 

 

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“Market Cap to GDP is a long-term valuation indicator that has become popular in recent years, thanks to Warren Buffett. Back in 2001 he remarked in a Fortune Magazine interview that “it is probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.”

My friend and guest contributor Chris Turner offered some analysis along those lines last year using the S&P 500 as the surrogate for the market (When Warren Buffett Talks … People Listen). For a broader measure of Market Cap, VectorGrader.com uses line 36 in the Federal Reserve’s B.102 balance sheet (Market Value of Equities Outstanding) as the numerator. Since both GDP and the Fed’s data are quarterly, the folks at VectorGrader.com do some interpolation and extrapolation to produce monthly estimates. Their latest chart is available to the general public here.

The four valuation indicators I track in my monthly valuation overview offer a long-term perspective of well over a century. The raw data for the “Buffett indicator” only goes back as far as the middle of the 20th century. Quarterly GDP dates from 1947, and the Fed’s B.102 Balance sheet has quarterly updates beginning in Q4 1951. With an acknowledgment of this abbreviated timeframe, let’s take a look at the plain vanilla quarterly ratio with no effort to interpolate monthly data or extrapolate since the end of the most recent quarterly numbers.

The strange numerator in the chart title, MVEONWMVBSNNCB, is the FRED designation for Line 36 in the B.102 balance sheet (Market Value of Equities Outstanding), available on the Federal Reserve website. Here is a link to a FRED version of the chart. Incidentally, the numerator is the same series used for a simple calculation of the Q Ratio valuation indicator.

Unfortunately, the “market cap” numerator is rather stale. The Fed won’t publish the Q1 data until the June 5th.

Click for a larger image

For version that’s current through Q1…..”

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“Jeremy Stein, in one of his last speeches as a Federal Reserve governor, said policy makers are set for a smooth end to their bond-buying program that won’t whipsaw investors with shifting interest-rate expectations.

Investors “almost uniformly expect” that the Federal Open Market Committee will continue tapering purchases in “further measured steps” through the rest of the year, Stein said Tuesday in remarks prepared for delivery in New York. The Fed has slowed buying in $10 billion increments over the past four meetings to $45 billion a month.

“We are currently in a very good position with respect to the market’s expectations for our asset purchases,” Stein said. “With these expectations in place, the execution of the taper itself becomes much easier, as we no longer have to worry about a step-down at each meeting sending a potentially misleading message about our intentions with respect to the future path of the federal funds rate.”

Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues are starting the process of dialing back the most aggressive policy actions in the central bank’s history, aiming to do so without destabilizing financial markets. They have kept the main rate near zero since December 2008 and more than quadrupled the balance sheet to almost $4.3 trillion.

Stein said he agrees with Yellen’s comment at her March press conference that the FOMC’s views on policy will evolve as the economy does, and that uncertainty shouldn’t be eliminated.

“As policy normalizes, forward guidance will be less commitment-like and, hence, a less precise guide to our future actions than it has been in the recent past,” Stein said…..”

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Tale 1)

Mob Rules

“(Reuters) – His mistake was to run from the advancing mob, and that was enough for the men and women carrying clubs, knives and swords through Donetsk’s Lenin district.

They set upon him. Beaten and bloodied, the unidentified man was saved, in a manner, by militiamen who dragged him through the crowd under metal shields, bundled him into the back of a car and drove him off at speed to an unknown fate.

No one could say what he’d done; he was a “provocateur”, a term used by both sides of Ukraine’s increasingly bitter divide to describe the other, but in the rebel-held east it means only one thing – a supporter of the “Fascist” government in Kiev.

It was a brutal picture of the mob-rule that has descended upon this city in eastern Ukraine, the biggest to fall to an armed uprising against a government in Kiev that wants to take the country west. Kiev blames Russia for fomenting the violence, a charged denied by Moscow.

Pro-Russian separatist leaders want a referendum on May 11 to declare Donetsk and the surrounding region an independent republic.

Whatever the outcome, it won’t be recognized by Kiev. The anger unleashed in the process will prove hard to rebottle, and points to a state descending into dangerous disorder, potentially civil war.

“We will not forgive Odessa!” the crowd chanted, a phrase that has quickly become the new rallying cry in towns across Ukraine’s industrial east.

The deaths of more than 40 pro-Russian activists in a burning building during clashes in the Black Sea port on Friday have injected new venom into the fight for Ukraine….”

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Tale Two)

“Washington Intends Russia’s Demise

Washington has no intention of allowing the crisis in Ukraine to be resolved. Having failed to seize the country and evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, Washington sees new opportunities in the crisis.

One is to restart the Cold War by forcing the Russian government to occupy the Russian-speaking areas of present day Ukraine where protesters are objecting to the stooge anti-Russian government installed in Kiev by the American coup. These areas of Ukraine are former constituent parts of Russia herself. They were attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders in the 20th century when both Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country, the USSR.

Essentially, the protesters have established independent governments in the cities. The
police and military units sent to suppress the protesters, called “terrorists” in the American fashion, for the most part have until now defected to the protesters.

With Obama’s incompetent White House and State Department having botched Washington’s takeover of Ukraine, Washington has been at work shifting the blame to Russia. According to Washington and its presstitute media, the protests are orchestrated by the Russian government and have no sincere basis. If Russia sends in military units to protect the Russian citizens in the former Russian territories, the act will be used by Washington to confirm Washington’s propaganda of a Russian invasion (as in the case of Georgia), and Russia will be further demonized.

The Russian government is in a predicament. Moscow does not want financial responsibility for these territories but cannot stand aside and permit Russians to be put down by force. The Russian government has attempted to keep Ukraine intact, relying on the forthcoming elections in Ukraine to bring to office more realistic leaders than the stooges installed by Washington.

However, Washington does not want an election that might replace its stooges and return to cooperating with Russia to resolve the situation. There is a good chance that Washington will tell its stooges in Kiev to declare that the crisis brought to Ukraine by Russia prevents an election. Washington’s NATO puppet states would back up this claim.

It is almost certain that despite the Russian government’s hopes, the Russian government is faced with the continuation of both the crisis and the Washington puppet government in Ukraine.

On May 1 Washington’s former ambassador to Russia, now NATO’s “second-in-command” but the person who, being American, calls the shots, has declared Russia to no longer be a partner but an enemy. The American, Alexander Vershbow, told journalists that NATO has given up on “drawing Moscow closer” and soon will deploy a large number of combat forces in Eastern Europe. Vershbow called this aggressive policy deployment of “defensive assets to the region.”

In other words, here we have again the lie that the Russian government is going to forget all about its difficulties in Ukraine and launch attacks on Poland, the Baltic States, Romania., Moldova, and on the central Asian states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The dissembler Vershbow wants to modernize the militaries of these American puppet states and “seize the opportunity to create the reality on the ground by accepting membership of aspirant countries into NATO.”

What Vershbow has told the Russian government is that you just keep on relying on Western good will and reasonableness while we set up sufficient military forces to prevent Russia from coming to the aid of its oppressed citizens in Ukraine. Our demonization of Russia is working. It has made you hesitant to act during the short period when you could preempt us and seize your former territories. By waiting you give us time to mass forces on your borders from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia. That will distract you and keep you from the Ukraine. The oppression we will inflict on your Russians in Ukraine will discredit you, and the NGOs we finance in the Russian Federation will appeal to nationalist sentiments and overthrow your government for failing to come to the aid of Russians and failing to protect Russia’s strategic interests.

Washington is licking its chops, seeing an opportunity to gain Russia as a puppet state…..”

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“The Federal Reserve will likely bring its massive bond-buying program to an end in October, and only after that will it consider when to raise U.S. interest rates, a top Fed official said on Sunday.

“I personally expect us to end that program in October,” Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said in an interview on Fox News. “Then we have to see how the economy is doing, including these broader measures of unemployment and where we stand before we can talk about how we might move the short-term rate.”

U.S. unemployment registered 6.3 percent in April, a government report showed on Friday. But broader measures of the strength of the labor market, including the labor participation rate and hourly wages, indicated the jobs market is still far from strong…..”

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“For the 6th month in a row, China HSBC Manufacturing PMI missed expectations. With a 48.1 print for April (vs 48.3 flash) this is a very modest rise from March’s 48.0 but is the 4th month in a row of contraction for the broader-based HSBC-version of the PMI (as opposed to the official more-SOE-biased version which remains in modest expansion). This is the longest streak of contraction since Oct 2012 (and the 3rd consecutive month of new order contraction) as employment drops for the 6th month in a row. Most worrying new export orders dropped further showing no signs of a US-driven pick-up post-weather. As if that was not enough to upset the ‘recovery is around the corner’ crew, home sales in China in the most recent (most frenetic typically) period, collapsed 47% year-over-year (and a stunning 65% in tier-2 cities). But apart from that – everything’s great in the newly appointed largest economy on earth…

 

The gap between the official and HSBC/Markit PMI is at almost its widest in 2 years…”

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“There was a surprising amount of bubble talk at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles last week.

Top investors and economists spoke publicly about their fear of inflated values for various securities and the broader economy—a decidedly less optimistic view compared to recent years at “Davos with palm trees.”

“I do see many signs of the bubble of the future—the default specter that you’re talking about. I agree that short term we’re not likely to see that, but all the danger signs are there of a future crisis,” Marc Rowan, co-founder of $161 billion private equity firm Apollo Global Management, said during a panel discussion.

“Covenants have been stripped away, cov-lite is the norm, senior debt levels are actually higher than they were in 2007, although total debt is not quite where it was,” Rowan added, noting looser lending terms given to borrowers.

“We’re back to doing exactly the same things that were done in the credit markets in the crisis.”

“It’s just indiscriminate buying. There are no covenants whatsoever. It’s covenant light and there’s just no creditor protections. PIK-toggle is back in a big way,” James Litinsky, founder of investment manager JHL Capital Group, said of leveraged loans and high yield bonds while speaking on a separate panel.

“PIK-toggle” refers to a “payment in kind” bond that allows the issuers to defer paying interest on the note for a higher rate later on, essentially trading a cash payment for a new bond.

“We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends,” Litinsky added. “We don’t know where we are—maybe there’s another year to go but as we know, when psychology changes, it changes fast.”

Justin Slatky, a senior portfolio manager at credit-focused investment firm Shenkman Capital Management, agreed while speaking on the same panel….”

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Cheers on your weekend!

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“As the Benghazi scandal wears on with frustratingly little accountability at the executive level, there has been no shortage of speculation regarding the identity of key players behind the cover-up.

American Thinker’s Ed Lasky put forth a theory that Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes was instrumental in crafting the deflecting narrative that a YouTube video, not an incompetent administration, was responsible for the outbreak of violence that left four Americans dead on Sept. 11, 2012. His suspicions, it seems, were founded.

A series of emails recently released through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch show that Rhodes, who possesses no identifiable qualifications for shaping public opinion in matters of national security, conducted meetings with then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice ahead of her Benghazi comments.

Less than two days before she made the rounds on various Sunday morning political news programs, Rhodes implored her to “underscore that these protests are rooted in [an] Internet video, and not a broader failure [of] policy.” …”

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Street Concensus courtesy of Zero Hedge

• UBS 180K
• HSBC 195K
• Bank of America 215K
• JP Morgan 220K
• Goldman Sachs 220K
• Citigroup 225K
• Deutsche Bank 240K
• Barclays 250K
• Full Report

 

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“…………….In his latest quarterly letter, Jeremy Grantham, veteran fund manager at GMO, put out his “best guesses for the next two years.”

Grantham draws on John Hussman’s research that shows “an overpricing for the U.S. markets that ranges from 75% overpriced to 125% at the end of March.” Meanwhile Grantham writes that GMO “very much agrees with the spirit of this data, but our preferred measure for our 7-Year Forecast has the market slightly less overvalued at 65%.”

He also acknowledges that the bull market could already have come to an end even as he wrote his quarterly letter, but he believes “it probably (i.e., over 50%) will not end for at least a year or two and probably not before it reaches a level in excess of 2,250 on the S&P 500.”

Grantham believes the market bubble will burst around or after the 2016 presidential election….”

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“SLOVYANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine launched what appeared to be its first major assault against pro-Russian forces who have seized government buildings in the country’s east, with fighting breaking out in the early hours on Friday around a city that has become the focus of the insurgency. Three deaths were reported in early fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said the offensive “effectively destroyed the last hope for the implementation of the Geneva agreements” which were intended to defuse the crisis.

Two Ukrainian helicopters were shot down and their pilots killed on Friday morning, both sides said. The Ukrainian Security Service said one of the helicopters was shot down with a surface-to-air missile, which it said undercut Russia’s claims that the city is under control of civilians who took up arms.

Stella Khorosheva, a spokeswoman for the pro-Russian militants, said one of their men was killed and another injured. She offered no further details.

The center of Slovyansk appeared quiet but empty and tense while fighting outside the city seemed to be over by Friday morning when an Associated Press crew got into town.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin had sent an envoy to Ukraine’s southeast to negotiate the release of foreign military observers who were captured by pro-Russian militia in Slovyansk.

In comments to Russian news agencies, Peskov said the Kremlin has not been able to get in touch with the envoy, Vladimir Lukin, since Ukraine launched the offensive. However, Russia’s Interfax and RIA Novosti quoted Lukin’s aides as saying he was in touch and safe.The action came a day after Putin said that Ukraine should withdraw its military from the eastern and southern regions of the country. Russia has massed tens of thousands of troops along the Ukrainian border as it warns Ukraine’s military not to move against the insurgents in the east.

The Ukrainian Security Service said its forces were fighting “highly skilled foreign military men” in Slovyansk….”

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