U.S. Justice Department Opens Criminal Probe Into Currency Market Manipulation

Posted on October 11, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Currency markets are massively rigged.

Bloomberg reports today:

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is also looking into alleged rigging of interest rates associated with the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is in the early stages of its currency market probe, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is confidential.

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Swiss regulators last week said they were “coordinating closely with authorities in other countries as multiple banks around the world are potentially implicated.”

The U.S. investigation comes as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said in June it was reviewing potential manipulation of exchange rates.

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Earlier this week, European Union antitrust regulators said they were examining the possible manipulation of currency rates by the financial industry, while Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or Finma, and the nation’s competition commission said they were probing similar potential wrongdoing.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also been reviewing possible currency market rigging, said a separate person with knowledge of the matter.

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RBS, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup are among firms reviewing e-mails, instant messages and phone records of their foreign-exchange employees for evidence of potential manipulation, according to three people with knowledge of those probes.

(Don’t get too excited.  The Justice Department has announced it will go easy on big banks, and always settles prosecutions for pennies on the dollar … a form of stealth bailout.  It is also arguably one of the main causes of the double dip in housing.  Indeed, the government doesn’t even force the banks to admit any guilt as part of their settlements.)

It’s not just currency markets. As shown below, big banks have manipulated virtually every market – both in the financial sector and the real economy – and broken virtually every law on the books.

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Interest rates are rigged:

• The big banks have conspired for years to rig interest rates … upon which $800 trillion in assets are pegged

• This was the largest insider trading scandal ever … and the largest financial scam in world history

• Local governments got ripped off bigtime by the Libor manipulation

• Libor is still being manipulated

Derivatives Are Manipulated

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives … a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market.

Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way that interest rates are fixed: through gamed self-reporting.

Oil Prices Are Manipulated

Oil prices are manipulated as well.

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

The Guardian and Telegraph report that gold and silver prices are “fixed” in the same way as interest rates and derivatives – in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be.

Energy Markets Are Manipulated

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that JP Morgan has massively manipulated energy markets in California and the Midwest, obtaining tens of millions of dollars in overpayments from grid operators between September 2010 and June 2011.

Commodities Are Manipulated

The big banks and government agencies have been conspiring to manipulate commodities prices for decades.

The big banks are taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity.

And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currencies and commodities. And see this.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here and here

• Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

• Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

• Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this

• Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

• Cooking their books (and see this)

• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

The Big Picture

The big picture is simple:

• The big banks manipulate every market they touch

• Too much interconnectedness leads to financial instability

• The government has given the banks huge subsidies … which they are using for speculation and other things which don’t help the economy. In other words, propping up the big banks by throwing money at them doesn’t help the economy

• Top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy. They say we need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy

• The big banks own the D.C. politicians … so Congress and the White House won’t do anything unless the people force change

 

The US banking system has become an extension
of the NSA and the surveillance state.

• Bitcoins: The future of money?

 

 

 

 

Food stamp recipients panic as federal EBT system crashes

The outage that caused EBT card systems in 17 states to go down Saturday is fixed.

I’ve often said that 72 hours after EBT cards stop working, every U.S. city will collapse into chaos. In case you’re not familiar with the term, EBT cards are “digital food stamps.” Nearly 50 million Americans are right now using EBT cards which are automatically refilled each month with welfare money the government doesn’t have, increasing the national debt.

Under Obama, food stamp enrollees have exploded. The annual usage statistics for food stamps are found here, but you can’t see them because under the Obama administration’s contrived “shutdown theater,” the USDA.gov website has been taken offline. Note, of course, that the food stamp program itself is still online (most of the time), thereby proving there really isn’t a “government shutdown” as claimed by Obama.

If you really want to see the data, you have to go to a private website like this one that shows the annual food stamp enrollment from 1975 to 2012:
http://www.dailyjobsupdate.com/wp-content/up…

There, you can clearly see the explosion of food stamps under Obama, who has more than doubled the number of Americans on the program. That’s considered “economic growth” by democrats, by the way: the more people who subsist on government, the better the economy.

EBT system craters across 17 states

Today, the EBT system crashed hard, causing food stamp beneficiaries across 17 states to be unable to buy their cupcakes, donuts, diet sodas and other junk foods that keep them diseased and obese. (Yes, food stamp money is primarily used buy processed junk food.)

“While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits,” stated a food stamp official in an AP story. The story goes on to say, “Typically when the cards aren’t working retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money a customer has available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren’t able to use their cards.”

The feds said this was due to a “system update,” but this is of course a lie. Then again, every computer system in government that crashes — including the Healthcare.gov website — is now said to be “fully functioning” as if everybody in government is tripped out on acid.

The IT backbone of the U.S. federal empire is unraveling

Today’s failure of the EBT card system is yet more evidence that the U.S. empire is rapidly falling apart. The disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov proved yet again that the Obama administration is utterly incapable of competently managing a simple R&D development project. And rather than trying to help Americans become more independent and self-reliant, Obama has worked hard to put as many people on social welfare programs as possible, vastly expanding the role of government to the point where millions of Americans no longer have any concept of having a job or supporting themselves.

As an example of this, AP quotes a cashier named Eliza Shook who said, “It’s been terrible. It’s just been some angry folks. That’s what a lot of folks depend on.”

And that’s true. Without EBT cards, millions of Americans have no way to feed themselves. They depend entirely on government just to put food on the table. So when that government fails them, they panic.

This is why I have long held that the day America collapses into chaos is the day when EBT cards go offline and stay offline for 72 hours. Technically, that’s three days, of course, but you get my point.

The day the U.S. government collapses in default is fast approaching

Because an exponential rise in debt cannot be sustained, at some point the U.S. government will simply collapse into financial default. Soon after, Martial Law will have to be declared in every major U.S. city to quell the riots. Imagine 50 million Americans going hungry and realizing their welfare food credits aren’t going to be available anymore and you begin to get an idea of why cities will be nearly impossible to survive when the chaos hits.

The impending failure of the federal government is now obvious to everyone. Even Ron Paul is now openly talking about the coming collapse of the U.S. empire, mirroring the overnight collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, where that nation broke into twelve independent republics.

Many people now believe the U.S. is headed for a similar outcome, and that such an outcome can happen virtually overnight. The crash of EBT cards could be the tumbling domino that sets this into action. Nearly every state already has a secessionist movement calling for independence, and the Tenth Amendment Center is leading the charge on state nullification of federal tyranny. Groups like the Oath Keepers are ready to step in and help establish local law and order in the short-term chaos that would follow a dissolution of the U.S. empire.

Today, all that is left of America is a deeply-indebted welfare state run by a corrupt cabal of tyrants who have no moral authority, no faith of the People and no solutions. America has devolved into a corrupt, bankrupt, incompetent government tyranny headed for imminent collapse.