Goldman Sachs – Redhawk500's Blog

Things May Not Be What They Seem To Be

Millions of Americans have wondered why the banksters have not been criminally charged for their obvious illegal activities that have destroyed the global economy, devastated the lives of hundreds of millions of people globally, and brought countries to their knees economically. We are cynical that any justice will prevail and the economic ship will be righted. We feel our governmental representatives have been bought and all are entirely controlled by the financial cabal. Certainly when you see big banks admitting to money-laundering, bid rigging, fraud, and market rigging, but still no one individual is being charged with criminal activity, it is easy to feel absolutely helpless.

In the past two years alone, these criminals have paid more than $8 Billion dollars in fines globally and stipulated their guilt, but it seems no one is going to jail. This is even more disheartening when we learn that those who should be enforcing the law are rolling over like lap dogs such as this news from the Wall Street Journal on 10 August:

Source: Wall Street Journal

“After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won’t bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis.

In a statement, the Justice Department said “the burden of proof” couldn’t be met to prosecute Goldman criminally based on claims made in an extensive report prepared by a U.S. Senate panel that investigated the financial crisis.

“Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report,” the statement read. The Justice Department reserved the right to bring charges in the future if new evidence emerges. In a statement Thursday, Goldman said: “We are pleased that this matter is behind us.”

It does seem to be an insult to our intelligence and common sense. However, we must remember who controls the media, as well as the political system. We also must be patient. There are arrests happening globally and they are significant. From these arrests, much information will surface that will compel even those who are so compromised to act or be grossly negligent and criminally involved themselves. Am I right Eric?

There are many brave and conscientious men and women risking their lives quite literally on a global basis to do the right thing. Here are just a few examples:

7/2/12: Gary Foster: Former VP of Citigroup Sentenced to 97 Month in Prison for Embezzlement – (Source: FBI) — Gary Foster, a former vice president in Citigroup, Inc.’s treasury finance department, was sentenced to 97 months’ imprisonment today on a conviction for bank fraud arising from his embezzlement of more than $22 million from Citigroup. Foster embezzled by first transferring money to Citigroup’s cash account and then wiring it to his personal bank account at another bank. Foster used the money to buy real estate and luxury automobiles, including a Ferrari and a Maserati. In total, the value of the seized and restrained property is estimated to be approximately $14 million.

7/6/2012: Ex-Bankas Snoras Owners Arrested Again in U.K. Over Fraud Claims – Bankas Snoras AB’s former owners were arrested again in London today on expanded claims they siphoned at least 1.7 billion litas ($609.5 million) from the failed Lithuanian lender to finance luxurious lifestyles. Russian banker Vladimir Antonov and his business partner Raimondas Baranauskas, who were detained in November and are fighting extradition to Lithuania, were arrested a second time after authorities probing the bank’s collapse in the Baltic country issued another European arrest warrant containing new allegations, John Hardy, a lawyer for the prosecution, said at a scheduled hearing today in London’s Westminster Magistrates Court.

7/10/12: Dozens arrested in loan fraud scheme with victims in U.S, Canada – (Reuters) – Dozens of people were charged in what federal authorities on Tuesday called a highly sophisticated loan fraud scheme that robbed $2.7 million from at least 2,000 victims with poor credit histories in Canada and the United States. Would-be borrowers were lured to websites of 67 fictitious businesses with names similar to well-known lenders such as “Countrywide Funding,” which sounds similar to the legitimate Countrywide Financial Corp., and “Admiral Financial Services,” which mirrors Admiral Financial Corp., authorities said. They were approved for loans in exchange for security deposits ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars – to be sent in advance of the flow of borrowed cash that never arrived.

7/12/12: DOJ: Former Bank of the Commonwealth Executives Arrested for Alleged Fraud – Former executives and favored borrowers at the failed Bank of the Commonweath have been arrested and charged with masking nonperforming assets for their own benefit, in a scheme that contributed to the Virginia bank’s 2011 collapse, the Justice Department said.

7/18/12: Ex-UBS France Employee Charged in Tax Inquiry After Raids – A judge leading a tax-fraud investigation concerning UBS AG’s French unit has charged a second person with aiding in illicit marketing and money laundering. UBS avoided prosecution in the U.S. in 2009 by paying $780 million, admitting it helped thousands of Americans evade taxes and turning over the names of 250 American clients to authorities. UBS later revealed another 4,450 accounts held by clients in the country.

7/19/12: Eleven Charged, Arrests Made In $15 Million Mortgage Fraud Scheme – CAMDEN, N.J. – Eleven individuals from five states are charged in New Jersey for their alleged roles in a $15 million mortgage fraud scam that used phony documents and “straw buyers” to make illegal profits on overbuilt condos, including a defendant who attempted to murder a witness to the scheme, New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

7/20/12: SJ Bank Manager, Husband Bilk Victim of $1.1 M– A JP Morgan Chase bank manager and her husband were convicted Thursday of scamming a 97-year-old man out of $1.1 million in life savings, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney. Prosecutors said that bank manager Christina Bray, 30, befriended the elderly banking client and pretended to manage his financial affairs. Instead, prosecutors said, Bray and her husband, Jimmy Bray, 39, of San Jose, spent the victim’s money on luxury cars and liposuction. The couple pleaded guilty to several counts of felony elder theft.

7/23/12: Irish banker McAteer arrested by Anglo probe fraud squad officers – Willie McAteer is set to become the first banker prosecuted over the collapse of the toxic Anglo Irish Bank in 2008-2009. McAteer, an executive in the former rogue lender, is due in court in Ireland on fraud charges. Anglo’s former finance director was arrested this morning by fraud squad officers investigating financial irregularities at the bust bank.

7/24/12: Anglo Irish Bank’s ex-CEO arrested for fraud – DUBLIN – Fraud detectives arrested the former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank and charged him Tuesday over a conspiracy to hide colossal losses at the bank that brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. Forensic accountants found that Anglo provided secret loans to 16 insiders on condition they used the €1.1 billion ($1.35 billion) to buy Anglo stock.

7/26/12: FL Title Agency Owner Sentenced for Mortgage Fraud Scheme – (Source: FBI) – JACKSONVILLE, FL—U.S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces that U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. today sentenced Cynthia Darlene Strickland (46, Jacksonville) to 18 months in federal prison for bank fraud related to a mortgage fraud scheme. As part of the sentence, the court ordered Strickland to pay restitution to victims in the amount of $531,356. The court also entered a judgment against Strickland for $178,625, which was the amount of money she received as a result of the scheme. Strickland pled guilty.

7/27/12:TD bank denies wrongdoing after court convicts U.S. fraudster in $7B Ponzi scheme– Robert Allen Stanford was the stereotype of a Texas tycoon, oozing the extravagance billions of dollars buys: a fleet of private jets, yachts and helicopters; mansions, castles and a private island; mixing with celebrities and world despots; being knighted and hosting a world sports tournament where he put up the US$20-million purse. At the height of his outsized life, however, his banking empire collapsed and, last month, a U.S. court exposed his US$7-billion fraud, sentencing the 63-year-old to 110 years in prison. Now, attention is turning to the role a respected Canadian bank may have played in allowing Stanford to strip 21,000 investors of their savings.

7/28/12: UK – Six Sentenced for Insider Trading – UBS and JPMorgan print rooms. One of six individuals sentenced on Friday to a total of 16 years in prison for taking part in an insider trading ring has said the JP Morgan Cazenove print room manager allegedly at the heart of the conspiracy avoided prosecutors by fleeing to Northern Cyprus. Ersin Mustafa, a contractor for Xerox running the secure print room in JP Morgan, was accused of playing a pivotal role in sourcing confidential documents from the bank and from UBS where his brother Ali Mustafa worked – his role also involving the confidential printing of market-sensitive documents, many of them linked to corporate takeover plans.

7/30/12: Iran sentences 4 to death in $2.6B fraud case – TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court has sentenced four people to death and given two more life sentences on charges linked to a $2.6 billion bank fraud described as the biggest financial scam in the country’s history, an official said Monday. The trial, which began in February, involved some of the country’s largest financial institutions and raised uncomfortable questions about corruption at senior levels in Iran’s tightly controlled economy.

8/1/12: Former UBS bankers cheated cities by rigging bond bids: U.S. – Three former UBS executives helped deceive U.S. cities and towns by operating a scheme to rig bids to invest municipal bond proceeds, a federal prosecutor said on Monday at the start of the bankers’ criminal trial in New York. Peter Ghavami, Gary Heinz and Michael Welty were charged in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of its broad investigation of the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market. The probe has focused on rooting out schemes to fix prices and rig bids on bond transactions, and has ensnared some of the world’s largest banks. The three men “steered financial contracts to their friends in exchange for kickbacks and other favors.

8/2/12: AmeriFirst Securities Fraud Case Lands Sentence for Seven Defendants – (Source: FBI) – DALLAS—The final sentencing was held today in the massive AmeriFirst securities fraud case, prosecuted in the Northern District of Texas, that has resulted in a total of seven felony convictions and prison sentences up to 25 years, announced U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña of the Northern District of Texas. Today, John Porter Priest was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn to one year in federal prison. Priest, 43, of Ocala, Florida, was sentenced by Judge Lynn to one year in federal prison and ordered to pay $4,742,946 in restitution. He pleaded guilty in September 2010 to one count of securities fraud based on his role in the Secured Capital Trust scheme.

These are just a few of the most outstanding actions. So, while the controlled MSM media is not now currently reporting these activities, they are going on. From our close sources, this is but the tip of the iceberg, as a lot of these who were arrested are singing loudly and turning over evidence that will start to bring pressure to those on top of the pyramids.

What we should be doing is demanding from our MSM the reasons why they are not reporting these facts and more importantly why there is a lack of good old fashion investigative journalism. Where is 60 Minutes when you need them? We should also put pressure on the White House and DOJ to step up their investigations and begin to take actions that they could take, elections be damned. The more we push and the louder we speak, the more action will have to be taken. If you were a victim of the mortgage scams, or you lost half your retirement to these banksters, speak up, take the time to write an email or letter demanding more action. It really is up to us to be informed and outraged. This isn’t a red or blue issue, it is a green issue and if we don’t take these actions, we will soon be owned slaves. Our power is also at the ballot box with an informed vote. Let’s not continue to send lapdogs back to DC. Let’s not buy into the rhetoric from both sides and let’s demand action.

Fast and Furious Goldman Sachs – The Tip Off of Why Issa is Attacking Eric Holder

Eric Holder and DOJ have been conducting an on-going investigation of the five major banks and investment firms and potentially a coordinated criminal conspiracy to rig both LIBOR and EURIBOR interest rates. The most significant thing you need to understand about these rates is that they are the basis which firms like Goldman Sachs uses to determine fees for credit default instruments. The total exposure of the banks, investment firms and hedge funds is nearly $800 trillion dollars! The information uncovered by the DOJ investigation was shared with UK regulators and this week the CEO of Barclays has resigned instead of facing the Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee. “This is the most damaging scam I can recall,” said Andrew Tyrie, chair of parliament’s Treasury select committee. “It appears that many banks were involved and Barclays were the first to own up.”

The interest rate rigging scandal that has engulfed Barclays was the result of a coordinated attempt at collusion by traders working for a coterie of leading banks over at least five years, according to a series of lawsuits and legal rulings filed in courts in Asia and North America.

The lawsuits allege the fraud was extensive, spanning at least three continents and involving trades worth tens of billions of pounds. The allegations raise further serious questions about the banks’ ability to police themselves and the role of senior management in monitoring the activities of their employees.

In a 28-page statement of facts relating to last week’s revelation that Barclays had been fined a total of £290m, the US Department of Justice discloses how a network of traders working on both sides of the Atlantic conspired to influence both the Libor and Euribor interest rates – the rates at which banks lend to each other. It was, in effect, a worldwide conspiracy against the free functioning of the market.

Here is where it gets really interesting, as reporter Lee Fang writes in, Think Progress reports “Exclusive: Goldman Sachs VP Changed His Name, Now Advances Goldman Lobbying Interests As Top Staffer To Darrell Issa .”

Fang reported, “ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then later went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.” The former Goldman Sachs vice president Fang was referring to is Peter Simonyi, now known as Peter Haller.

Imagine that for a minute, a Goldman Sachs operative as a top congressional staffer, lobbying for Goldman Sachs, in this case to block strengthening Dodd-Frank regulations on derivatives. Issa’s wish is exactly the banks’ wish, to weaken the legislation so Wall Street’s Derivatives Casino can keep its stakes up. Fang asks, “Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators?”

In fact, “In July 2011, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. A standard practice on Capitol Hill is to send a letter to a government agency with contact information for the congressional staffer responsible for working on the issue for the committee. In most cases, the contact staffer is the one who actually writes such letters. With this in mind, it is important to note that the Issa letter ended with contact information for Peter Haller, a staffer hired that year to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee.”

Pretty diabolical scheme: deflect Issa’s corrupt lobbying techniques to emasculate oversight, by ferreting out a DOJ scandal to cover the Democrats with the Fast and Furious scandal, burying the larger scandal of planting a Goldman operative in Congress to lobby for soft laws on derivatives. The Fast and Furious scandal is nowhere near the magnitude of the Goldman Sachs operative scandal, with the add-on that Goldman has succeeded in getting the U.S. attorney general held in contempt and at the same time discredited Obama for using his presidential override of the charge.

Lee Fang writes, “Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for. Indeed, Goldman Sachs has spent millions this year trying to slow down the implementation of the new rules. In the letter, Issa explicitly mentions that the new derivative regulations might hurt brokers ‘such as Goldman Sachs.’

“Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until four years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.

“It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, Haller—then known as Peter Simonyi—left the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs, then quickly began lobbying his colleagues at the SEC on behalf of his new firm. At one point, Haller was requiring [sec] to issue a letter to the SEC stating that he did not violate ethics rules and the SEC agreed. A brief timeline of Haller’s work history underscores the ethical issues raised with Issa’s latest letter to bank regulators:

“● After completing his law degree in 2000, Haller was employed by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as an economist, and later with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Office of Enforcement.

“● In April of 2005, Haller resigned from the SEC to take a job with Goldman Sachs. Although he was not a registered lobbyist, he soon began lobbying the SEC on compliance issues on behalf of Goldman Sachs.

“● In 2006, Haller left Goldman Sachs, according to a Goldman official who spoke to ThinkProgress.

“● In 2008, he took a job with the law/lobbying firm Brickfield Burchette Ritts & Stone.

“● In January of 2011, Haller was hired to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee. Under the supervision of Haller, Issa sent a letter dated July 22, 2011 to bank regulators (including the heads of the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FCA, CFTC, FHFA, and Office of Comptroller) demanding documents to justify new Dodd-Frank mandated rules on margin requirements for banks dealing in the multi-trillion dollar OTC derivatives market, like Goldman Sachs.” This resume embodies everything that is wrong with the financial industry.

So much for Haller; now back to Issa. “When he took over the chairmanship of the Oversight Committee this year, Issa dramatically shifted the committee’s focus away from its traditional role of investigating major corporate scandals. Instead, Issa has used the committee to merge the responsibilities of Congress with the interests of K Street and Issa’s own fortune.” In some way he spelled out his own end by doing this.

“In June of this year, ThinkProgress broke the story about Issa’s own complicated relationship with Goldman Sachs. [They] revealed that Issa purchased a large amount of Goldman Sachs high yield bonds at the same time as he used the Oversight Committee to attack an investigation into allegations that Goldman Sachs had systematically defrauded investors leading up to the financial crisis. This conflict of interest, along with ThinkProgess’s exclusive story about Issa’s earmarks benefitting his own real estate empire, received coverage in a recent piece by the New York Times.

“ThinkProgress also broke a story last month revealing other revolving door conflicts within Issa’s staff. Peter Warren, Issa’s new policy director, maintains some type of financial contract with a student loan lobbying group he led last year, and received a bonus from the lobbying group before leaving to work for Issa. Since joining Issa’s staff, Warren and his colleagues have fought to weaken the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new agency charged with overseeing student loans.

“The new revelations about Peter Haller, however, raise even more significant ethical concerns than Peter Warren and other ex-lobbyists working for Issa. Why did Issa hire a high-level Goldman Sachs executive to work on stopping regulations on banks like Goldman Sachs? Haller’s direct involvement in the July letter brings Issa’s ability to lead the Oversight Committee—charged with conducting investigations on behalf of the public interest—into serious doubt.”

It also explains why President Obama did invoke executive privilege concerning Issa’s Fast and furious investigation and the unusual actions of the Democratic Caucasus walking out on the vote. There is no doubt that the banksters are running scared and acting in such desperate manners. There are literally billions of dollars of exposure here and REAL criminal activity. The fact that it could extend to congressmen and senators is even more revealing. To those who are involved and/or have knowledge of the activities should at this moment consider hard what the future may hold for them when this whole scheme unfolds in MSM. This may be your last chance to save your butts. Act now or do the PERP walk tomorrow, your choice.

Some Fact Checking on the BIG BAILOUT and Its Effect on the Economy

Remember back in 2008, when Uncle Ben Bernanke and Little Timothy Geithner went to the Hill and said they needed $700 B to bailout the banks or else the world economy would collapse? Yeah we all remember, there have been millions of articles, documentaries, and movies made about it.

Ok so when the Congress called Uncle Ben back to testify about what he did with the money and was asked to explain how the bailout had saved the economy, he REFUSED to disclose who got how much, defending his position by saying that divulging such information could jeopardize the public faith in the individual banks who had received monies. Congress said, ‘Oh OK that makes sense’.

Then, in 2009, the discussion was that if banks were too big to fail that those banks should also be too big to exist, as that would put us right back in the position that got us into the jam in the first place. Bernanke agreed, but offered no statements as to what should be done to prevent it. Some in CONgress did and the Dodd-Frank Bill was passed. At the time some said it was too weak as written, but hey, at least it was a start.

So, here we are now. How has Dodd-Frank or Federal Reserve policy worked? I do hope you are sitting down for this. You may also want to pour a stiff dink, if you are so inclined, or at least have a pair of vise grips handy to occasionally pinch yourself.

First, too big to fail has resulted in the following: Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy! WHAT???? Yeah you read it correctly. Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. What say you Uncle Ben? What say you CONgress?

At a recent lecture at George Washington University, Mr. Benanke said ,according to CNNMoney, — “The bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG were “distasteful” but still necessary. Meanwhile, the Fed was “helpless” when it came to saving Lehman Brothers, he said.

“Lehman Brothers was in itself probably too big to fail, in the sense that its failure had enormous negative impacts on the global financial system,” Bernanke said. “But there we were helpless, because it was essentially an insolvent firm.”

In a lecture about the Fed’s emergency efforts during the financial crisis, Bernanke explained that the central bank was willing to bail out AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) and Bear Stearns because it expected both firms would eventually be able to pay back their loans. Bear Stearns was ultimately acquired by JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500).

Lehman Brothers, on the other hand, had no collateral to put up in exchange for the Fed’s assistance.

“It was very difficult and in many ways distasteful intervention that we had to do on the grounds that we needed to do that to prevent the system from collapsing,” Bernanke said. “But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.'”

Oh! Then I guess we really had no choice except to fork over the $700 Billion. It was exactly $700 Billion though, wasn’t it Uncle Ben? It took a court case by Bloomberg (because CONgress wouldn’t or couldn’t demand the info) to reveal the true number of the bailout. Vise grips and shot glasses at the ready, here are the real numbers we are all on the hook to the FED for.

The amount of money in secret loans that some of the big Wall Street banks received from the Federal Reserve is absolutely staggering. The following figures come directly from a GAO report….

Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion

OMG that’s $7.1 TRILLION and then with the bailouts of foreign banks, yes most of the major banks in Europe, and yes we did those too, but you know the information is “so sensitive”. The total is $16.115 TRILLION and that is more than the annual GDP of the entire country!

But this has been good for the economy right? I mean if we, as the American people, throw that much money at the problem things are getting better. I mean the banks did the responsible thing to fix the problem, after all we have trusted them with an entire year’s worth of labor by everyone and every company in the US. Well…..consider these two facts.

1). Over the past few years, big Wall Street banks have made huge amounts of money speculating on the price of food. This has caused food prices all over the globe to soar and it has caused tremendous hardship for hundreds of millions of families around the planet. The following is from a recent article in The Independent….

Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world’s poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push prices to 30-year highs and causing sharp price fluctuations that have little to do with the actual supply of food, says the United Nations’ leading expert on food.

Hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate the food commodities markets, dwarfing the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers.

Goldman Sachs alone has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from food speculation.

2). According to the New York Times, the too big to fail banks have complete domination over derivatives trading. Every month a secret meeting that includes representatives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup is held in New York to coordinate their control over the derivatives marketplace. The following is how the New York Times describes those meetings….

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

When the derivatives market fully implodes, there will not be enough money in the world to bail everyone out. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the too big to fail banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely outrageous. Just check out the following numbers….

JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion

Citibank – $52.1 Trillion

Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion

That’s over $200 TRILLION dollars, more than 3 ½ TIMES the global GDP! And that is just the Big Five’s exposure to the derivatives market.

This is beyond insane and would be funny except we are being enslaved to keep it floating. When you combine these facts with the current crisis in the EU, and the fact CONgress has gutted Dodd-Frank and even voted down the Volcker rule that would not allow banks to speculate with our deposits, it doesn’t even make sense to a brick wall.

I write this article because the banksters are counting on us not understanding how well they have fleeced our global economy with no hopes of any recovery. They hope we will all just say this is high finance and we don’t need to understand it. You would understand if your teenage ran up $5,000 in credit card bills wouldn’t you? And I am certain what you would say and do to your irresponsible teenager who did such a thing. THEY would be grounded for LIFE, and you certainly wouldn’t give them any more of your money! For each and every one of us, we need to understand this is the very same thing, only the irresponsible teenagers in this scenario are the FED, the banksters, and our CONgress, and I am being nice. Criminals could also be used to replace irresponsible teenager in this real life scenario, lots of criminals. So what are we going to do about this, DAD? MOM? There really isn’t anybody else stepping up, nowhere in the world. Sorry to be such a bummer, but it is what it is.

Financial Sector Resignations Continue.. This Phenomena Really Has Legs.

In a continuation of our previous article, we continue with the assistance of those previously acknowledged to follow this seemingly mass migration of senior financial experts globally. This now far exceeds “normal attrition”. If we are to believe Benjamin Fulford and others, this is the “taking down” of the cabal that has been responsible for the biggest theft of wealth in history. As we also said, the nature of these resignations is most telling. Fifty-one percent resigned or stepped down, 26 percent retired, and only 9 percent left to take other jobs….

I would welcome anyone in “the know” to comment. I know a lot of financial industry folks read this blog. Maybe it is time and it may be the only time to contribute positively to this discussion and the events unfolding.

Certainly, the evidence is supporting that events are unfolding as Fulford and others are contending. If that is so, then we should be seeing some sort of major media announcement within the next week. We will continue to follow this closely. It does seem important enough to pay close attention.

Also, if this is what is happening (a complete do-over of the global financial system), it is the most important event of our lifetimes. Anyone who can help us understand this correctly is welcome to join the discussion.

3/07/12 (AUSTRALIA) Customers Ltd, Tim Wildash has cashed himself out as chief executive of Australia’s largest ATM operator
http://goo.gl/eZJMb

3/07/12 (USA CA) CALSTRS, Pascal Villiger, senior private equity portfolio manager at the $145 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System resigns
http://goo.gl/ub0ke

3/07/12 (USA) Astaire quits Bank of America Merrill to dance to Barclays Capital’s tune
http://goo.gl/Zv6Ny

3/08/12 (UK) Schroders, Chairman Michael Miles depart as fees, inflows drop. UK’s biggest fund management firm.
goo.gl/TgURM

3/08/12 (USA NY) Schroders, CIO Alan Brown is steps down
http://goo.gl/ZTtYo

3/08/12 (USA IL) CBOE Executive Patrick Fay Put on Leave Amid SEC Probe
http://goo.gl/x5snO

3/08/12 (USA NH & RI) Bristol County Savings Bank president E. Dennis Kelly retires after 35 years
http://goo.gl/8KVKn

3/08/12 (GERMANY) Clearstream Banking AG – Katja Rosenkranz To Leave Deutsche Börse Group [stockmarket]
http://goo.gl/RiVNi

3/08/12 (UK) B&CE CEO Brian Griffiths is to retire later this year
http://goo.gl/AV7Sk

3/08/12 (UK) Invesco Trimark Ltd, portfolio manager Dana Love has resigned.
http://goo.gl/MyQ90

3/08/12 (ISRAEL) Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer will hand in his shock resignation in the coming days and take up a new position as head of the Bank of Zambia. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz is believed to be furious with Fischer’s decision. Treasury officials said he even canceled his participation in the office’s annual Purim party in order to convince Fischer to reverse his decision.
http://goo.gl/0DlSA

3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Group Limited (SBK), board member Sir Paul Judge retires.
http://goo.gl/SjSPg

3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Groupl Limited (SBK), board member Sir Sam Jonah retires.
http://goo.gl/SjSPg

3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Mongol Bank President Alag Batsukh submitted his resignation letter to Speaker of Parliament D. Demberel at the end of last month. He described his reason for resigning as a lack of support by Parliament.
http://goo.gl/RDmNx

3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Asia Pacific Securities, General Manager Narantuguldur Saijrakh recently resigned, to focus on his role as Director of Khan Investment Management, investment advisor to the Khan Mongolia Equity Fund – the first open-ended investment vehicle with monthly dealing that invests in Mongolia related equities listed both domestically and internationally.
http://goo.gl/2T4R6

3/09/12 (Côte d’Ivoire) Banque Central des Etats d’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) The Ivorian governor of the multi-billion dollar West Africa Francophone bank, Philippe-Henry Dacoury-Tabley, resigned his post.
http://goo.gl/CevLn

3/09/12 (UK) Lazard , co-head of investment banking Alexis de Rosnay quits. De Rosnay specialises in the healthcare sector, he has advised Teva Pharmaceutical and Novartis.
http://goo.gl/3gzbi

3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, UK head of portfolio management Martyn Surguy resigned.
http://goo.gl/5Ti2p

3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, head of discretionary management, Kypros Charalambous, having also stepped down.
http://goo.gl/5Ti2p

3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, K.J. Kim, responsible for Southeast Asia, resigned
http://goo.gl/sE7xh

3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Jimmy Choi, who was in charge of high-yield debt, resigned.
http://goo.gl/sE7xh

3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Leonard Ng, a vice-president in Hong Kong resigned.
http://goo.gl/sE7xh

3/09/12 (AUSTRALIA) Bank of Queensland CFO Ram Kangatharan plans to leave the bank.
http://goo.gl/ieNea

3/09/12 (USA) Cerberus Capital Management LP, CEO Robert Nardelli resigns.
http://goo.gl/9uKVx

3/10/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, Rob Chapman opted to quit running its regional subsidiary St George Bank.
http://goo.gl/G6MD

3/10/12 (TURKEY) Garanti Bank, The deputy CEO of Turkish lender Tolga Egemen, has decided to quit.
http://goo.gl/vAMzV

3/10/12 (CHINA) Korea Development Bank, Shanghai unit senior manager Stella Wen resigned.
http://goo.gl/55CqZ

3/10/12 (HONG KONG) Deutsche Bank, Johan Sudiman resigns as director.
http://goo.gl/6CYGP

3/12/12 (USA) John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, head of investments Andrew Chapman, resigns
http://goo.gl/hevqh

3/12/12 (USA CA) California’s Department of Financial Institutions, commissioner William Haraf resigned. The DFI did not say why he is leaving.
http://goo.gl/zquTc

3/12/12 (KUWAIT) Gulf Bank, Chairman Ali Rashaid Al Bader quits
http://goo.gl/LDz9b

3/12/12 (UK and IRELAND) Allfunds Bank, head of UK and Ireland Alan Gadd is stepping down from his role at the end of April.
http://goo.gl/4DF6i

3/12/12 (USA) ICAP, CEO of the electronic broking business David Rutter step down following a restructuring of the business.
http://goo.gl/SUHqW

3/12/12 (UK) SVG Capital, chairman Nicholas Ferguson resigns. His departure left him well placed to succeed James Murdoch as chairman of BSkyB should the latter bow to investor pressure and step down. Other investors in the satellite broadcaster suggested Ferguson might be seen as too close to Murdoch to win the support of institutional shareholders.
http://goo.gl/z19wH

3/12/12 (UK) Park Hill Group – Blackstone Group’s fundraising advisory arm, Managing Partner of private equity and hedge fund distribution Chris Leach resigns
http://goo.gl/jnHax

3/12/12 (UK) Park Hill Group – Blackstone Group’s fundraising advisory arm, Managing Partner Justin Bower resigns
http://goo.gl/jnHax

3/12/12 (UK) The chief executive David Rutter of the electronic broking business at interdealer broker Icap stepping down.
http://goo.gl/sxk4y

3/12/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), CEO Paul Baloyi resigns.
http://goo.gl/yX4xo

3/12/12 (USA) Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, CEO Bryan Marsal Resigns Title, Remains on as Adviser
http://goo.gl/1K9zV

3/12/12 (USA IL) CME Group Inc, CEO Craig Donohues will step down at year end.
http://goo.gl/lvzgC

3/13/12 (USA) Eaton Vance Corp, Treasurer and CFO Robert J. Whelan has stepped down.
http://goo.gl/oxmbL

3/12/12 (USA IL) CBOE Holdings Inc. (CBOE), senior compliance executive Patrick Fay has resigned. The options exchange being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fay had been placed on leave after the SEC began investigating the options-market operator’s oversight of traders.
http://goo.gl/gj4W6

3/13/12 (USA) Mithras Investment Trust, chairman Mike Wooderson will step down
http://goo.gl/UjO2e

3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, President Luke Hayden resigned from to pursue what the company calls “other interests.” http://goo.gl/iaqQf

3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, Treasurer Mark Johnson.resigned
http://goo.gl/iaqQf

3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, head of corporate affairs after David Bell decided to step down from the role. Bell is the latest top executive to leave the bank.
http://goo.gl/FntUz

3/13/12 (UK) Capula’s Systemic Trading Head Qiang Dai to Leave Fund
http://goo.gl/zkrN2

3/13/12 (UAE) National Bank of Abu Dhabi, CEO Michael Tomalin, will retire from the post in a few months.
http://goo.gl/dzBW8

3/13/12 (ISRAEL) Osem Investments Ltd, CEO Gazi Kaplan has tendered his resignation, effective April 2, citing heath reasons. Nestlé SA owns 58.8% of Osem.
http://goo.gl/t032l

3/13/12 (USA) Paulson & Co.’s, partner and head of the global bank team Robert Lacoursiere has quit to form his own hedge fund
http://goo.gl/I8UNd

3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) ASX Ltd, Chairman David Gonski will step down from his role at Australia’s main stock market operator after being appointed to oversee almost A$90 billion ($95 billion) in the nation’s sovereign-wealth funds.
http://goo.gl/gJN33

3/13/12 (UK) JP Morgan, Asset Management European chief Jamie Broderick is to step down more than 20 years at the firm.
http://goo.gl/MV65V

3/13/12 (UK) SVG Chairman Nicholas Ferguson retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY

3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Edgar Koning retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY

3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Denis Raeburn retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY

3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Francis Finlay retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY

3/14/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs, executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Greg Smith, is resigning today.
http://americankabuki.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html

3/14/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA chairman Garth Griffin to retire
http://goo.gl/Mhjb5

3/14/12 (UK) WorldSpreads, CEO Conor Foley resigns
http://goo.gl/GgT4z

3/15/12 (US WA) HomeStreet Bank, EVP and CFO David Hooston resigns
goo.gl/UUlc0

3/15/12 (DENMARK) Sparekassen Faaborg board member Steen Grønved Nielsen resigns
http://tinyurl.com/6rd3m74

3/15/12 (UK) RBC Capital Markets head of SSA syndicate desk Noel Williams resigns
http://tinyurl.com/7zcf4z8

3/15/12 (UK) Novia London sales manager Dave Chassell quits
http://tinyurl.com/7gx6sn2

3/15/12 (US CA) Prosper Finance (online venture captial services) CEO Chris Larsen steps down
http://tinyurl.com/6lhu8xx

3/15/12 (UK) The Royal British Legion’s (fund) director of corp. communications Stuart Gendall resigns
http://tinyurl.com/7bhtysl

3/15/12 (IRELAND) President of Sinn Fein USA (fund) Larry Downes steps down
http://tinyurl.com/7uqnwcg

3/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) Investorfirst CFO and company secretary Ariel Sivikofsky resigns
http://tinyurl.com/7jdshty

3/16/12 (MALAYSIA) Amanah Raya Bhd (trust) managing director Datuk Ahmad Rodzi Pawanteh steps down
http://tinyurl.com/7wbujpm

3/16/12 (UK) Towry (investment & fin. advice) Non-exec chairman Glyn Jones steps down
http://tinyurl.com/83g3y8b

3/16/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank Chief risk officer (CRO)of Hugo Bänziger steps down
http://tinyurl.com/7pmal9k

3/16/12 (US IL) Henderson Global Investors Inc. head of the International Opportunities Fund Iain Clark steps down
http://tinyurl.com/7kfxz3j

3/16/12 (US CA) Executive VP and Chief Compliance Officer of Heritage Bank of Commerce Margaret Incandela resigns
http://tinyurl.com/6wcaqaz

3/16/12 (US VA) Genworth Financial board member J. Robert Kerrey resigns to campaign for senate seat
http://tinyurl.com/7566f74

3/16/12 (UK) CEO of the FSA (Financial Services Authority) Hector Sants to leave
http://tinyurl.com/7av7v5n>

3/19/12 (US IA) ISU Foundation (fund), President and CEO of the Dan Saftig to step down
http://tinyurl.com/7jvb24x

3/19/12 (BRAZIL) HSBC Brazil CEO Conrado Engel steps down
http://tinyurl.com/89uayoo

3/19/12 (UAE) Finance head at SNR Denton Islamic Sheikh Muddassir Siddiqui resignsto pursue advisory role
http://tinyurl.com/84avxch

3/19/12 (SWITZERLAND) Julius Baer bank’s chairman Raymond Baer steps down in a “surprise departure”
http://tinyurl.com/84gcl3z

3/19/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank, asset management chief Kevin Parker to leave executive committee
http://goo.gl/ahZlJ

3/19/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank, head of private wealth management Pierre de Weck resigns from executive committee
http://goo.gl/wRZkU

3/19/12 (HONG KONG) China Development Bank HK branch CEO Di Weiping retires
http://tinyurl.com/7xcskmp

3/19/12 (US ID) SunTrust Bank president and CEO Thomas Rueger to retire
http://tinyurl.com/7n2l6sr

3/19/12 (SWEDEN) AP6 (private equity) CEO Marianne Dicander Alexandersson steps down
http://tinyurl.com/7bnvygp

3/19/12 (SWITZERLAND) FINMA (Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority) Vice-chair Monica Mächler to step down
http://tinyurl.com/7r9akho

3/20/12 (KUWAIT) National Investments Co. chairman Yousef Al Majid resigns
http://tinyurl.com/7maw3xx

3/20/12 (UK) Bank of America, Co-head of distressed debt at Michael Guy resigns
http://tinyurl.com/75eml6v

3/20/12 (US PA) Penseco Financial Services Corp, Former state senator Robert J. Mellow resigns from board
http://tinyurl.com/6rxqeo9

3/20/12 (US TX) Acquisition chief Dan Magder quits Lone Star Investments
http://tinyurl.com/6qm2rj4

3/20/12 (NIGERIA) Chairman of House Committee on Capital Markets Hon. Herman Hembe resigns due to allegations of bribery
http://tinyurl.com/7r6dk54

3/20/12 (Hong Kong) Head of Deutsche Bank Asia-Pac Loh Boon Chye quits
http://tinyurl.com/6muckmq

3/20/12 (US NY) Deutsche Bank, head of asset management Kevin Parker steps down from executive committee
goo.gl/4NO66

3/20/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank, Chairman and CEO Josef Ackermann exits with pension of €18.7 million
http://goo.gl/eiF39

3/20/12 (UK) Coller Capital, CEO Charles Hippsley has left to help lead a Christian organisation in London.
http://goo.gl/rVFz0

3/21/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank AG, Co-head Wolfgang Hammes leaves
http://tinyurl.com/74ks8jk

3/21/12 (UK) Aviva Investor’s European equity head John Botham exits
http://tinyurl.com/7qwlc26

3/21/12 (CANADA) National Bank’s Ontaria, Atlantic region manager Mike Miller leaves
http://tinyurl.com/7kq4bdp

3/21/12 (UK) Royal Bank of Scotland Group’s global head of equity prime services Gregory Wagner resigns
http://tinyurl.com/6vz8f8k

3/21/12 (US DC) Liquidity Services Inc, Chief information officer Eric Dean resigns
http://tinyurl.com/7v2c4ku

3/22/12 (UK) Global equity head Neil Rogan resigns from Henderson Global Investors
http://tinyurl.com/7v2c4ku

3/22/12 (NETHERLANDS) CIO at Nedlloyd Pension Fund Bert Tibben step down
http://goo.gl/NHE94

3/22/12 (UK) Bank of America Corp, chairman of global banking and markets, Andrea Orcel steps down, goes to UBS
http://goo.gl/AVXL2

3/22/12 (UK) Bank of America Corp, Jonathan Moulds steps down, helped build the bank’s over-the-counter derivatives trading business and held positions including global head of rate derivatives trading, head of global derivatives and head of global rates and commodities.
http://goo.gl/AVXL2

3/25/12 (EGYPT) National Bank of Egypt, CEO Tarek Amer said that he will step down from his position at the end of 2012.
http://goo.gl/tC7Ma

It is not however just the number of resignations, but more interesting is the nature of how a lot of these players are exiting. Consider this very revealing OP-ED piece from the New Times Opinion Page, which appeared on 14 March. It is like the saying, when it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and now THE DUCK himself says it’s a duck. Well, you be the judge.

Op-Ed Contributor – New York Times Opinion Section

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs By GREG SMITH, Published: March 14, 2012

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

All I can say is I expect an exciting next few months. I also think it needs to be said here that it also appears that there is a major effort by some very courageous people (like Greg Smith), who are taking great personal risk, to assist in this “cleansing”. We owe them a large debt of gratitude.

Is There a Major Change in Global Financial Markets Just Around the Corner?

Since the economic crash in 2008, much has surfaced as to how it happened, who was involved, the reaction of regulators, The President and Congress. What amazed me in the months following the implosion, nothing seemed to materialize, either in the way of criminal actions or new regulations.

It was at this point, I began my blog. I needed to look deeply into the situation and see what I could discover. I have written over 100 articles outlining my findings. What I have spent nearly the last two months doing was following and trying to validate some amazing stories that were circulating the internet concerning the financial cabal and the fact it was under attack by some unknown forces.

The whole story was first introduced by Benjamin Fulford, who was a Forbes Business Editor in Japan. You can learn all about Benjamin here, http://benjaminfulford.net/. To say the least, Benjamin’s story is on the surface, was too much to believe. Although I must say, over time, I began to see that while I could not accept the whole of Benjamin’s story, there were events unfolding in real-time, that were similar to Benjamin’s previous statements as to what would occur in the near future.

Then last month, the well known writer and a New York Best Selling Author, David Wilcox did an exhaustive piece on his blog which you can find here, Financial Tyranny – Defeating the Greatest Cover-Up of All Time. Again, most of this article was mind-blowing to say the least, but again there was hard evidence presented for some of the key points that was undeniable, but accepting the whole premise was a bit too much for me.

So for me the bottom line was there has to be proof that this financial cabal is collapsing. This started my two months of investigating on my own. What I found I have outlined in detail below. Forgive the long article, but to see it all, you must know it all.

Since September of 2011, I have been tracking and following the major players in the global financial arena. If there was any weight to what Fulford and Wilcox were saying, the rats would be jumping ship. Honestly, I thought I would find normal patterns of revolving doors and resignations. I will let you be the judge of what I uncovered as a matter of public record and verified reporting. I started first in the US.

Over 20,000 resignations/house arrests are visible using data from the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 requires that publicly traded companies must report to the SEC whenever members of the Board or certain officers resign. Also, the SEC has a database named EDGAR that is open to the public. After a little research, what was discovered is that corporations must report said resignations on Form 8-K, Item 5.02. From there, it was a simple matter of searching only Form 8-Ks within a specific range of dates, and including the boolean search terms “Resigns” and “Resignation”.

From the start of 2008 to the second quarter of 2011 the resignations remained steady @ about 2000 per quarter. Suddenly in the 3rd quarter of 2011 they increased by 50% to 3000 for that quarter. (That’s an extra 1000). Then in the 4th quarter they jumped to 7000. (That’s an additional extra 5000 resignations). Now without the full quarter results for the first quarter of 2012 they are up to 16,000. (That’s an extra 14,000 resignations & increasing fast). That’s a total of 20,000+ extra resignations that no one is reporting in news papers & nothing of course in the major media!

OK, well that is interesting, but how does this hold-up on the international scene. First of all I want to thank americankabuki.blogspot.com and Gabriel@ Facebook Global Mass Resignations for doing an immense amount of research that was invaluable to my effort, and I am indebted to their willingness to share it so freely.

What we uncovered…

358 MAJOR RESIGNATIONS FROM WORLD BANKS, INVESTMENT HOUSES, MONEY FUNDS
Abreviations used:
CEO = Chief Executive Officer, CFO = Chief Financial Officer, CIO = Chief Investment Officer, COO = Chief Operating Officer
INC = Incorporated (can be private held or publically traded shares)
PLC = Public Limited Company (publicly traded shares can be listed or unlisted on stock market)
LTD = Limited Company (privately held)
LLC = American version of LTD, but can have a shareholder/member that is an INC, often hybrids of both
AG = German version of PLC
AB = Swedish version of PLC
SA = Society Anonymous in various Latin languages – same as PLC
NV = Dutch version of PLC
BV = Dutch version of LTD
LP = Limited Partners (partnership with limited liability)
REIT = Real Estate Investment Trust
Click here to scroll to latest additions to list from AmericanKabuki, then scroll up.

9/01/11 (USA NY) Bank of New York Mellon Chief Robert P. Kelly Resigns in a Shake-UP. Bank of New York Mellon’s chief executive and chairman, Robert P. Kelly, stepped down late Wednesday because of “differences in approaches to managing the company,” the bank said. Pressure on the bank has been growing for months. Kelly’s departure — the sudden, shocking resignation of a star CEO (editor note: #2 among CEO compensation in the banking industry)– has received remarkably little attention or explanation.
http://goo.gl/NdW7q
9/06/11 (BELGIUM) Dexia confirmed that its CEO Stefaan Decraene had left the company. Its exposures to sovereign debt in the PIIGS nations are larger than its core Tier 1 capital. Dexia’s CEO Resigns Suddenly – by Erin Davis | 06 Sep 11

On Monday, Dexia confirmed that its CEO Stefaan Decraene had left the company and will be replaced by Jos Clijsters, an executive at the bank since January and a former senior executive at the failed bank Fortis.

We continue to think that Dexia is the most troubled publicly traded bank in the eurozone outside of Greece. Its exposures to sovereign debt in the PIIGS nations are larger than its core Tier 1 capital, it has an inadequate deposit base to support its loan book, and it is overly leveraged, in our opinion. We think Dexia is likely to undertake a highly dilutive capital raise, and wonder if it might come sooner rather than later given the management change. http://goo.gl/vuhvd

9/09/11 (GERMANY) European Central Bank (ECB) governing board member Jürgen Stark, who has resigned. The dramatic resignation of a senior European central banker sent stock markets plunging, amid fears that Greece is on the brink of default and the fragile consensus in Berlin over support for the ailing Italian and Spanish economies was close to disintegration.

Bank stocks, down more than 5% in some cases, were the worst affected as the Dow Jones dropped almost 3% to below 11,000. European exchanges joined the panic with the FTSE falling more than 100 points to 5230. Speculation that several French and German banks would soon embark on massive capital raising schemes to offset write-offs on holdings of Greek debt, added to the febrile atmosphere. Stark “and his wife, Christine, whom he married in 1973, have a retirement house on the Baltic Sea. http://goo.gl/t83S4

9/12/11 (HONG KONG) HSBC Group Hang Seng Bank Non-Executive Director Mark McCombe resigns. In a release, the Board of Directors of Hang Seng Bank Limited hereby announces that following his resignation from the HSBC Group, Mr. Mark S McCombe has tendered his resignation as a Non-executive Director of the Bank with effect from 9 September 2011.

Mr. McCombe has confirmed that he has no disagreement with the Board and that he is not aware of any matter relating to his resignation that needs to be brought to the attention of the shareholders of the Bank. Mark moved to BlackRock Asian Operations. http://goo.gl/mCTgi

9/14/11 (USA NJ) Columbia Bank CEO Raymond G. Hallock Announces Retirement
http://goo.gl/UjUZY
9/14/11 (NEW ZELAND) AMP NZ Office Limited (ANZO), Mark Verbiest has resigned as a director. His resignation arises due to his desire to devote the necessary time and energy to his prospective new role as Chairman of Telecom, assuming the Telecom demerger is sanctioned by Telecom shareholders.
http://goo.gl/LjSI0
9/15/11 (USA NY) Morgan Stanley, Chairman John Mack resigns. Mack, 66, joined Morgan Stanley in 1972 as a bond salesman and worked his way up through the ranks to become president and chief operating officer of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in 1997. Mack will retire from a full-time role but remain a senior adviser to Morgan Stanley. http://goo.gl/jWWv7
9/18/11 (JORDAN) Central Bank governor Faris Sharaf resigns over policy. They did not disclose the reasons for the surprise resignation of Sharaf, who took the five-year post last November.

But bankers and some officials say Sharaf was enraged by an appeasement policy adopted by the government to win over disgruntled public sector employees in the wake of Arab unrest that endangered the country’s financial and monetary stability.

Bankers say Sharaf, a highly respected financial expert who had senior posts in the banking and financial industry, has increasingly voiced privately his alarm at the government’s expansionary fiscal policy. A bit of fuel was added to the fire when Faris Sharaf’s mother, Leila Sharaf, resigned from her post in the Senate the very next day, stating that she will not be part of a “corrupted government”. Leila claims her son was “removed” for attempting to combat corruption and also voiced her displeasure over the way her son was “removed” from office, claiming that the bank was surrounded by armed guards who supposedly were there to keep him from entering. http://goo.gl/8yU5N

9/20/11 (SCOTLAND) SCOTTISH WIDOWS (RETIREMENT INVESTMENT SAVINGS FUND) There could be no Scottish representative on the board of Lloyds Banking Group, owner of Bank of Scotland, in future after it announced the departure of Lord Sandy Leitch, the chairman of Scottish Widows and group deputy chairman. Less than a year after Labour first won power in 1997, Sandy Leitch was invited to No10 for breakfast with other business leaders. He went on to run several Labour projects, becoming one of Mr Blair’s most trusted business advisers. His reward came in 2004 – the same year he left Zurich – when he was made a Labour peer, becoming Baron Leitch of Oakley in Fife. The multi-millionaire entrepreneur was introduced into the Lords by Mr Blair’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy. But Lord Leitch, 60, has maintained links with Gordon Brown’s government, donating £5,000 last year to his leadership campaign. http://goo.gl/Dx8qs
1. 9/21/11 (AUSTRALIA & NZ) JP Morgan Australia and New Zealand Worldwide Securities Services CEO Jane Perry resigned
  http://goo.gl/Qx0Va
2. 9/25/11 (SWITZERLAND) UBS CEO Oswald Gruebel quits over £1.5bn rogue trader crisis. The head of the Swiss bank at the centre of the rogue trading scandal resigned yesterday after telling colleagues it was his duty to take responsibility for the £1.5 billion loss.

UBS chief executive Oswald Gruebel stepped down from his £1.9 million-a-year job in an attempt to limit further damage to the bank’s reputation. http://goo.gl/WCeqB

9/25/11 (USA CA) Douglas E. Tow, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer, will retire from American River Bankshares (NASDAQ: AMRB) . Mr. Tow has made the decision to retire in order to pursue personal interests. http://goo.gl/24aAU
9/28/11 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Bank Council: Fritz Studer resigns as per end-April 2012
http://goo.gl/7dNiD
9/29/11 (JAPAN) BLIFE Investment Corporation, Asset Manager Director Masaomi Yamadaira resigned.
http://goo.gl/Vsmk3
9/29/11 (UK) Barclays, Head of UK & European Retail Banking Deanna Oppenheimer resigned.
http://goo.gl/o63jO
9/29/11 (USA NM) New Mexico Pension Fund Director Terry Slattery Resigns
http://goo.gl/BzLn4
9/30/11 (SINGAPORE) AIMS AMP CAP INDUSTRIAL REIT, Ms Tang Buck Kiau resigned.
http://goo.gl/VGxjv
10/01/11 (USA MO) Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas M. Hoenig retired on Oct. 1, 2011
http://goo.gl/B8WK7
10/03/11 (INDIA) The of Euram Bank Asia, president Arun Panchariya, has resigned after being implicated in a stock trading scandal in India.
http://goo.gl/yh2bF
10/03/11 (GHANA) Intercontinental Bank Ghana Limited, Managing Director and CEO Albert Mmegwa resigned.
http://goo.gl/Vc252
10/03/11 (USA FL) Quantek Opportunity Fund, portfolio manager Javier Guerra. Arbitration awarded $1 million damages to Aris Multi-Strategy Fund. Quantek Asset Management made false statements to Aris.
http://goo.gl/udpBA
10/05/11 (UK) UBS co-chief François Gouws of global equities had resigned after last month’s revelation of a $2.3 billion loss from unauthorized trading.
http://goo.gl/OuUjr
10/05/11 (UK) UBS co-chief Yassine Bouhara of global equities had resigned after last month’s revelation of a $2.3 billion loss from unauthorized trading.
http://goo.gl/OuUjr
10/10/11 (BELGIUM) Dexia (Franco-Belgian bank) its chairman Jean-Luc Dehaene will give up his role on the board of Dexia’s Belgian division, which is being sold to the Belgian state as part of a rescue deal, the group said on Monday.
http://goo.gl/vyldE
10/11/11 (UK) BlackRock, head of sterling portfolios and manager of the Corporate Bond fund, Paul Shuttleworth, has resigned after 11 years at the firm.
http://goo.gl/FMBjw
10/11/11 (UK) Dynamic Funds, portfolio manager David Taylor has resigned.
http://goo.gl/GZCt5
10/11/11 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Non-Executive Direct Sue Yang resigns for personal reasons.
http://goo.gl/ip8Un
10/13/11 (UK) Cogent Partners co-head research department Katita Palamar resigned.
http://goo.gl/TVLWO
10/13/11 (UK) Cogent Partners co-head research department Bill Farrell resigned.
http://goo.gl/TVLWO
10/14/11 (USA TX) Deutsche Bank Investment Advisor Griffin Perry resigns, SEC regulations prevented him from campaigning for his father Rick Perry’s Presidential campaign.
http://goo.gl/R0PgH
10/23/11 (USA) Fairholme Capital Management LLC, Director Charles Fernandez stepped down for personal reasons. Fairholme Fund has lost 26 percent of its net asset value due to bets that have backfired on AIG Inc, Bank of America Corp and Florida-based landowner and developer St Joe Co.
http://goo.gl/vzTbY
10/24/11 (ICELAND) Icelandic State Financial Investments board members of Icelandic State Financial Investments have resigned following “outside interference” with their Sept. 30 decision to hire Pall Magnusson, the former political adviser to the island’s industry minister, as chief executive officer. [names and positions have been requested from the reporter on 3/9/12]
http://goo.gl/lEpz2
10/24/11 (SINGAPORE) Keppel Corporation Limited, Teo Soon Hoe will resign from his role as group finance director Jan 1.
http://goo.gl/l90be
10/26/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank) CEO B S Deshmukh arrested for embezzling Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd payment deposits.
http://goo.gl/CXL7Z
10/26/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank) former CEO A N Kulkarni arrested for embezzling Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd payment deposits.
http://goo.gl/CXL7Z
10/27/11 (USA NY) Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc (KBW) CEO John Duffy stepped aside. Duffy has prostate cancer.
http://goo.gl/i1s3E
10/29/11 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Corp Chairman Guo Shuqing resigns
http://goo.gl/fdd9v
10/29/11 (CHINA) Agricultural Bank of China Ltd Chairman Xiang Junbo resigns
http://goo.gl/yWX9R
10/31/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, resigns.
http://goo.gl/ygG59
11/01/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank More directors resign [research still being conducted on the names]
http://goo.gl/HD8BQ
11/02/11 (UK) Lloyds Banking Group chief executive, António Horta-Osório, is to take leave of absence on health grounds for six to eight weeks, the BBC has reported. (STILL OUT AS OF 2/24/12 – DEFACTO RESIGNATION)
http://goo.gl/3L9gE
11/03/11 (POLAND) Nordea Bank Poland, Wlodzimierz Kicinski resigned from as President of the Management Board of Nordea Bank Poland as of the 10th of November.
http://goo.gl/oKUVZ
11/04/11 (USA NY) MF Global, Jon Corzine, stepped down as chairman and CEO, hired criminal attorney to represent him.
http://goo.gl/tUaVY
11/07/11 (SINGAPORE) Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX), CEO Framroze Pochara quits.
http://goo.gl/eum87
11/08/11 (SINGAPORE) The Singapore Fund, Inc, Austin C. Dowling has resigned as Director of the Fund
http://goo.gl/bCUhI
11/09/11 (USA NY) HSBC Israeli desk, managing director Issac Doueck resigned.
http://goo.gl/zuCJE
11/09/11 (ISRAEL) HSBC Israeli desk, senior representative Simon Hakim resigned.
http://goo.gl/zuCJE
11/09/11 (SWITZERLAND) HSBC Israeli desk, head of Israel Dan Sagi resigned.
http://goo.gl/zuCJE
11/09/11 (USA NY) HSBC Israeli desk, ????? resigned.
http://goo.gl/zuCJE
11/09/11 (USA NY) HSBC Israeli desk, ????? resigned.
http://goo.gl/zuCJE
11/10/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) European Central Bank Lorenzo Bini Smaghi resigned from the European Central Bank’s Executive Board.
http://goo.gl/Invjc
11/11/11 (HONG KONG) Goldman Sachs’ Asia Pacific co-head Yusuf Alireza is retiring from the investment bank after 19 years
http://goo.gl/pejs3
11/10/11 (INDIA) UBS The head of India operations at UBS AG , Manisha Girotra, has resigned
http://goo.gl/3aTh2
11/15/11 (USA NY) Icahn Enterprises LP, senior managing director of health-care investing, Alex Denner, has resigned.
http://goo.gl/X1A4i
11/16/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) International Monetary Fund Europe, director Antonio Borges resigns for personal reasons.
http://goo.gl/55CqZ
11/17/11 (NETHERLANDS) Syntrus Achmea (pensions manager), CIO Marjolein Sol is resigning.
http://goo.gl/Xqxsr
11/18/11 (SCOTLAND) Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Limited (SWIP) Private Equity Fund, wish to announce the resignation of John Brett from the Board of Directors of the Company, for business reasons.
http://goo.gl/MLsp8
11/21/11 (JAPAN) UBS’s Japan Investment Banking Chairman Matsui to Resign
http://goo.gl/OiDiq
11/23/12 (USA SC & NC) Bank of the Carolinas, CFO Eric Rhodes resigns for personal reasons. Bank of the Carolinas was delisted from the NASDAQ on 3/9/12
http://goo.gl/oytcD
11/24/12 (IRELAND) AXA Rosenberg Management Ireland Limited, director Simon Vanstone resigns.
http://goo.gl/x5Fl6
11/28/11 (LATVIA) Latvia’s chief banking regulator, Irena Krumane, said she resigned today, a week after the state took over Latvijas Krajbanka AS (LKB1R), the Baltic News Service reported. The bank regulator suspended operations at Krajbanka, a subsidiary of Lithuania’s Bankas Snoras AB, on Nov. 21 and said around 100 million lati ($191.8 million) was missing. The Lithuanian government seized Snoras on Nov. 16 saying assets reported on the lender’s balance sheet were missing.
http://goo.gl/mUvLF
11/29/11 (USA) R. David Land Submits Resignation from the Boards of Directors of Peoples Bancorp. and Seneca National Bank
http://goo.gl/XncOc
11/29/11 (NORWAY) Carnegie ASA’s co-head of investment banking in Norway, Cato Holmsen, has resigned
http://goo.gl/utIfy
11/29/11 (FRANCE) AXA Real Estate Investment Managers, Global head of business development, strategy and research for Kiran Patel, has handed in his resignation. Patel was with the firm for 11 years.
http://goo.gl/iGjB6
11/30/11 (LITHUANIA) Lithuania Central Bank, Governor Vitas Vasiliauskas fired Kazimieras Ramonas, head of the banking supervision department, after seizing Bankas Snoras AB, the country’s third-biggest deposit bank.
http://goo.gl/EiqUC
12/01/11 (SRI LANKA) Sri Lanka’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) head Indrani Sugathadasa resigned.
http://goo.gl/6qzny
12/02/11 (PAKISTAN) NIB Bank, Singapore forced resignation of CEO Khawaja Iqbal Hassan, for mismanagement
http://goo.gl/ojDcu
12/03/11 (USA SC) South Carolina’s $25 billion pension fund chief investor Robert Borden resigned. Borden’s resignation comes as the SC Retirement System faces a $13 billion deficit, prompting state lawmakers to call for a massive overhaul of the system.
http://goo.gl/ypK2G
12/05/11 (BERMUDA) HSBC Bermuda Ltd, chairman of the board and director John Campbell resigns
http://goo.gl/peFGD
12/05/11 (BERMUDA) HSBC Bermuda Ltd, CEO Philip Butterfield retires
http://goo.gl/peFGD
12/06/11 (USA ) Western Liberty Bancorp CFO George Rosenbaum has resigned.
http://goo.gl/ozuwB
12/08/11 (USA) Fidelity Global Special Situations Fund, manager Jorma Korhonen resigned.
http://goo.gl/a7Rhw
12/08/11 (INDIA) Nomura’s co-head of equity-linked solutions Neeraj Hora, resigns
http://goo.gl/WYcjR
12/14/11 (MAURITIUS) African Alliance Africa Pioneer Fund I (the “Fund”), Portfolio Manager Paul David Austin Clark resigned
http://goo.gl/YiagF
12/14/11 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs global head Milton R. Berlinski retiring at the end of the year
http://goo.gl/Xj0l4
12/15/11 (UK) Coutts [private bank] Senior private banker James Fleming resigns
http://goo.gl/ANN5B
12/19/11 (CANADA) Holloway Lodging Real Estate Investment Trust (a REIT) CEO Glenn Squires has resigned
http://goo.gl/8rAKb
12/19/11 (JAPAN) Citibank Japan CEO, Darren Buckley, resigns after Citibank was punished by regulators for the third time in seven years.
http://goo.gl/ScT47
12/19/11 (DENMARK) Danske Bank Peter Straarup, who will retire February 15
http://goo.gl/06c2b
12/19/11 (DENMARK) Danske Bank Eivind Kolding has resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors and from the three board committees on which he served, He continues as member of Danske Bank’s Board of Directors until he assumes the position of Chairman of the Executive Board on 15 February 2012. On the same day, at the latest, Eivind Kolding will resign from the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group.
http://goo.gl/06c2b
12/20/11 (UK) Prudential (UK) Chairman Harvey McGrath has informed the Board of his intention to retire from the Board in 2012 once a successor has been found.
http://goo.gl/IPOzf
12/20/11 (USA MA) Century Bancorp, Inc., Director Roger S. Berkowitz resigned.
http://goo.gl/bbdeT
12/21/11 (USA MN) Voyager Bank, fired CEO trade accusations, New details have emerged in Voyager Bank’s firing of its CEO in a court filing that accuses him of defrauding the bank of $15 million. The former CEO, Timothy Owens, has sued the bank for wrongful termination and accused the bank of defaming him.
http://goo.gl/3Q1Vg
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Chairman Mark Giles quits
http://goo.gl/dFDpH
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Claire Gargalli quits
http://goo.gl/kowkW
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Leslie Disharoon quits
http://goo.gl/kstLp
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Neal Kassell quits
http://goo.gl/NrrPZ
12/23/11 (USA) Third Avenue Value Fund, co-manager Marty Whitman is leaving.
http://goo.gl/iMe99
1/01/12 (NIGERIA) United Bank for Africa Plc Victor Osadolor resigns
http://goo.gl/b6AoA
1/01/12 (ISRAEL) Israel’s Bank Leumi CEO Galia Maor steps down after 16 years
http://goo.gl/xwlFt
1/03/12 (GREECE) Marfin Popular Bank Public Co Ltd, Mr Eleftherios Hiliadakis has resigned from the Board of Directors.
http://goo.gl/MuFa0
1/03/12 (USA VA) Suffolk Bancorp president and CEO J. Gordon Huszagh steps down
http://goo.gl/joExI
1/03/12 (USA WI) Michael Falbo, president and CEO of Southport Bank, has resigned just six months after accepting the position.
http://goo.gl/DP1uK
1/03/12 (UK) Arbuthnot Banking Group: Neil Kirton resigned from the Board
http://goo.gl/SKE7j
1/03/12 (UK) Arbuthnot Banking Group: Atholl Turrell left the Board.
http://goo.gl/bzZtQ
1/05/12 (UK) Saunderson House [Private Bank] CEO Nick Fletcher steps down
http://goo.gl/zvo1L
1/05/12 (USA NY) Blackstone/GSO Senior Floating Rate Term Fund and Blackstone/GSO Long-Short Credit Income Fund announced that John R. O’Neill has resigned.
http://goo.gl/ZiWGL
1/07/12 (UK) Arab Banking Corporation Intl. Bank (ABCIB) Manama, Bahrain: ABCIB announced retirement of CEO Nofal Barbar from its London office.
http://goo.gl/yF0Mm
1/09/12 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigns
http://goo.gl/5qsUu
1/09/12 (USA WASHINGTON DC) Whitehouse former banker and Chief of Staff William M. Daley resigned
http://goo.gl/34F0B
1/09/12 (USA NY) Morgan Stanley Chief Legal Officer Frank Barron retires.
http://goo.gl/XYCwJ
1/09/12 (SWITZERLAND) Temenos Group AG, provider of core banking software announced the resignation of Mark Austen as a member of the Board of Directors.
http://goo.gl/l6QzM
1/10/12 (USA IN) Security Bank of Springfield, president and CEO Steve Cour has announced plans to retire at the end of June.
http://goo.gl/jFbYA
1/11/12 (KAZAKHSTAN) BTA Bank, CEO Marat Zairov resigns for health reasons.
http://goo.gl/yAHgr
1/11/12 (SWITZERLAND) La Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild, CEO Claude Messulam resigns, replaced by Christophe de Backer, Claude Messulam to become a director of the bank holding company.
http://goo.gl/vWr3i
1/12/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs, Co-Head Securities Trading Edward K. Eisler retires
http://goo.gl/i2TVk
1/12/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs, Co-Head Securities Trading David B. Heller retires
http://goo.gl/i2TVk
1/13/12 (IRELAND) National Asset Management Agency, head of lending Graham Emmett is resigning
http://goo.gl/GN3h3
1/13/12 (USA DC) World Bank, Vice President for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili will retire from her position at the World Bank in May.
http://goo.gl/fiUsU
1/17/12 (CANADA) Cumberland Private Wealth Management CIO John Wilson quit to join another money manager.
http://goo.gl/3JuNJ
1/17/12 (HONG KONG) Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC Bank) CEO David Conner retires.
http://goo.gl/83Z1i
1/17/12 (UK) Morgan Stanley Intl, chairman Walid Chammah is retiring. An inside source speculated that it could mean that the company had suffered exposure to European sovereign debt woes under Chammah’s purview.
http://goo.gl/e7vS7
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Ali Yousef Al Awwadhy resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Miss Anoud Fadhel Al Hathran resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Tarek Farid Al Othman resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Salem Ali Hassan Al Ali resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Majed Ali Oweid Awadh resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Badr Suliman Al Ahmed resigned.
http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-heads of Goldman’s securities business David Heller resigns.
http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-heads of Goldman’s securities business Edward Eisler resigns.
http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-head of its investment management division Ed Forst resigns.
http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/19/12 (UK) Santander, senior director Americas division Francisco Luzón is retiring with a pension pot of about €56m, a package whose generous size is expected to reignite controversy over bankers’ remuneration.
http://goo.gl/XMRvP
1/19/12 (EGYPT) Beltone Financial Holding (BTFH) Alaa’ Sabaa resigned from board of directors.
http://goo.gl/5Eze1
1/19/12 (EGYPT) Beltone Financial Holding (BTFH) Wael EL Mahgary resigned from board of directors.
http://goo.gl/5Eze1
1/20/12 (USA NY) JPMorgan Chase, Mortgage Banking Default organization head Scott Powell has decided to leave the bank.
http://goo.gl/TCYpT
1/20/12 (JAPAN) Normura’s head of wholesale banking Jasjit Bhattai quits
http://goo.gl/6FuWe
1/20/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) First National Bank’s sharia banking division is in a state of flux after it was hit by a corporate governance scandal in which its chief executive, Ebi Patel, was put on “special leave” for almost a month while an internal probe was conducted. Patel has been reinstated, but is facing disciplinary action. Islamic finance forbids the payment and receipt of interest (riba), and investment in some industries. Sharia law states that interest-bearing transactions result in economic ills such as unemployment and high inflation. Trading in derivatives and speculative investment are also forbidden. Sharia law requires all transactions to be backed by tangible assets.
http://goo.gl/NmGJP
1/20/12 (USA) TIAA-CREF executive vice president and president of Asset Management, Scott C. Evans resigned
http://goo.gl/f6qLs
1/20/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) South African deputy economic development minister Enoch Godongwana quit his post this week in the face of growing outrage in government circles about his involvement in a company that allegedly defrauded clothing factory workers of R100-million of their pension fund money.
http://goo.gl/ZADvn
1/21/12 (UK) Butterfield Private Bank head Danny Dixon Steps Down
http://goo.gl/sdY1p
1/21/12 (SINGAPORE) ANZ Asia’s private banking head Nina Aguas resigns as managing director of Asia-Pacific private banking.
http://goo.gl/hlHvG
1/21/12 (USA CA) Nara Bancorp (Now called BBCN) President and CEO Min Kim Resigns
http://goo.gl/rcfJ3
1/22/12 (KENYA) National Bank of Kenya’s (NBK) managing director, Mr Reuben Marambii, will resign before year end.
http://goo.gl/c2n7r
1/24/12 (IRELAND) Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited fund, Paul Shevlin resigned as a director
http://goo.gl/OjZFF
1/24/12 (SWITZERLAND) Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, a French clinical immunologist and head of the $22.6 billion fund has abruptly resigned, since revelations about corruption and misspending severely rattled some of its biggest donors. The resignation came on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, which played a role in its creation a decade ago. A dinner for the public-private fund is planned Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and major backers Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The shakeup resulted from an internal review to address problems highlighted in Associated Press stories last year about the loss of tens of millions of dollars in grant money because of mismanagement and alleged fraud. Its biggest private donor is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $1.15 billion and provided it with $650 million so far.
http://goo.gl/bqXs8
1/25/12 (UK) SOFIA PROPERTY FUND LIMITED, Gerry Williams has resigned as a Director, following his resignation from Ardel Holdings Limited (“Ardel”) where he was CEO. Ardel is the holding company of Ardel Fund Services Limited which provides administration services in Guernsey to the Company.
http://goo.gl/kDfVv
1/25/12 (USA NY) Fortress Private Equity, CEO Daniel Madrid (aka Daniel Mudd) has resigned. Madrid was forced to leave in order to deal with SEC allegations. Prior to joining Fortress, Madrid served as Fannie Mae CEO and was forced to resign. SEC sued Madrid and former Freddie Mac CEO Richard West Long (aka Richard Syron) for hiding hundreds of billions of dollars in subprime loans. Madrid denied the SEC allegations saying the US govt. and investors were informed of Fannie Mae’s loan data.
http://goo.gl/u9IdB and http://goo.gl/v94ik and http://goo.gl/tXQwP
1/27/12 (SINGAPORE) AIMS AMP CAP INDUSTRIAL REIT, Mr Graham Sugden resigned.
http://goo.gl/VZYHY
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group COO Alfie Naidoo would be leaving to pursue personal interests
http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group chief marketing and communication officer Happy Ntshingila, will be taking up an “exciting position” outside banking
http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group CEO Daphne Motsepe retires at the end of April after a 10-year career at the bank.
http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/29/12 (PORTUGAL) Banco Santander Totta SA executive chairman Nuno Manuel da Silva Amado has resigned
http://goo.gl/Glvdn
1/29/12 (NEW ZEALAND) New Zealand Reserve Bank Gov Alan Bollard to Step Down
http://goo.gl/BwUgv
1/29/12 (UAE) NBD, Emirates ‘s investment banking division CEO Suresh Kumar is leaving the bank
http://goo.gl/S1x0F
1/30/12 (UK) British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) COO Andrew Graham steps down
http://goo.gl/4SDW8
1/31/12 (SCOTLAND) Royal Bank of Scotland former CEO Fred Goodwin Stripped of Knighthood
http://goo.gl/CoLVS
2/01/12 (SYRIA) Arab Bank Syria Board member Basma Talal Zein resigns.
http://goo.gl/WXxzw
2/01/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA [Barclay’s Bank] deputy CEO Louis von Zeuner resigns
http://goo.gl/IP8nH
2/01/12 (UK) Lloyds Bankging Group head of wholesaleTruett Tate quits
http://goo.gl/OqRVo
2/01/12 (UK) Llyods Banking Group Tim Tookey leaving end of February
http://goo.gl/vjO5M
2/02/12 (VENEZUELA) Banking Crisis Arne Chacon arrested for Banking Corruption
http://goo.gl/bb5sh
2/02/12 (USA) American Perspective Bank, President and CEO Thomas J. Beene resigned.
http://goo.gl/K66eb
2/02/12 (USA) NIR Group hedge funds, Corey Ribotsky was forced out of NIR by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, the court-appointed liquidator, following allegations of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In September, the SEC sued Ribotsky and NIR for taking more than $1 million of investors’ money to buy cars and watches.
2/02/12 (IRELAND) AXA Rosenberg Management Ireland Limited, director Nathalie Savey resigned.
http://goo.gl/cXB8u
2/03/12 (UK) VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund Ltd, Non-Executive Director Horst Geicke has resigned.
http://goo.gl/r955T
2/03/12 (UK) UBS London trader, Kweku M. Adoboli, was arrested and charged with fraud and false accounting, forcing UBS to announce a $2.3 billion trading loss.
http://goo.gl/ClTaq
2/05/12 (USA – NY) Morgan’s investment banking chairman Joseph Perella quit
http://goo.gl/pG2jF
2/05/12 (USA – NY) Morgan Stanley investment banking Tarek Abdel-Meguid quit
http://goo.gl/bRv9K
2/06/12 (INDIA) Dhanlaxmi Bank CEO Amitabh Chaturvedi quits:
http://goo.gl/OhCEb
2/06/12 (USA NY) TD Ameritrade, head of retail distribution John Bunch resigns. Bunch is leaving to take the top job at a small investment advisory firmin Kansas City.
http://goo.gl/kgS7M
2/07/12 (USA) Bank Of America’s Mortgage Business Chief Barbara Desoer Retires
http://goo.gl/i7AUY
2/07/12 (INDIA) Kotak Mahindra Bank Falguni Nayar quits
http://goo.gl/fP03J
2/07/12 (IRAN) Iran denies central bank resignation rumor (don’t believe until its denied?)
http://goo.gl/PiQSy
2/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Group Ltd – Resignation of Group Secretary Loren Wulfsohn
http://goo.gl/K1pfn
2/08/12 (USA OH) Cleveland International Fund (CIF) private equity fund, A. Eddy Zai launched and led the Cleveland International Fund, an investment outfit that pairs wealthy foreign investors hoping for U.S. residency with job-creating projects. Zai resigned from his job this week, before being indicted in a bank-fraud scheme that, according to investigators, contributed to the collapse of a credit union in Eastlake.
http://goo.gl/tgamf
2/08/12 (UAE) Emirates NBD makes top-level changes Bank’s deputy chief executive officer Abdul Wahed Al Fahim has resigned.
http://goo.gl/JUdNd
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 62 year old Monsignor Emilio Messina, the Archdiocese of Camerino-San Severino Marche investigated on money laundering by Italian officials.
http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 49 year old Father Don Salvatore Palumbo of the socially popular parish of San Gaetano
http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 37 year old Father Horace Bonaccorsi of Catania, already tried and acquitted in Sicily for money laundering offenses recycling money through accounts at IOR
http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 85 year old Father Don Evaldo Biasini of Rome. Father Don Evaldo Biasini is known as the “Don of Cash”.
http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (UKRAINE) National Bank of Ukraine deputy governor Volodymyr Krotiuk quits
http://goo.gl/8BuXy
2/09/12 (UK) JP Morgan Chinese Investment Trust PLC, non-executive Director Madam Yujiang Zhao resigned
http://goo.gl/CPO23
2/09/12 (UK) Alliance Trust Savings (ATS), Robert Burgess is stepping down as CEO.
http://goo.gl/ohHG3
2/10/12 (KOREA) Korea Exchange Bank chief Larry Klane steps down
http://goo.gl/DBKdc
2/10/12 (INDIA) Tamilnad Mercantile Bank CEO A K Jagannathan resigns
http://goo.gl/wMl5g
2/13/12 (KUWAIT) Kuwait Central Bank CEO Sheikh Salem Abdulaziz Al Sabbah resigns
http://goo.gl/GFvIy
2/13/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs confirmed on Monday that George N. Mattson, one of the firm’s top deal makers in the industrial sector, will retire. He was a senior relationship banker with a client list that included General Motors, General Electric and Caterpillar.
http://goo.gl/vgnq2
2/13/12 (HONDURAS) Honduras finance minister William Chong Wong, resigned on Monday after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the country did not reach its deficit and monetary targets for 2011.
http://goo.gl/drgHY
2/14/12 (NICARAQUA) Nicaraqua Central Bank President Antenor Rosales resigns
http://goo.gl/iQ0n8
2/14/12 (UK) Social finance pioneer Malcolm Hayday quits Charity Bank
http://goo.gl/uHp6C
2/14/12 (PAKISTAN) National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) chairman Syed Ali Raza resigned
http://goo.gl/scexo
2/14/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs Jeffrey Moslow resigns, an investment banker to companies such as Tyco International Ltd, Nstar, the Boston-based utility, and defense contractor Dyncorp International Inc.
http://goo.gl/7h4O7
2/15/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) HPA – Hospitality Property Fund Limited, chairman Frank Berkeley resigned.
http://goo.gl/wJmpR
2/15/12 (USA) Boston Properties (REIT), Executive VP and COO E. Mitchell Norvilleto resigned
http://goo.gl/AW7X7
2/15/12 (WORLD) World Bank CEO Zoellick resigns
http://goo.gl/dHDSm
Did the White House tell the World Bank president that he’s out?
http://goo.gl/wUOgb
2/15/12 (CHINA) Morgan non-executive chairman Stanley Stephen Roach will be retiring.
http://goo.gl/MQeGW
2/15/12 (SLOVENIA) Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor CEO Andrej Plos resigns
http://goo.gl/SNsVI
2/15/12 (SLOVENIA) Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d. CEO Bozo Jasovic resigns
http://goo.gl/TyYiJ
2/16/12 (USA IL) Deerfield Capital Management LLC, CEO Daniel Hattori and CEO of CIFC Corp resigned.
http://goo.gl/LLNnD
2/16/12 (USA IL) Deerfield Capital Management LLC, COO Luke Knecht and CEO of CIFC Corp, resigned both positions.
http://goo.gl/LLNnD
2/16/12 (UK) The Financial Services Authority Margaret Cole is to step down
http://goo.gl/yT6rS
2/16/12 (GHANA) Databank Group Executive Chair Ken Ofori-Atta steps down
http://goo.gl/c7PtU
2/16/12 (SAUDI ARABIA) Saudi Hollandi Banks Managing Director Geoffrey Calvert Quits
http://goo.gl/CtmOU
2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) ANZ Bank Australia CFO Peter Marriott resigns
http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (UK) Royal Bank of Scotland Sr Equities Trader Jason Edinburgh Arrested
http://goo.gl/WczHh
2/16/12 (UK) Royal Bank of Scotland director equities bus. Vincent Walsh director Arrested
http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (UK) Marex Spectron senior trader Michael Elsom Arrested
http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) Royal Bank of Scotland Austraila CEO Stephen Williams resigns
http://goo.gl/4r16D
2/17/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Coronation Fund Managers CEO Hugo Nelson is stepping down at age of 40.
http://goo.gl/I3NY8
2/17/12 (PAKISTAN) PICIC Asset Management Company Limited CFO Ahmed Raza resigns
http://goo.gl/K8A2I
2/17/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein out as by summer
http://goo.gl/UjpzD
2/17/12 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Council President Hansueli Raggenbass resigns
http://goo.gl/1n1Nr
2/17/12 (UK) Insight Investment, asset manager Mike Pinggera has resigned..
http://goo.gl/uDplK
2/17/12 (USA NY) Harbinger Group Inc. CFO Francis T. McCarron has advised the Company of his resignation effective April 30
http://goo.gl/6il4F
2/17/12 (BULGARIA) Bulgaria National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), The managing director Neli Nesheva, resigned after a two-day row about end-of-year bonuses paid by NHIF to its employees.
http://goo.gl/7UQxv
2/18/12 (PAKISTAN) The Bank of Azad Jammu and Kashmir executive Zulfiqar Abbasi resigns
http://goo.gl/G0woP
2/19/12 (MALTA) Bank of Valletta, director of the Multi-Manager Fund John C. Ripard, has resigned being reprimanded by the MFSA for disposing of his holdings in the Fund whilst in possession of sensitive information which was not available to the public.
http://goo.gl/1li3r
2/20/12 (RUSSIA) Head of Russian Bank Regulator Gennady Melikyan Steps Down
http://goo.gl/Unuez
2/20/12 (SWITZERLAND) Credit Suisse Chief Joseph Tan resigns
http://goo.gl/F5twL
2/20/12 (ISRAEL) Bank Leumi le-Israel Ltd: Zvi Itskovitch resigns
http://goo.gl/aA0RW
2/20/12 (USA WA) First Financial Northwest Director Spencer Schneider Quits
http://goo.gl/6Dj0i
2/21/12 (ARGENTINA) Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) Gen Mgr Benigno Velez, resigns
http://goo.gl/DuMrm
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Abdul Matlub resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank
http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Selima Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank
http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Abdul Musabbir Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank
http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) City General Insurance Co. Ltd director Geasuddin Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank
http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Social Islami Bank Limited director Taslima Akter resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on Eastland Insurance Company Limited
http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (JAPAN) CITIBANK JAPAN: Bakhshi is taking over duties from Brian Mccappin, who the bank said in December would resign after the unit was banned for two weeks from trading tied to the London and Tokyo interbank offered rates.
http://goo.gl/Z1rnw
2/22/12 (HONG KONG) DZ BANK project finance head Tim Meaney quits
http://goo.gl/ppKno
2/22/12 (SINGAPORE) Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund’s CEO John Stuart to resign
http://goo.gl/ji7Q4
2/22/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Group Chief Howard Wietschner to Retire
http://goo.gl/x4Zsr
2/22/12 (UK) UBS AG’s (UBSN) Doug McCutcheon, head of Healthcare Banking in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific region, has left Switzerland’s biggest bank after 25 years at the firm.
http://goo.gl/Dnxqh
2/23/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs Nordic M&A banker Luca Ferrari has decided to retire from the firm, clients included the largest telecommunications operator in Spain the Spanish telecommunications.
http://goo.gl/qmCh3
2/23/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Richard Gush resigns from Standard Bank
http://goo.gl/DTL5S
2/23/12 (SCOTLAND) Royal Bank of Scotland Group director John McFarlane resigns.
http://goo.gl/KoEUI
2/24/12 (GUERNSEY) Spearpoint Limited (SPL) Investment Funds, director Mike Kirby resigns for business reasons.
http://goo.gl/9stPB
2/24/12 (INDIA) Breaking: ICICI Bank GC Pramod Rao resigns
http://goo.gl/5eUqU
2/24/12 (HONG KONG) Citigroup Pvt Bank Global Real Estate Kwang Meng Quek Resigns
http://goo.gl/JIC9A
2/24/12 (NEW ZEALAND) FSF Executive Director Kirk Hope resigns
http://goo.gl/6UJau
2/24/12 (USA NY) Evercore Partners Head Eduardo Mestre steps down
http://goo.gl/n5RLY
2/25/12 (AUSTRALIA AND NZ) Goldman Sachs Chairman Stephen Fitzgerald quits
http://goo.gl/nMTLW
2/25/12 (DENMARK) European Investment Bank (EIB), Mr Sigmund Lubanski, of the Kingdom of Denmark tendered his resignation.
http://goo.gl/y4XXF
2/27/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank Americas chief Seth Waugh steps down
http://goo.gl/8lxSw
2/27/12 (BAHRAIN) Khaleeji Commercial Bank CEO Ebrahim Ebrahim quits
http://goo.gl/yKjzL
2/27/12 (BAHRAIN) – Mumtalakat Holding [Sovereign Wealth Fund] CEO Al Zain resigns
http://goo.gl/hhHSm
2/27/12 (FRANCE) Societe Generale’s Investment Banking Chief Michel Péretié Steps Down
http://goo.gl/IJ5Lw
2/27/12 (MALAYSIA) Elaf Bank CEO Dr El Jaroudi resigns
http://goo.gl/eVCS5
2/27/12 (GERMANY) Equiduct chairman Artur Fischer steps down
http://goo.gl/Q0dWR
2/27/12 (IRAN) Bank Melli CEO Mahmoud Reza Khaavari Resigns – Flees to Canada!
http://goo.gl/DDEUk
2/27/12 (IRAN) Bank Saderat CEO Mohammad Jahromi resigns
http://goo.gl/ZD0mc
2/27/12 (UK) Lloyds Banking Group Glen Moreno steps down
http://goo.gl/dsXcE
2/27/12 (SINGAPORE) Standard Chartered Bank, global head of repo and collateralised financing Tanweer Khan resigned.
http://goo.gl/hgbuc
2/28/12 (HONG KONG) Hang Seng Bank CEO Margaret Leung Ko May-yee quits
http://goo.gl/Uo800
2/28/12 (CHINA) Bank of China International ECM global head Marshall Nicholson quits
http://goo.gl/26MYq
2/28/12 (SINGAPORE) DBS security head Jim Pasqurell quits, cites health reasons
http://goo.gl/NDJze
2/28/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America’s Asia-Pac. mrkts Brian Canniffe quits
http://goo.gl/cRkCP
2/28/12 (BELGIUM) KBC’s CEO Jan Vanhevel is to retire after a career spanning 41 years.
http://goo.gl/1rCWd
2/28/12 (CANADA) Ontario Securities Commission chairwoman Peggy-Anne Brown quits
http://goo.gl/HIYXv
2/28/12 (AUSTRALIA) Bank manager Colin John Carleton jailed nine years for $3m theft
http://goo.gl/ggPvq
2/28/12 (SRI LANKA) Sri Lanka Com Bank CEO Amitha Gooneratne retires
http://goo.gl/YxvNA
2/28/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) REDEFINE INCOME FUND director Gerald Leissner resigns
http://goo.gl/F0UgN
2/28/12 (ITALY) UNICREDIT: Chairman Dieter Rampl not available for a new mandate
http://goo.gl/7aLRU
2/28/12 (UK) Bank of England Sir David Lees re-appointed Chair of Bank of England and gives notice of resignation at end of 2013
http://goo.gl/LkJhV
2/28/12 (IRELAND) State Street Global Advisors Cash Funds plc Director Keith Walsh resigns
http://goo.gl/n6uoM
2/29/12 (AUSTRALIA) Perpetual portfolio manager Matt Williams steps down
http://goo.gl/Jh9jd
2/29/12 (UK) Honister Capital CEO Richard Pearson steps down
http://goo.gl/014or
2/29/12 (GUYANA) National Investment and Commercial Investments Ltd. (NICIL), Executive Director Winston Brassington resigns, “We feel that (Winston) Brassington knows everything…A to Z about all the transactions,” said Chairman of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan, as he sounded a warning that controversial figure could be subpoenaed to appear before the Parliamentary Economic Sector Committee.
http:// goo.gl/L7I35
3/01/12 (MALAYSIA) RHB Bank Bhd deputy managing director Renzo Viegas quits
http://goo.gl/wACrI
3/01/12 (ITALY) Italian Banking Association Chairman Giuseppe Mussari talks to reporters in Rome after he and seven other executives offered to resign in protest over new banking-fee rules included in the government’s legislation on boosting competition.
http://goo.gl/3llyT
3/01/12 (USA FL) Florida Venture Forum [Venture Capital] Exec Dir Robin Lester quits
http://goo.gl/nA8g9
3/01/12 (USA NY) PineBridge Investments said Win Neuger has resigned as chief executive. Neuger helped build AIG’s third party asset management business, PineBridge still manages AIG assets
http://goo.gl/SI7kT
3/01/12 (SINGAPORE) UBS Singapore – James Tulley is leaving Switzerland’s largest bank, it is not clear where he is going.
http://goo.gl/BGugF
3/01/12 (USA NH) Piscataqua Savings Bank CEO Jay Gibson retires
http://goo.gl/uEqDV
3/01/12 (ICELAND) Iceland’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) fired its director Gunnar Andersen
http://goo.gl/VG9q5
3/01/12 (USA OR) Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF) senior RE officer Brad Child will retire
http://goo.gl/vcERz
3/02/12 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Corp, assistant general manager and head of corporate banking Mickey Mehta quits
http://goo.gl/B9dR0
3/02/12 (USA NY) Deutsche Bank Student Loan CEOJohn Hupalo quits to start student loan counseling firm.
http://goo.gl/8kZuc
3/02/12 (UK) Bank of England Sir Mervin King resigns in June, Lord Sassoon tipped as replacement.
http://goo.gl/ZEUwf
3/02/12 (BOTSWANA) Barclays Bank Botswana managing director Wilfred Mpai forced to resign
http://goo.gl/npBe2
3/02/12 (HONG KONG) New Century Group Hong Kong Ltd [investment house and leisure group] Wilson Ng resigns
http://goo.gl/wFSV8
3/02/12 (USA NY) Citigroup Richard Parsons to step down as chairman
http://goo.gl/BhZ0F
3/03/12 (AUSTRIA) Volksbank AG (VBAG) The contract of CEO Gerald Wenzel will not be extended
http://goo.gl/w99tD
3/03/12 (ETHIOPIA) Dashen Bank’s board dismisses president Leulseged Teferi
http://goo.gl/Y801M
3/03/12 (RUSSIA) Enza Capital KK, Wealthy British banker Philip Townsend (Baron Townsend of Rathmore) and his wife killed at Estonia holiday home ⑆44541444⑈
http://goo.gl/GSOUN and http://goo.gl/x94ID and http://goo.gl/gGgLP
3/04/12 (KOREA) Hana Financial Group Inc, prominent figure in the history of South Korean finance Kim Seung-yu , resigns
http://goo.gl/fmNxY
3/04/12 (USA NY) JP Morgan prop trading chief Mike Stewart quits
http://goo.gl/gubPj
3/05/12 (SAUDI ARABIA) Al Rajhi Bank CEO Abdullah bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi has resigned
http://goo.gl/pNx0l
3/5/12 (UK) Jupiter fund co-manager Tony Nutt steps down
http://goo.gl/RPqOp
3/05/12 (UK) Jupiter fund co-manager John Hamilton steps down
http://goo.gl/RPqOp
3/05/12 (NEW ZEALAND) Insured Group Bill Jeffries has resigned as chairman and director
http://goo.gl/gX7wu
3/05/12 (USA) Reliance Bancshares chairman Patrick Gideon resigned
http://goo.gl/u6BT4
3/05/12 (UK) Charterhouse partner Gordon Bonnyman is stepping down.
http://goo.gl/iAEYB
3/05/12 (UK) HgCapital, partner Lindsay Dibden is leaving after 20 years.
http://goo.gl/iAEYB
3/06/12 (FRANCE) Blackstone Group’s Paris office leader Jean-Michel Steg will step down
http://goo.gl/w3Ca5
3/06/12 (JAMAICA) Jamaica Money Market Brokers Limited, Patricia Sutherland has resigned as Executive Director
http://goo.gl/oMwv6
3/06/12 (JAMAICA) Jamaica’s Financial Services Commission (FSC), Executive director Rohan Barnett, has resigned the position, the Ministry of Finance, Planning and the Public Service announced this afternoon.
http://goo.gl/FBwFo
3/06/12 USA CT) Wells Fargo & Co. said that Mackey McDonald, one of the last remaining directors from Wachovia is retiring.
http://goo.gl/F1O4v
3/06/12 (USA PA) USA Technologies Inc Bradley M. Tirpak, a nominee of Shareholder Advocates for Value Enhancement,has resigned from its board subsequent to a settlement agreement with the investing group, according to an SEC filing. Provides a network of wireless non-cash transactions, associated financial/network services and energy management. It provides networked credit card and other non-cash systems in the vending, commercial laundry, hospitality and digital imaging industries.
http://goo.gl/8oi7C
3/06/12 (UK) Sterling Green Group has announced that Philip Kanas, a non-executive director, has decided to resign
Sterling Green Group PLC became a cash shell following the disposal of their subsidiaries Taxdebts Ltd, Sterling Green (Mortgages) Ltd and the back books of the clients of Sterling Green Ltd. during December 2011.
http://goo.gl/qc3jB
3/06/12 (UK) Aberdeen Asset Management, non-executive director Gerhard Fusenig has resigned from the board.
http://goo.gl/ZIkvQ
3/07/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank AG’s (DB) Chief Risk Officer Hugo Baenzigeri to resign
http://goo.gl/MWqsH
3/07/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank AG’s (DB) Chief Operating Officer Hermann-Josef Lamberti to resign
http://goo.gl/MWqsH
3/07/12 (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES) Dubai Mercantile Exchange announced Thomas Leaver will step down as CEO
http://goo.gl/rfhWN
3/07/12 (SCOTLAND) Macfarlane Group Chairman Archie Hunter to step down after 8 years of service
http://goo.gl/RHllr
3/07/12 (USA) BlackRock Emerging Markets Fund co-head Daniel Tubbs, has left the group to pursue other opportunities.
http://goo.gl/CpEzZ
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Christopher French resigns from board
http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) David Wildermuth resigns from board
http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Matthew Westerman resigns from board
http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) co-head of global mergers and acquisitions Yoel Zaoui resigns
http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Phil Beatty resigned as head of European power and natural-gas trading
http://goo.gl/jqbYY
3/07/12 (SINGAPORE) Nikko Asset Management Timothy McCarthy is retiring as chairman and CEO at the end of the month
http://goo.gl/v8tcT
3/07/12 (HONG KONG) UBS Senior Asia Economist Jonathan Anderson Departs
http://goo.gl/09VqT
3/07/12 (HAITI) FORMER DIRECTOR HAITI CENTRAL BANK SLAIN! ⑆44541444⑈
http://goo.gl/UtVz3
3/07/12 (FRANCE) Société Générale Private Banking, Daniel Truchi is to step down as head of Société Générale Private Banking
http://goo.gl/XhgJ9
3/07/12 (AUSTRALIA) Customers Ltd, Tim Wildash has cashed himself out as chief executive of Australia’s largest ATM operator
http://goo.gl/eZJMb
3/07/12 (USA CA) CALSTRS, Pascal Villiger, senior private equity portfolio manager at the $145 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System resigns
http://goo.gl/ub0ke
3/07/12 (USA) Astaire quits Bank of America Merrill to dance to Barclays Capital’s tune
http://goo.gl/Zv6Ny
3/08/12 (USA NY) Schroders, CIO Alan Brown is steps down
http://goo.gl/ZTtYo
3/08/12 (USA IL) CBOE Executive Patrick Fay Put on Leave Amid SEC Probe
http://goo.gl/x5snO
3/08/12 (USA NH & RI) Bristol County Savings Bank president E. Dennis Kelly retires after 35 years
http://goo.gl/8KVKn
3/08/12 (GERMANY) Clearstream Banking AG – Katja Rosenkranz To Leave Deutsche Börse Group [stockmarket]
http://goo.gl/RiVNi
3/08/12 (UK) B&CE CEO Brian Griffiths is to retire later this year
http://goo.gl/AV7Sk
3/08/12 (UK) Invesco Trimark Ltd, portfolio manager Dana Love has resigned.
http://goo.gl/MyQ90
3/08/12 (ISRAEL) Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer will hand in his shock resignation in the coming days and take up a new position as head of the Bank of Zambia. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz is believed to be furious with Fischer’s decision. Treasury officials said he even canceled his participation in the office’s annual Purim party in order to convince Fischer to reverse his decision.
http://goo.gl/0DlSA
3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Group Limited (SBK), board member Sir Paul Judge retires.
http://goo.gl/SjSPg
3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Groupl Limited (SBK), board member Sir Sam Jonah retires.
http://goo.gl/SjSPg
3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Mongol Bank President Alag Batsukh submitted his resignation letter to Speaker of Parliament D. Demberel at the end of last month. He described his reason for resigning as a lack of support by Parliament.
http://goo.gl/RDmNx
3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Asia Pacific Securities, General Manager Narantuguldur Saijrakh recently resigned, to focus on his role as Director of Khan Investment Management, investment advisor to the Khan Mongolia Equity Fund – the first open-ended investment vehicle with monthly dealing that invests in Mongolia related equities listed both domestically and internationally.
http://goo.gl/2T4R6
3/09/12 (Côte d’Ivoire) Banque Central des Etats d’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) The Ivorian governor of the multi-billion dollar West Africa Francophone bank, Philippe-Henry Dacoury-Tabley, resigned his post.
http://goo.gl/CevLn
3/09/12 (UK) Lazard , co-head of investment banking Alexis de Rosnay quits. De Rosnay specialises in the healthcare sector, he has advised Teva Pharmaceutical and Novartis.
http://goo.gl/3gzbi
3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, UK head of portfolio management Martyn Surguy resigned.
http://goo.gl/5Ti2p
3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, head of discretionary management, Kypros Charalambous, having also stepped down.
http://goo.gl/5Ti2p
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, K.J. Kim, responsible for Southeast Asia, resigned
http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Jimmy Choi, who was in charge of high-yield debt, resigned.
http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Leonard Ng, a vice-president in Hong Kong resigned.
http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (AUSTRALIA) Bank of Queensland CFO Ram Kangatharan plans to leave the bank.
http://goo.gl/ieNea
3/09/12 (USA) Cerberus Capital Management LP, CEO Robert Nardelli resigns.
http://goo.gl/9uKVx
3/10/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, Rob Chapman opted to quit running its regional subsidiary St George Bank.
http://goo.gl/G6MD
3/10/12 (TURKEY) Garanti Bank, The deputy CEO of Turkish lender Tolga Egemen, has decided to quit.
http://goo.gl/vAMzV
3/10/12 (CHINA) Korea Development Bank, Shanghai unit senior manager Stella Wen resigned.
http://goo.gl/55CqZ
3/10/12 (HONG KONG) Deutsche Bank, Johan Sudiman resigns as director.
http://goo.gl/6CYGP
3/12/12 (USA) John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, head of investments Andrew Chapman, resigns
http://goo.gl/hevqh
3/12/12 (USA CA) California’s Department of Financial Institutions, commissioner William Haraf resigned. The DFI did not say why he is leaving.
http://goo.gl/zquTc
3/12/12 (KUWAIT) Gulf Bank, Chairman Ali Rashaid Al Bader quits
http://goo.gl/LDz9b
3/12/12 (UK and IRELAND) Allfunds Bank, head of UK and Ireland Alan Gadd is stepping down from his role at the end of April.
http://goo.gl/4DF6i
3/12/12 (USA) ICAP, CEO of the electronic broking business David Rutter step down following a restructuring of the business.
http://goo.gl/SUHqW
3/12/12 (UK) SVG Capital, chairman Nicholas Ferguson resigns. His departure left him well placed to succeed James Murdoch as chairman of BSkyB should the latter bow to investor pressure and step down. Other investors in the satellite broadcaster suggested Ferguson might be seen as too close to Murdoch to win the support of institutional shareholders.
http://goo.gl/z19wH
3/12/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), CEO Paul Baloyi resigns.
http://goo.gl/yX4xo
3/12/12 (USA) Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, CEO Bryan Marsal Resigns Title, Remains on as Adviser
http://goo.gl/1K9zV
3/12/12 (USA IL) CME Group Inc, CEO Craig Donohues will step down at year end.
http://goo.gl/lvzgC
3/13/12 (USA) Eaton Vance Corp, Treasurer and CFO Robert J. Whelan has stepped down.
http://goo.gl/oxmbL
3/12/12 (USA IL) CBOE Holdings Inc. (CBOE), senior compliance executive Patrick Fay has resigned. The options exchange being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fay had been placed on leave after the SEC began investigating the options-market operator’s oversight of traders.
http://goo.gl/gj4W6
3/13/12 (USA) Mithras Investment Trust, chairman Mike Wooderson will step down
http://goo.gl/UjO2e
3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, President Luke Hayden resigned from to pursue what the company calls “other interests.” http://goo.gl/iaqQf
3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, Treasurer Mark Johnson.resigned
http://goo.gl/iaqQf
3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, head of corporate affairs after David Bell decided to step down from the role. Bell is the latest top executive to leave the bank.
http://goo.gl/FntUz
3/13/12 (UK) Capula’s Systemic Trading Head Qiang Dai to Leave Fund
http://goo.gl/zkrN2
3/13/12 (UAE) National Bank of Abu Dhabi, CEO Michael Tomalin, will retire from the post in a few months.
http://goo.gl/dzBW8
3/13/12 (ISRAEL) Osem Investments Ltd, CEO Gazi Kaplan has tendered his resignation, effective April 2, citing heath reasons. Nestlé SA owns 58.8% of Osem.
http://goo.gl/t032l
3/13/12 (USA) Paulson & Co.’s, partner and head of the global bank team Robert Lacoursiere has quit to form his own hedge fund
http://goo.gl/I8UNd
3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) ASX Ltd, Chairman David Gonski will step down from his role at Australia’s main stock market operator after being appointed to oversee almost A$90 billion ($95 billion) in the nation’s sovereign-wealth funds.
http://goo.gl/gJN33
3/13/12 (UK) JP Morgan, Asset Management European chief Jamie Broderick is to step down more than 20 years at the firm.
http://goo.gl/MV65V
3/13/12 (UK) SVG Chairman Nicholas Ferguson retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY
3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Edgar Koning retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY
3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Denis Raeburn retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY
3/13/12 (UK) SVG Director Francis Finlay retires.
http://goo.gl/hTDDY
3/14/12 (UK) Goldmand Sachs, executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Greg Smith, is resigning today.
http://americankabuki.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html
3/14/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA chairman Garth Griffin to retire
http://goo.gl/Mhjb5

Whew! So after all of this what is the truth? It does appear that the financial elite are in some kind of retreat. Also you can a pattern where the further we come forward to the present, the more major CEO and board members are involved, in other words, the most senior management. Also odd was the number of en masse resignations of board members. What is disturbing is the fact that I tracked everyone of these people stepping down, really hoping to see that a majority of them were just making “career moves”, but exactly the opposite was true for the majority. Words and phrases such as, “sudden resignation”, “unexpected move” “surprising” were often contained in the news articles chronicling the moves.

I went one step further to see if I could independently verify where these folks were going. Here is where it gets a bit murky and interesting. A number of these very successful people in their prime are “retiring”, “going to follow personal pursuits”, “personal matters”, and they are NOT resurfacing.

Some of this information is leaking into MSM now within the last few weeks, but truly this phenomena is being grossly under-reported, no doubt.

In summary, as I finished this article, I asked myself one question, and I think it is the same question we all ask when it comes to “high finance”, so what? What can I do about it? Then it hit me, now I know details and I do believe there is a financial cabal that does act in concert with one another and someone or group, or government has uncovered some extremely damaging information about this financial conspiracy, and they are trying to get them under control. What we can do about it is insist that our governments start doing their job and regulate these guys and prosecute those who have violated criminal laws. This should be a MAJOR platform of any presidential candidate and we should insist that Congress begin acting now. Our voices really do count. Just ask any woman of late, right Ladies?

Announcing the World is Under New Management-Goldman Sachs

You know, when I tell people that what we are experiencing is not a new depression or giant recession, but instead the largest transfer of wealth to the ¼% elite, they nod their head in disbelief and quietly think that man is off his rocker. But when you look at what is happening politically in the US, Europe, UK, and to a lesser extent the Middle East and Africa there is no doubt in my mind that the financial elite have put Goldman Sachs in charge of managing the world.

From their perspective it makes good sense and after all running governments is the biggest business opportunity of all. Where else can you siphon off assets and when you need more money you just extract it from the citizenry and they cannot do anything about it.

Look at the US government at all levels, executive, legislative, and administrative, who is running the show? Ex-Goldman Sachs and FUTURE Goldman Sachs executives, the FUTURE part is important to watch. Consider this from the Independent.

Source: The Independent

The ascension of Mario Monti to Italian Prime Ministers office is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic. This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank’s alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund’s European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as “the Vampire Squid”, and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the Eurozone, skeptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the Eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman’s interests are entwined with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.

The bank’s two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro.

Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman’s UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalization he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country’s financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland’s interest rate this summer.

Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank.

Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the Eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn’t be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs. (See previous blogs).

The bank’s traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channeled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece’s unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time.

Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: “It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.” When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn’t involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman.

It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a “voluntary” haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the Eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent’s big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other Eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus.

“The IMF is running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?” says Simon Johnson. “It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same.”

Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm’s money that Italian government bonds will not default. When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history, but got little coverage in MSM.

The giant myth here is that the interests of the banks are the same interests for governments. This is what is being used to justify this massive transfer of wealth. Do we, as a collectively we, not see this as it is? What is really happening is the methodical dismantling of government and democracy in favor of the commercial interests of the bankers without the consent of the people. If any current government official balks they are eliminated. Ask the recent PREVIOUS PM’s from Greece and Italy.

My suggestion, given these facts, is that all the unemployed and under employed workers in the world should immediately apply for work at Goldman Sachs. It looks like the only company hiring for the next five years globally.

The European Union Has Entered Final Meltdown Phase

As we have outlined in previous articles, The EU will collapse, it was a matter of time. Well, that time has arrived. The falsely placed hope was that Greece would go silently into the night and then the politicos in Germany and France then could consolidate any impacts from the rest of the PIIGS and somehow manage the overwhelming debt over time. It was a fool’s dream from the onset.

It was so because first there is no way the German and French People would settle with being saddled with the cost of that bailout. The big secret is that both Germany and France are not in that good a shape themselves. France’s external debt to GDP is 208% and Germany’s external debt to GDP is 163%. Here is what the house of cards really looks like:

It is deceptive, at least, to use the Public Debt to GDP to honestly evaluate the situation, given the enormous exposure of the German and French banks are facing in the derivatives market float that currently exists. Keep it in your mind always that is the banks behind all of this and the ECB would have to bail them out when the final wheel falls off the joy wagon.

There is no way that German and French banks can cover their exposure and the ECB cannot possibly print that much money without setting off massive hyperinflation that would follow any effort to try and print that many Euros. The hope was that Greece would accept the draconian austerity demanded by the bankers to cover the 220% external debt (ED) to GDP.

Where it gets really crazy is that IF Greece went silently into what can only be described as a deep depression, somehow the EU could then manage the Italian ED (135%), the Irish ED 1098%, the Portuguese ED 239%, and the Spanish ED of 173%, basically on the backs of the French and Germans. See how crazy it gets.

Well it just got a whole lot crazier in the last 72 hours. The country that invented drama and democracy is not disappointing the world on either front. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Monday called for two high- stakes votes. The first asks parliament to say by the end of this week whether it has confidence in his leadership. The second is a referendum in which Greek voters would approve or reject, possibly by year’s end, Europe’s latest debt-crisis workout. The move blindsided European leaders on the eve of a global summit and rocked lawmakers in Papandreou’s party, some of whom are now calling for him to step down. The next day, stocks tumbled worldwide, the euro declined and Italian bonds plunged.

French banks and other lenders exposed to Greece and other weak euro zone countries slumped on Tuesday after Greece’s leader said he would put a bailout plan to a referendum, raising the risk of a disorderly default. Papandreou knew all along he could not force the Greek people to accept the austerity plan proposed by the ECB and IMF. Europe’s latest bailout proposal falls far short of what’s needed. Under the deal, private banks holding Greek debt would voluntarily accept a 50 percent write-off on their returns; the European Financial Stability Facility, the EU’s bailout fund, would be leveraged to 1 trillion euros ($1.37 trillion) from 400 billion euros; and European banks would raise 106 billion euros ($145 billion) in new capital by June 2012. As for Greece, it is due to receive 130 billion euros ($180 billion) in public funds on top of 110 billion euros pledged in 2010.

Writedowns of Greece’s sovereign debt should be much steeper. Greek bonds held by the European Central Bank would not be covered, so the writedown is really less than 50 percent. It needs to be closer to 70 percent to make Greece’s debt burden bearable. In addition, the EFSF needs a war chest of at least 3 trillion euros to make sure Europe’s banks are recapitalized and to guarantee the financing needs of Italy and other struggling governments.

Greeks know that this latest bailout proposal will also come with many unpopular strings attached, including further austerity measures. In an Oct. 27 poll for the Greek weekly To Vima, the majority said the deal should be put to a national vote, with 58 percent calling it “negative” or “probably negative.” Deep budget cuts, broken pension promises and heavy government job losses have already led to strikes, street protests and violence.

Then Monday’s surprise was, as Greek politics grew ever more chaotic, strong political protests erupted as the government moved to replace military chiefs with officers seen as more supportive of George Papandreou, the prime minister. In a surprise development, Panos Beglitis, Defence Minister, a close confidante of Mr. Papandreou, summoned the chiefs of the army, navy and air-force and announced that they were being replaced by other senior officers.

Neither the minister nor any government spokesman offered an explanation for the sudden, sweeping changes, which were scheduled to be considered on November 7 as part of a regular annual review of military leadership retirements and promotions. Usually the annual changes do not affect the entire leadership. “Under no circumstances will these changes be accepted, at a time when the government is collapsing and has not even secured a vote of confidence,” said an official announcement by the opposition conservative New Democracy party.

Add to this Greece’s government looked on the verge of implosion on Tuesday ahead of a Friday confidence vote as a socialist deputy defected and another cadre called for early elections after the prime minister called a referendum on his EU debt rescue. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou called the referendum late Monday in a bid to secure approval of his disputed economic policies without early elections. But the gambit backfired when a former deputy minister defected, reducing the ruling party’s majority in the 300-seat parliament to 152 deputies. Moments later, the head of parliament’s economic affairs committee Vasso Papandreou called for an early ballot and a temporary unity government to “safeguard” the EU deal agreed last week to slash Greece’s huge debt by nearly a third.

This “popular revolutionary” move is going to spread rapidly to the rest of the PIIGS. The unraveling will be rapid. The exposure of the American banks is significant and they have already been slammed this week with MF Global filing for bankruptcy on Monday, investors pummeled many financial stocks, fearful that problems were lurking on the books of other Wall Street firms. It was a crisis of confidence, not unlike in 2008 when the markets punished stocks on mere speculation of trouble. An interesting note is that Jon Corazine, the ex-head of Goldman Sachs, was at the helm at MF Global. Imagine that! A leopard doesn’t change its spots!

We are going to witness the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world within the next few weeks and the citizens of Germany, France, US, and Britain are NOT the winners, and neither is the 1%. The winners are the 1/4%. Are we catching on yet?

The True Greek Crisis

Everything we hear about the crisis in the EU, it seems that the whole situation is a result of the “problems” in Greece, and to a lesser degree Spain, Portugal, and Italy. French president Sarkozy and Germany’s chancellor Merkel can’t agree on how to “bailout” Greece. IMF and the ECB threaten to withhold funding for Greece if they don’t continue to enforce more and more austerity programs. Greek 1 year bond rate is 117%!

If you followed just MSM you would think the Greeks were the most stupid businessmen and politicians, and there is considerable support that these elements of Greece certainly contributed to the current situation. After joining the EU, there was wheeling and dealing with total disregard for the future and now they are in a real pickle. Some in the EU are calling for the dissolution of the Greek government and absorbing the region into other EU member nations!

However, in historical perspective, one could also argue that Greece was setup for this fall. Closer examination suggests a reality that is very different than the “picture” being painted for us to consume. Let’s examine some facts.

The Lazy Greek Meme

Greece is a land of ancient myth. But more recent myths have made Greeks cringe when foreigners start asking questions.

Greeks are lazy. They don’t work. They’re profligates who are taking down Europe. The caricature has become so common that a recent TV commercial in Slovakia used it to sell beer, drawing a contrast between the virtuous Slovak and the paunchy Greek indulging himself on a beach.

Most foreigners know Greece from holidays spent lolling on its beaches and drifting around its magical ruins. You could easily take it for granted that everybody here is just chilling out. They aren’t. The Greek labor force, comprising 5 million souls, works the second highest number of hours per year on average among countries in the Organization for Economic Development (OECD), right after South Korea. Greeks work 42 hours per week, while the industrious Germans toil just 36.

The average Greek worker earns a bit over $1,000 a month. Private sector employees are the most underpaid in the EU. Even before the harsh austerity measures imposed by the EU and the IMF, the Greeks had already cut the real average wages in the private sector to 1984 levels. This week the Greek parliament is expected to vote on measures that would place 30,000 public sector workers in a “labor reserve” at slashed pay – up to 40 percent.

Greeks retire a bit later than the European average. And the average pension, $990, is less than that of Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Thirty percent of the labor force works with zero Social Security or protections, while in the rest of the EU only 5-10 percent of workers are in this precarious situation.

The reality is simple, though rarely admitted –The “bailout” of Greece is really a bailout of big European banks. A game of smoke and mirrors leads us to think that Greek indolence led to financial ruin. The Greeks have done some things wrong, to be sure. But it was a dangerous mix of stupid economic theories and high-flying finance, fueled by a corrupt government, and that combination exploded the economy. If all this sounds sickeningly familiar, it should. We’re witnessing Round 2 of the Great Global Shakedown by the banks.

The Greeks got socked in WWII and then creamed again by a brutal civil war (1946–1949), in which American military aid to the Greek governmental army ensured the defeat of the Greek Communist Party. After WWII, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan determined relations between the U.S. and Europe. The economic recovery of Germany—designed to benefit American multinationals like IBM, Ford and General Motors – was a high priority. (Watch a fascinating lecture by economist Joseph Halevi here.) Greece mattered to the U.S. as a strategic barrier against the USSR in the Cold War, so it decided to support Greece with economic and military aid, fearing that another communist domino would fall.

Meanwhile, a resurgent Greek Left began to demand fair labor practices and human rights. It was duly answered with brutal repression. Executions and exile were common. In 1967, the army, backed by the CIA, overthrew the government in a Cold War right-wing military coup. The new government, known as the Regime of the Colonels, engaged in stupid military adventures like a disastrous attempt to annex Cyprus, which led to its collapse in 1974. But the Greeks maintained a ridiculously oversized army and navy, underwritten by the U.S., to keep those Russians at bay. When the Cold War ended, the Russians were no longer a threat to the U.S., and, accordingly, financial support for Greece was drawn down.

Through the ’80s and most of the ’90s, the Greeks economy faltered, and the Greeks had to pay super-high interest rates when they borrowed money. The government, mired in bureaucracy, mismanaged things badly. Taxes were not collected. Bitter class conflicts emerged. Horribly high unemployment persisted.

But in 1992, something called the Maasticht Treaty brought hope, getting the ball rolling for the creation of the euro. Unfortunately, the idea of the euro was kind of a fairy tale promoted by European elites (minus the British). Some tried to sound warnings of an epic screwup. Wouldn’t the lack of a shared language, common culture, and big central government be a problem? Paul Krugman notes that European number crunchers who wanted the euro weren’t above fudging results to make the plan look good. The fairy dusters won, and in 1999, the euro became official. In 2000, Greece joined the game.

One fairy tale held that once countries adopted the euro, they wouldn’t default. They would limit their deficits. Every country would become like Germany, where debt was highly secure. Yay! Greek debt, Irish debt and Spanish debt began to trade as if they were super-safe German or French debt. Countries like Greece that had been considered dicey investment became overconfident. The European Central Bank would take care of inflation, they thought. And surely no one could go bankrupt. The Greeks, once forced to pay high interest rates (as high as 18 percent in 1994), could now borrow at low interest. The conservative Greek government went on a reckless borrowing spree and the banks went on a reckless lending spree. Big European banks were delighted to lend them money; more than a few also helped the Greeks hide evidence that all was not well.

Many of these big banks knew perfectly well as early as 2005 that the Greeks wouldn’t be able to pay the money back. But so what? Banks love a little thing called moral hazard – where you know your risky behavior is not going to be punished because somebody out there is going to pay for it. That’s what they counted on with Greece, and accordingly kept the rivers of money flowing.

The Greek government borrowed boatloads for the 2004 Olympics, which cost twice as much as projected. Magician-bankers at Goldman Sachs obligingly helped it disguise the debt — we’re talking billions — with clever little financial instruments called derivatives. The public hadn’t a clue what was going on. All the southern countries on the euro continued to borrow heavily, spend heavily, and for a while, they boomed until the boom as the financial markets collapsed in 2008.

God of the Winds

TSHTF in 2008. Everybody looked around and said, “Who the hell is going to pay off these debts?” The banks saw big money heading out the door. According to the bible of neoliberal economics, this can’t happen. Human beings and societies are one thing. But banks must be saved at all costs.

When the Greek government changed hands in October 2009, the books were opened and it became obvious that there was a much bigger deficit than anyone thought. Investors ran for the hills. Interest rates shot up. In November, just three months before the Greeks became the epicenter of the European economic crisis, the wizards of Wall Street were back on the scene in Athens, trying to peddle more deals that would allow debt to magically vanish. The New York Times summed up the banks’ role in the crisis:

“As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.

“In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come…Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.”

With evil financial winds gaining hurricane force, it became clear that Greece would need a whole lot of money if the bankers were going to get paid back. They jumped on the austerity train to nowhere– chasing their tails by making draconian cuts, which only increased their deficits, and then having to ask the EU for more money. Public workers were fired to pay the banks. Pensions were slashed to pay the banks. But there still wasn’t enough money to pay the banks.

If you’re a country that has your own sovereign currency – like the U.S. – then you have some options in this situation. You can do monetary expansion to head off deflation, for example, and devalue your currency. But once Greece went on the euro, it say good-bye to such options. So it cut, and cut, and cut, and now it’s going bankrupt anyway. The country is mired in falling income, rising deficits, and sinks even further. It’s in the Herbert Hoover death spiral.

Meanwhile, members of the EU are flipping out. Contributions to the bailout agreed to in July are supposed to be proportional to a country’s economic status, and thus the Germans have the biggest chunk to fork over. They are not keen on the notion of doing so in order for the Greek and French banks to get paid. Hey, they’re thinking, wouldn’t it be cheaper to recapitalize our own banks directly? The French are really flipping out, because after the Greek banks, their banks are holding the biggest hordes of Greek debt. They’re worried about their credit ratings. The bailout decision has been postponed until mid-November so everybody can fight it out.

With the major banks holding all of these Greek derivatives, is it any wonder that BoA and JPMC are now trying to foist these toxic assets onto the American Taxpayers by transferring these assets into their banking arms so the loses would be covered under the FDIC!

No matter how this turns out, two facts will remain unchanged. First, Greek debt will be the start of the whole house of cards collapsing, that was the EU and the Euro. Secondly, Greeks will pay the price of cozying up to greedy bankers for decades.

The Fox is in the Henhouse Again, and We are not Watching!

We watched as the banks were bailed out after ripping off nearly $5 trillion dollars of America’s wealth. We are on the hook for their loses. They were too big to fail, we were told. It would be a disaster for the world’s economy. The same story was then foisted on our European brothers, and again with the same “chicken little” reasoning.

Well, here we are 3 years later and the economy is still in the dumpster and we have not done one thing to correct the major problem of banks being investment firms ponied up to the roulette table wildly playing with OUR money unchecked. Now the drunken bankers are at it again. I have written many articles concerning this crazy derivatives market that is the banker’s hedge for the downside of this slow motion crash of the world’s economy.

This WAS one market that the bankers were exposed and WE were not on the hook for bailouts. Well, that was until last week. No ONE is MSM National media is even reporting this. If you aren’t mad as hell when you read this, you are certifiably in a COMA.

Source: Washington’s Blog

Bloomberg reports that Bank of America is dumping derivatives onto a subsidiary which is insured by the government – i.e. taxpayers.

Yves Smith notes:

If you have any doubt that Bank of America is going down, this development should settle it …. Both [professor of economics and law, and former head S&L prosecutor] Bill Black (who I interviewed just now) and I see this as a desperate move by Bank of America’s management, a de facto admission that they know the bank is in serious trouble.

The short form via Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation…

Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.

Now you would expect this move to be driven by adverse selection, that it, that BofA would move its WORST derivatives, that is, the ones that were riskiest or otherwise had high collateral posting requirements, to the sub. Bill Black confirmed that even though the details were sketchy, this is precisely what took place.

And remember, as we have indicated, there are some “derivatives” that should be eliminated, period. We’ve written repeatedly about credit default swaps, which have virtually no legitimate economic uses (no one was complaining about the illiquidity of corporate bonds prior to the introduction of CDS; this was not a perceived need among investors). They are an inherently defective product, since there is no way to margin adequately for “jump to default” risk and have the product be viable economically. CDS are systematically underpriced insurance, with insurers guaranteed to go bust periodically, as AIG and the monolines demonstrated. [Background.]

The reason that commentators like Chris Whalen were relatively sanguine about Bank of America likely becoming insolvent as a result of eventual mortgage and other litigation losses is that it would be a holding company bankruptcy. The operating units, most importantly, the banks, would not be affected and could be spun out to a new entity or sold. Shareholders would be wiped out and holding company creditors (most important, bondholders) would take a hit by having their debt haircut and partly converted to equity.

This changes the picture completely. This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. [Background.] So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.

But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. No Congressman would dare vote against that. This move is Machiavellian, and just plain evil.

The FDIC is understandably ripshit. Again from Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Well OF COURSE BofA is gonna try to take the position this is kosher, but the FDIC can and must reject this brazen move. But this is a bit of a fait accompli,and I have NO doubt BofA and the craven, corrupt Fed will argue that moving the derivatives back will upset the markets. Well too bad, maybe it’s time banks learn they can no longer run roughshod over regulators. And if BofA is at that much risk that it can’t survive undoing this brazen move, that would seem to be prima facie evidence that a Dodd Frank resolution is in order.

Bill Black said that the Bloomberg editors toned down his remarks considerably. He said, “Any competent regulator would respond: “No, Hell NO!” It’s time that the public also say no, and loudly, to this new scheme to loot taxpayers and save a criminally destructive bank.

Professor Black provided a “bottom line” summary in a separate email:

1.The bank holding company (BAC) is moving troubled assets held by an entity not insured by the public (Merrill Lynch) to the Bank of America, which is insured by the public
2. The banking rules are designed to prevent that because they are designed to protect the FDIC insurance fund (which the Treasury guarantees)
3. Any marginally competent regulator would say “No, Hell NO!”
4. The Fed, reportedly, is saying “Sure, no worries” by allowing the sale of an affiliate’s troubled assets to B of A
5. This is a really good “natural experiment” that allows us to test whether the Fed is protects the public or the uninsured and systemically dangerous institutions (the bank holding companies (BHCs))
6. We are all shocked, shocked [sarcasm] that Bernanke responded to the experiment by choosing to protect the BHC at the expense of the public.

Karl Denninger writes:

So let’s see what we have here.

Bank customer initiates a swap position with Bank. In doing so they intentionally accept the credit risk of the institution they trade with.

Later they get antsy about perhaps not getting paid. Bank then shifts that risk to a place where people who deposited their money and had no part of this transaction wind up backstopping it.

This effectively makes the depositor the “guarantor” of the swap ex-post-facto.

That the regulators are allowing this is an outrage.

If you’re a Bank of America customer and continue to be one you deserve whatever you get down the line, whether it comes in the form of higher fees and costs assessed upon you or something worse.

Stand Up to the Coup

Bank of America has repeatedly become insolvent due to fraud and risky bets, and repeatedly been bailed out by the government and American people. The government and banks are engineering an age of permanent bailouts for this insolvent, criminal bank (and the other too big to fails). Remember, this is the same bank that is refusing to let people close their accounts.

This is yet another joint effort by Washington and Wall Street to screw the American people, and to trample on the rule of law.

The American people will be stuck in nightmare of a never-ending depression (yes, we are currently in a depression) and fascism (or socialism, if you prefer that term) unless we stand up to the overly-powerful Fed and the too big to fail banks.

This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this week. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank’s European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn’t get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to “give relief” to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

First folks, we are talking over $150 Trillion of exposure. That is 10 times our GDP! Would you give me 100% of your income for the next ten years because I need it to make up my gambling loses! What would you say to me? You know, the OWS call for a BANK TRANSFER DAY in early November is getting to be a really significant idea. If the banks refuse to act in a responsible manner and the FED is refusing to discipline its children, then we have to just take their “toys” (our money) away from the bankers. It is time for “time out” for our out of control children. Check out your local credit unions, they are real functioning banking organizations owned and controlled by their depositors and members. Congress will never vote our interest, so we have to vote with our bucks.

What Goes Up….! Where is the Down?

A lot of people lament the lack of upward mobility in the U.S. right now and I share those sentiments. However, equally important is downward mobility. What makes the concept of America unique is not merely the concept that the poor can become rich but that the rich can become poor. It is this second part that is the most dangerous to social cohesion when it disappears. Unfortunately, the system that we have today of an unholy alliance between Wall Street, Washington D.C. and the multi-national corporations (including the military industrial complex of course) stands there holding onto all the levers of power to serve as gatekeepers of their own empires.

Consider this when we think about how the game is “rigged” right now. From Matthew Cardinale of the
Inter Press Service on 28 Aug 2011.

Atlanta, Georga: The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said in a statement. The majority of loans were issues by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY).

“From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars… in emergency loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system,” the audit report states. “The scale and nature of this assistance amounted to an unprecedented expansion of the Federal Reserve System’s traditional role as lender-of-last-resort to depository institutions,” according to the report. The report notes that all the short-term, emergency loans were repaid, or are expected to be repaid.

The emergency loans included eight broad-based programs, and also provided assistance for certain individual financial institutions. The Fed provided loans to JP Morgan Chase bank to acquire Bear Stearns, a failed investment firm; provided loans to keep American International Group (AIG), a multinational insurance corporation, afloat; extended lending commitments to Bank of America and Citigroup; and purchased risky mortgage-backed securities to get them off private banks’ books.

Overall, the greatest borrowing was done by a small number of institutions. Over the three years, Citigroup borrowed a total of 2.5 trillion dollars, Morgan Stanley borrowed two trillion; Merryll Lynch, which was acquired by Bank of America, borrowed 1.9 trillion; and Bank of America borrowed 1.3 trillion. Banks based in counties other than the U.S. also received money from the Fed, including Barclays of the United Kingdom, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (UK), Deutsche Bank (Germany), UBS (Switzerland), Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland), Bank of Scotland (UK), BNP Paribas (France), Dexia (Belgium), Dresdner Bank (Germany), and Societe General (France).

“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the President,” Sanders wrote. In recent days, Bloomberg News obtained 29,346 pages of documentation from the Federal Reserve about some of these secret loans, after months of fighting in court for access to the records under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of the financial institutions secretly receiving loans were meanwhile claiming in their public reports to have ample cash reserves, Bloomberg noted. The Federal Reserve has neither explained how they legally justified several of the emergency loans, nor how they decided to provide assistance to certain firms but not others.

“The main problem is the lack of Congressional oversight, and the way the Fed seemed to pick winners who would be protected at any cost,” Randall Wray, professor of economics at University of Missouri- Kansas City, told IPS. “If such lending is not illegal, it should be. Our nation really did go through a liquidity crisis – a run on the short-term liabilities of financial institutions. There is only one way to stop a run: lend reserves without limit to all qualifying institutions. The Fed bumbled around before it finally sort of did that,” Wray said.

“But then it turned to phase two, which was to try to resolve problems of insolvency by increasing Uncle Sam’s stake in the banksters’ fiasco. That never should have been done. You close down fraudsters, period. The Fed and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Commission) should have gone into the biggest banks immediately, replaced all top management, and should have started to resolve them,” Wray said.

For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.

Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs).

When we look to the East and watch our Arab brothers struggle against tyranny, I don’t think we connect their struggle to us. However, I assure you that the roots of that struggle was economic slavery, not unlike we, both in the US and the EU, are rapidly marching (or is it being herded?) toward at this very minute.

As we awaken to these facts, it is apparent that the PTB, who wish to continue their “project”, are having more and more of a difficult time unfolding “their solutions” to our problems. You know “solutions’ like raiding retirement and pension funds, eliminating worker’s unions, ending any “social programs” of any kind.

Probably the most important news story of September 7^th won’t be reported by International MSM. No, it won’t be Obama’s speech on Jobs, nor will it be the outcome of the first games in the NFL. It will be this.

Seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a constitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga.

Mrs. Merkel has cancelled a high-profile trip to Russia on September 7, the crucial day when the package goes to the Bundestag and the country’s constitutional court rules on the legality of the EU’s bail-out machinery. If the court rules that the €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) breaches Treaty law or undermines German fiscal sovereignty, it risks setting off an instant brushfire across monetary union.

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. “Hysteria is sweeping Germany ” said Klaus Regling, the EFSF’s director. German media reported that the latest tally of votes in the Bundestag shows that 23 members from Mrs Merkel’s own coalition plan to vote against the package, including twelve of the 44 members of Bavaria’s Social Christians (CSU). This may force the Chancellor to rely on opposition votes, risking a government collapse.

Christian Wulff, Germany’s president, stunned the country last week by accusing the European Central Bank of going “far beyond its mandate” with mass purchases of Spanish and Italian debt, and warning that the Europe’s headlong rush towards fiscal union strikes at the “very core” of democracy. “Decisions have to be made in parliament in a liberal democracy. That is where legitimacy lies,” he said.

A day earlier the Bundesbank had fired its own volley, condemning the ECB’s bond purchases and warning the EU is drifting towards debt union without “democratic legitimacy” or treaty backing. Joahannes Singhammer, leader of the CSU’s Bundestag group, accused the ECB of acting “dangerously” by jumping the gun before parliaments had voted. The ECB is implicitly acting on behalf of the rescue fund until it is ratified.

Mrs. Merkel faces mutiny even within her own Christian Democrat (CDU) family. Wolfgang Bossbach, the spokesman for internal affairs, said he would oppose the package. “I can’t vote against my own conviction,” he said. The Bundestag is expected to decide late next month on the package, which empowers the EFSF to buy bonds pre-emptively and recapitalize banks. While the bill is likely to pass, the furious debate leaves no doubt that Germany will resist moves to boost the EFSF’s firepower yet further. Most City banks say the fund needs €2 trillion to stop the crisis engulfing Spain and Italy. Mrs. Merkel’s aides say she is facing “war on every front”. The next month will decide her future, Germany’s destiny, and the fate of monetary union.

I make all these points because we must think clearly and precisely now. No politics, nor economic religion, just fix this now, and we can. We start by taking some people DOWN. Start to put some balance back into the equation. I think the audit of the FED would be an excellent place to start that quest.

Secondly, we must be informed voters and place candidates that understand clearly the goals of restoring balance into our global economy through prudent but thorough regulatory changes. That must, by its nature, start with the political process elements of our societies. I cannot think of anything more important to you on a personal basis than this.

	roto rooter prices on Further Posts from the Currenc…
	Debbie on Student Loans-An Engineered So…
	redhawk500 on Understanding the Quantum Worl…
	Uncle Tree on Understanding the Quantum Worl…
	seetasoma on It is Time to Declare Who You…
	Redhawk on The Real Source of Anger in th…
	dontdoit on The Real Source of Anger in th…
	dontdoit on The Real Source of Anger in th…
	Man his beginnings o… on A Message for Those with Eyes…
	4StarList on Idiots, Zealots, Elitists and…
	Sarah on A Suggested Civil Action We Al…
	Rob Daniels on Update from the Currency War…
	redhawk500 on Stories That MSM Don’t Want Yo…
	Bruce Case on Stories That MSM Don’t Want Yo…
	Blueowl on A New Universal Bill of R…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: