This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Rigging Triangle Exposed: The JPMorgan-British Petroleum-Bank Of England Cartel Full Frontal
The name Dick Usher is familiar to regular readers: he was the head of spot foreign exchange for JPMorgan, and the bank's alleged chief FX market manipulator, who was promptly fired after it was revealed that JPM was the bank coordinating the biggest FX rigging scheme in history, as initially revealed in "Another JPMorganite Busted For "Bandits' Club" Market Manipulation." Subsequent revelations - which would have been impossible without the tremendous reporting of Bloomberg's Liam Vaughan - showed that JPM was not alone: as recent legal actions confirmed, virtually every single bank was also a keen FX rigging participant. However, the undisputed ringleader was always America's largest bank, which would make sense: having a virtually unlimited balance sheet, JPM could outlast practically any margin call, and make money while its far smaller peers were closed out of trades... and existence.
But while the past year revealed that FX rigging was a just as pervasive, if not even more profitable industry for banks than the great Libor-fixing scandal (for details see "How To Rig FX Like A Pro "Bandit", And Make Millions In The Process"), the conventional wisdom was that it involved almost exclusively bankers at the largest global banks including JPM, Goldman, Deutsche, Barclays, RBS, HSBC, and UBS.
Now, courtesy of some more brilliant reporting by Vaughan, we can finally link banks with the other two facets of what has emerged to be an unprecedented FX-rigging "triangle" cartel: private sector companies that have no direct banking operations yet who have intimate prop trading exposure, as well as central banks themselves.
By "banks" we, of course, refer to the ringleader itself: JP Morgan, and its former head of spot forex trading in London, Dick Usher. As for the company that benefited from its heretofore secret participation in the biggest FX rigging scandal in history, it is none other than British Petroleum.
We learn about all this thanks to a story that begins with, of all thing, a story about freshwater fishing at a lake in Essex called "Wharf Pool."
As Bloomberg reports, "an hour away by train, in London’s financial district, the lake’s owners ply their trade. Wharf Pool was purchased for about 250,000 pounds ($388,000) in 2012 by Richard Usher, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. trader at the center of a global investigation into corruption in the foreign-exchange market, and Andrew White, a currency trader at oil company BP Plc. "
The plot thickens: was there more than a passing connection between the head FX trader at JPM and White "who’s known in the market as Tubby, is one of half a dozen spot currency traders working for British Petroleum (BP) in London. He and his colleagues, most of them ex-bankers, decide which firms will carry out their foreign-exchange transactions. That makes them prized clients for banks seeking a slice of the business and a glimpse into potentially market-moving trades. Passing on information was a way to curry favor."
In short, a typical Over The Counter relationship between a banker and a buyside client, one which is largely unregulated and where the bank hopes to be able to frontrun the client's orders by providing the client with confidential market moving information, thus generating more business with the client in the future. In this case, however, the buyside client was not a typical hedge fund, but the FX trading group at one of the world's largest energy companies: a group which trades enormous amounts of FX every single day, both with intent to hedge, and to generate a profit.
The trading unit’s primary role is to manage the firm’s exposure to financial risks, including fluctuations in interest rates and foreign exchange, according to the company’s website. Unlike at most corporations, it also is run as a profit center, which means that in addition to hedging risks, traders can place their own bets on the direction of markets. The company doesn’t break out how much money the treasury unit makes
Basically, BP's energy operations were just a balance sheet funding cover: what its FX traders did in the front office was trade for a profit pure and simple, just like any prop trading desk or hedge fund anywhere else in the world. And it did so in collusion with a small group of market rigging individuals all located at the biggest, market-moving banks around the globe.
A quick reminder on the "Cartel":
The four banks in the Cartel controlled about 45 percent of the global spot-currency market, according to a survey by Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc, so information about their plans was valuable. Some days they worked together to push around the 4 p.m. fix, settlements with the banks show.
The Cartel chat room was started by Usher as early as 2009, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Usher had risen quickly to the top of his profession. After joining HBOS Plc in 2001, he was hired by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in 2003 and a year later collected an industry award on his employer’s behalf.... The four members of the chat room ribbed each other like high school buddies. Usher was referred to as Feston because he resembled an overweight version of British chef Heston Blumenthal, according to people who have seen the chats. Matt Gardiner, a UBS trader based in Zurich, was called Fossil because he was a few years older than the others. Rohan Ramchandani, Citigroup’s cricket-loving head of spot trading, was called Ruggy, while Chris Ashton, the last one to join, was dubbed Robocop.
Now we can add BP too, a BP which doesn't even hide the prop-trading nature of its FX "hedging" group, which is located two blocks away from, wait for it, JPMorgan!
The two dozen traders in BP’s treasury trading unit are housed above a Porsche showroom on the second and third floors of the company’s office in Canary Wharf, an area of reclaimed docklands three miles east of the City of London, the historic financial district. The building, two blocks from JPMorgan’s, was completed in 2003 on the cusp of an oil boom. Lights in meeting rooms flick from green to white when someone enters, in keeping with the company’s corporate colors.
And while until today the last sentence would be pure conjecture, thanks to Bloomberg's release of exchanges between JPM and BP revealing the extent to which the "cartel" would stoop in order to make money for its members on a daily, risk-free basis, it is not a fact.
From Bloomberg:
Copies of messages sent to BP traders over the course of a year were provided to Bloomberg News by a person with access to the online conversations. The person, who redacted the names of banks sending the messages and dates of conversations, said they came from firms whose senior foreign-exchange traders belonged to a chat room called “The Cartel” that was set up by Usher and included dealers at JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc., Barclays Plc and UBS Group AG.
The information offered an insight into currency moves minutes, sometimes hours before they happened. The messages could drag the U.K.’s biggest energy company into a scandal that has enveloped 11 banks and led to more than 30 traders from London to Singapore losing or being suspended from their jobs. Last month six banks were fined $4.3 billion for passing along information about their clients and working together to rig foreign-exchange markets.
Presenting BP: collusive, insider trading hedge fund extraordinaire. All comparisons and similarities to Enron are purely coincidental.
With revenue of almost $400 billion last year and operations in about 80 countries, BP trades large quantities of currency each day. Traders at the company regularly received valuable information from counterparts at some of the world’s biggest banks -- including tips about forthcoming trades, details of confidential client business and discussions of stop-losses, the trigger points for a flurry of buying or selling -- according to four traders with direct knowledge of the practice.
Of course, in any non-banana republic, whose regulatory and enforcement divisions were not captured by the same megacorp that is in question here, this would have been the basis for a massive lawsuit, one which would ultimately seek to break apart the company's "profitable" FX trading division from its core energy business. But not in this republic: after all, between one of the world's biggest banks and one of the world's biggest corporations, and a corrupt, crony government it should be clear to everyone by now just who calls the shots.
BP of course is quick to note that it did nothing illegal: after all the last thing the company needs is its own Enron-type scandal, where an ancillary business manages to drag down the entire company. Sure enough it has promptly denied everything:
BP said in a statement that it conducted an internal review after regulators began probing currency markets. “BP’s FX desk has relationships as a customer with 26 relationship banks, including JPMorgan, Citibank and Barclays,” the London-based company said. “BP has a robust framework of compliance requirements and internal controls which are constantly reviewed, and maintains an open dialogue with the appropriate regulators.”
The firm, the third-largest publicly traded company in the U.K., hasn’t been investigated by regulators looking into currency manipulation, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chris Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, declined to comment, as did representatives of JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup and UBS.
So how does one explain the joint equity interest in - for example - the little fishing lake ?
“BP’s Code of Conduct includes mandatory requirements for employees to disclose potential conflicts of interests internally,” the company said in response to a question about the commercial relationship between Usher and White through the fishing lake. “Following such disclosure, steps are taken to manage and monitor these appropriately. It is our policy not to comment on individuals.”
In other words, one can't. Which is how BP likes it. Which is also why Bloomberg was quite cautious with how it phrases BP's involvement into something that could promptly turn out to be Britain's own Enron:
While there’s no evidence that any BP traders were members of the Cartel, Usher participated in at least one chat room with White, according to a person who has examined conversations that included both men. It couldn’t be determined from the messages reviewed by Bloomberg News who sent the information to BP or whether BP employees acted on any of the tips.
They did, and this is how we know: "Traders at BP haven’t been accused of any wrongdoing. Last year, within hours of regulators announcing probes, the chats between BP and the banks were shut down, people with knowledge of the matter said. Soon after, a compliance officer was placed on the desk for the first time, one of them said."
Not exactly something one would do if one was, for lack of a better term, innocent.
And while we hold our breath until UK's justice (don't laugh please) system assigns blame - by which we mean a $19.95 one time settlement with a promise by BP it will never do it again - here is a glimpse at the full extent of just how this rigging took place:
In the clubby, lightly regulated world of foreign exchange, traders passed around tips to their circle of trusted contacts like candy. The victims: mutual-fund investors, pensioners and day traders who took the other side of a transaction at a lower price than they would have if they had the same information.
...
In an undated message seen by Bloomberg News, a trader at a bank told BP he would be buying U.S. dollars against Australian dollars at the WM/Reuters fix at 4 p.m. in London, the one-minute window during which traders around the world exchange billions of dollars of currency on behalf of pension funds and asset managers. The message was received at BP about 30 minutes before the fix. By tipping his hand, the sender was telling BP about a potential fall in the Australian currency
At about 3 p.m. in London on a different afternoon, BP traders were informed that banks were selling dollars against the yen at 4 p.m. In a third message, this one arriving as the oil company’s traders drank their first coffee of the morning, a trader at a bank said he had just sold a quantity of an emerging-market currency, to whom and the price he received.
The settlements the banks reached with regulators reveal that in the minutes before 4 p.m. the traders would meet on chat rooms to discuss their positions and how they planned to execute them. Sometimes they also agreed to work together to push exchange rates around to boost their profits –- something they called “double-teaming.”
All of the above would be, if proven, criminal but in line with expectations: after all when given a carte blanche to do anything they want, humans will do just that, even if it means trample every regulation known to man. In fact, the bigger one's balance sheet, the greater one's percevied (and realized) leeway of sneaking between the legal cracks, facilitated by the number of politicians and regulators that have been coopted and outright purchased courtesy of said big balance sheet.
However, the true punchline is this: "[Usher] joined JPMorgan as head of spot foreign exchange in 2010, where he became a member of the now-defunct Bank of England’s Chief Dealers Sub Group, a collection of about a dozen currency traders and central bank officials who met at restaurants and bank offices to discuss industry developments."
In other words, all of this rigging, all of the FX manipulation, all of the criminal abuse of naive, innocent market participants took place with the Bank of England's own seal of approval. Which, of course, is why the BofE itself had to scapegoat its own sacrificial lamb to avoid any further connection to this criminal cartel - something it did in early November when it fired its Chief FX dealer, Martin Mallett, who on November 12 "was dismissed by the Bank of England yesterday for “serious misconduct relating to failure to adhere to the Bank’s internal policies,” according to a statement by the central bank today."
And just like that all loose ends have been cut off, although if we were Mr. Mallett, we would certainly keep away from loose nail guns, hot tubs or airplanes for the next several months.
In the meantime, after the mandatory pause of 3-6 months, all rigging, all manipulation, and all criminal abuse with blessing from the central bank itself will quietly return, because until the great (and as increasingly more predict, very violent) reset finally comes, nothing can possibly change in a system as corrupt as this one.
- 104153 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


It's rigged bitchez. Save yourselves
After the multi Trillion dollar bankster bailouts in 2008 and 2009, and LIBOR scandals, what else do you need to know that the markets are rigged in favor of insiders? How many banksters went to jail, criminals like John Corzine? That is your answer.
Pretty sad that disclosures, which in past generations would have resulted in public outcry, protests, and lynchings are just shrugged off by those of us who either "already knew" or aren't surprised.
Nice unbiased watchdogging by the press, eh?
Tylers.... FULL MONTY..
Fixed it..
I see a $550 fine coming
It has to be rigged, because insolvency without liquidity is bankruptcy. And since no bankruptcy has occurred since 2008, it's kinda obvious the entire market is an insider rigged game, only delaying of the inevitable.
Bingo. All this does is cause the "insiders" to steal as much as they can even faster because they know the system is doomed and no one will be going to jail.
Keep records, they will be needed for retribution.
The current "let the majority eat cake" monetary experiment has in fact been done before. It will turn out the same this time around, only on a much larger scale. Get long security and commodity companies and short blood pudding.
Hey I like blood(black)pudding.
Have some consideration here.
Maybe someday we can all enjoy haggis courtesy of bankers & politicians
I take back all those nasty things I said about Ms 40 cents the other day. She deserves to be mad, very, very phucken mad [even she has no clue why].
"Double teamed" ........ is that like getting DP'd by BP ?
OHMYGAWD! Look what is happening to 30 day copper futures.
http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/copper_historical_large.html
The article didn't disclose anything new. This shit has been going on for centuries.
Hang 'em
http://y2u.be/VI6tBwVjyOY
Hi guyzzz! Has anyone seen The Interview yet? As a staunch liberal, I think we should all go see it and discuss the movie here, not this boring finance stuff. It's patriotic, you know?
Let's all take a stand against North Dakota!
Hey, I saw the movie, what has North Dakota got to do with it?
...and to those not wondering (whether everything is rigged),
this is hardly a surprise, no?
Liberal is just posting the typical disjointed thinking of Liberals.
His posts are SATIRE. (It is for HUMOR.)
North Dakota fracks and alledgedly poisons groundwater. All staunch liberals believe that it is their duty to run other people's lives and save the planet.
And if you believe that Liberal is liberal then the joke is on you.
(Which means that your post his funnier than his...)
roflmao...
Hang 'em
Nah, that's too good for them, let them slide slowly down a sharp stake......!
Hang 'em
http://y2u.be/VI6tBwVjyOY
Copper looks good to me:
http://www.barchart.com/commodityfutures/Metals
Just blame Putin.
What was that huge drop in copper all about?
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/why-commodity-prices-are-cliff-div...
Follow the money (flow).
The guys in the powdered wigs will offer leniency in exchange for some photo's of the innocent traders lil fartling. It's just how things work over there.
Bacon, Eggs, Black Pudding, Fried Tomato
White plastic bread.
Black coffee you need both hands to stir.
What a way to start the day!
Only manage it Sat & Sun - with variations, of course, except for the coffee.
Need to find something to do to burn it all off, then - good excuse for bike riding or hiking.
If you want to eat well in England, eat breakfast 3 times a day!
You forgot the bubble and squeak.
You forgot the bubble and squeak.
n' Fried bread...
along those lines, compare the number of guys that went to jail (at least a 1000) in the S&L scandal versus today. The S&L scandal is kindergarten crime today. That tells us two things: your government is exponentially corrupt (and desperate) now and the two criminal teams (bank and podium) are working together in a pathetic, felonious and failing attempt to keep the musical chairs ringing.
The banking mafia and their pets in Washington broke the S&L to steal their business.
@ nope-1004,
So, the markets rigged huh? You remember when I posted the following?
Copy & Paste and begin educating others. For starters "We" collectively must begin starving the Beast. Peaceful Non Compliance / Non Participation into the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC. System of Debt Bondage & Enslavement.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC.
Non-profit Delaware Corporation
Incorporation Date: 4/19/89
File No. 2193946
The corporation is registered in the state of Delaware.
STOP CONSENTING (Black's Laws Dictionary) either by Silence or Contracting with the Criminal Fraud.
-Stop paying Taxes.
-Stop buying their GMO Poison. Fast foods, sodas, Sucralose etc...
-Take your $ out of the Criminal TBTFBANKSTERS CIA drug money laundering Banks & transfer it to your Local Credit Union,
-Buy Local.
-Stop Voting or revoke your voters registration cards.
-Stay out of their Criminal Fraud Maritime / Admiralty Courts.
-Stop Contracting (CONSENT) via signature with the State.
-Educate, educate, educate.
-Home School. Stop the Indoctrination.
And, most importantly.
It's been proven time & time again on ZH the markets are manipulated. It's one huge Global Ponzi Scheme.
-Cash out. It's eventually going to collapse. Cripple the Criminal Fraud System as much as it's Crippled you.
-Store your wealth. Purchase food, precious metals, barter items. You'll need them.
-Have a Barter Skill. Mine is Physical Therapy.
Hang 'em high boys! (nothing less will do)
A $550....deferred... fine.....
And they have to donate it to some Democratic party fund...
...without admitting any wrong-doing.
Nah, this is the fine for the first D.U.I. in Merica. Thems just misunderstood folks. Shucks sake. Milestones
It's official- Enron was WAY ahead of their time. They really were the smartest guys in the room afterall. Except they went to jail (oops- ONE little oversight).
the only thing enron did wrong is that they forgot to buy off the authorities. See, JP Morgan just financed a few key congressional campaigns, and Voila. Not only do they not get jail time or forced liquidation, but instead, they get federal bailouts... Apparently being crooked DOES pay.
Being crooked would appear to be the only thing that really pays.
Enron's problem was 1) they weren't big enough, 2) they weren't a bank or Wall St firm....
Enron's blunder was they didn't buy a fishing pond, it would appear.
is it any surprise then that their is a crack house....i mean whore house....i mean a bank on every NYC street corner
Enron had a trading office in London. After they failed, most went to work at UPC and continued the same bullshit TO THIS DAY, while changing their name and having literally thousands of shell and shelf LLC's etc. associated with UPC.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/it-was-terrible-but-life...
...PricewaterhouseCoopers sold off Enron's European arm in pieces rather than as a going concern and some of its subsidiaries remain operational.
Ken Lay was pardoned, right?
He got the special hand of God pardon.
somewhere on a tropical island with, wait for it, hookers and blow and a good nose job (prolly hair implants too)
Kenneth Lay died* shortly after he was convicted.
*Unless the Bush Administration faked his death, gave him a new identity, and whisked him off to a resort island....which is a damned good possibility.
the msm is too busy fomenting racial tensions.
These guys were such amateurs. Transcript? Squealers?
What no blood oaths? No "nail gun" deaths?
I am reminded; Robert Anton wilson said in
the Illuminatti Trilogy,
"any conspiracy involving 2 or more includes a publicist"
BTFATH, Putaz.
Exactly.
Look at politics, Obama and Boehner are on the same team. LOL O/T Are people really waiting for Obma to get impeached, Obmacare repealed or the illegals to be booted, not to mention RvW overturned…. OMG, what a joke.
They (politicos) live in a whirlpool of money while we live with bogus alarm company stickers tattooed all over our house.
Point on!! Milestones
Bankster's motto: "Heads, I win; Tails, you lost".
Unless or until we see (in)famous Banksters going to jail, to the guillotine, pushed/jumping from highrises, or found 'suicided' with nailguns, they have complete and utter control.
I can even point to the date when this "quiet coup" happened: 9/11/01. If not earlier. Like the 2000 Election and Florida vote rigging, and US Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Bush junta.
And if it's "all rigged", then why should we even bother to stay informed with ZH or other business and economics sites -- besides for pure Infotainment value, or when we need to raise our blood pressure?
BTW, these two reasons is why several of my friends (who introduced me to ZH) are still reading ZH on occasion: Infotainment and when they need to raise their blood pressure. They no longer read ZH to front-run the 'Markets' for profit or for safety (like they used to).
Neo Feudalism by printer and mental whips.
RIPS
Hey &^%$ their burning down your house and raping you're family.
&^%$ " Your grammar is wrong, i cant hear you!"
It's a big club, blah blah blah. Everyone knows the rest by now.
F R E E
M A R K E T S
Free John Corzine
Free Bernie Madoff.
I wouldn't join any club that would have me.
It's a big club, and most people don't seem to understand the schizophrenic love/hate but simultaneously symbiotic relationship between big banks and big oil. Paper Assets vs Hard Assets, the bps the bankers tossing their frenemies are chump change versus the cost of replacing the core capitalization the oilmen could remove if they ever got serious about a divorce, which is a lot less likely now that the taxpayer has been handed the tab for the oilmen's counter-party risk...
and BofE is still sterling. just ask them.
but I would not want to be working for them when party after party files lawsuits against them for their rehypothecated gold. who will they off the blame on then?
When it comes to that then, the systems gone, the bankers and the lawyers are swinging from lamp posts and no ones even going to have time to ask about the gold. Some lucky thug will shove it in the back of a truck and declare himself King.
It's a club. And you ain't in it.
Have always thought it odd to call a currency market 'rigged' where the supply of it is a monopoly of governement.
I think the proper question is.....why wouldn't everything be rigged?
Heavens to Betsy, Cog. "Religious" men have "rigged" God for Centuries.
PS Too bad the "folks" are based out of Canary Wharf. Had they been in The City, they'd have been untouchable.
Oh, the ego of it all.
boy u gotta love the last minute efforts to shove Gold back under 1200 and Silver off its highs of the day...
their so fucking over the top obvious in London and NY...
DEATH TO THE MONEYCHANGERS.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html
How about the 2 second/$5 smackdown at 11:20 am est.?
CD, it's not rigged, it's 'calibrated and optimized for optimum performance'....
Gold is not.
You're a conspiracy theorist.
Money and Oil. All we need is the MIC/NSA connection and the Saint Trinity of Pax Americana will be complete in its totally incestuous construct.
The father, the son and the Holy ghost of Reaganomics/NWO construct.
You have to be IN the church to be an anointed one.
MIC falls under money, and lots of it.
The big stick never falls under money; it ensures the generation of money for the Empire.
It is the coercitive element that makes the rest possible.
But if the big stick costs too much it just means it's become a little stick...in terms of efficiency.
Don C needs a better Luca Brasi.
You want BP and JPM and which three letter agency on what specific dates???
Or just a general connection?
Or how about the time the CIA fucked BP for the benefit of Exxon, Marathon, Noble, Hess et al?
Or that war that they're still trying to kick off FBO (or is it CYA) ConocoPhilips?
Sure it's rigged. It's why the banksters want larger bailouts next time when deravatives fail.
They stuck the derivative bailout in the CR Omnibus bill. Take the profits and stick the taxpayers with the losses.
Jamie Dimon was on the phone to cogressmen and senators asking for payback.
The derivative fail will make them profits overseas but post losses in the US. What a scam.
Its good work if you can get it.
Kinda like pornstars nailing each other all the time. Porn stars get aids and die. Bankers just get nailed and die.
Hey, Eh,
Could someone forward this article to;
James Kunstler
Martin Armstrong
Thx
Two disinfo agents denying conspiracies in the financial world?
There is no question that Armstrong has been compromised. His views on gold and market rigging are beyond pathetic.
He is full of shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_A._Armstrong
"On September 29, 1999, Armstrong was indicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for having conspired with employees of Republic New York involving Japanese investors. Republic New York pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court on December 17, 2001 and agreed upon a restitution order on January 9, 2002 of $606 million.[6] Armstrong represented himself and was excluded from some proceedings, leading the Associated Press to question whether Armstrong could get a fair trial.[7] The government charged Armstrong with civil contempt and he remained in prison over 7 years for failure to surrender various assets that may have been purchased with money from the investment fund at the center of the litigation.[1][8] According to the New York Times, "Over the years, Judge Owen would revisit the contempt order every 18 months, guided by the federal statute. He repeatedly said that Mr. Armstrong was motivated by greed and was awaiting his release from jail to retrieve the $15 million that the government said was missing. According to lawyers who worked on the case in the early days, the financier’s headstrong manner irritated Judge Owen almost immediately."[9] On August 17, 2006, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy.[2][10] He was sentenced on April 10, 2007, to five years in prison.[1] Armstrong's daughter, Victoria, paid her father visits in prison most Wednesdays.[9] He was released from prison on September 2, 2011.[11] "
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/business/18trader.html
"“I think the government just wore Marty out,” said Thomas V. Sjoblom, a partner at Proskauer Rose who represents Mr. Armstrong. “The court system has not been gracious in any respect toward Martin Armstrong since the criminal judge in Trenton gave him bail in September 1999.”
After being released on bail in New Jersey seven years ago as the case was unfolding, Mr. Armstrong was indicted again by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Mr. Sjoblom said. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Mr. Armstrong in October 1999 and ordered him to turn over assets. Mr. Armstrong was jailed on civil contempt charges after failing to surrender $14.9 million in gold bars and rare coins to the government, assets that Mr. Armstrong maintained he did not have.
Last January, Mr. Sjoblom argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that Mr. Armstrong had been imprisoned unlawfully for six and a half years and should be released; the appellate court has not ruled on the matter. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/business/16jail.html?pagewanted=all
Martin Armstrong spent more time in a US military prison for contempt of court in a civil proceeding than any market commentator I can think of.
For fuck's sake the guy continued work on his wave theories in near isolation with dull pencils and napkins for a few years.
Compromised? -Martin is lucky to be able to walk and talk.
Personally, I think he got a raw deal and didn't deserve that kind of treatment and such a long sentence.
The point I was trying to make it that his writings have changed pretty dramatically since he got out of prison. It is incomprehensible how he can deny market rigging in light of the overwhelming evidence that confirms it.
I read his typewriter stuff from prision too.
And I agree with the slow change. Always pointing at GOVERNMENT and away from the banks, et al.
The round robin from regulatory to banks et al, the Government does EXACTLY what the banks et al say.
Marty never speaks of that paradox.
Also, don't forget Harry Dent along with all the regular news media outlets. Apparently they missed the memo!
Has anyone noticed that the collapse in oil began a few days after September 29, 2014, which is also the date the Shanghai Gold Exchange went international? Hmmm. Petrodollar even further along in its deathroes then even I thought.
Has anyone noticed that the collapse in oil began a few days after September 29, 2014, which is also the date the Shanghai Gold Exchange went international?
Huh....never made the connection.
a 2x4 is 1 1/2 x 3 1/2
True.
One dollar in one year is 93 cents.
8gigs of ram is actually about 7.8ish gigs because a computer knows 1024bytes= kilobyte and the manufactures pretend 1000bytes=kilobyte. Same for your hardrives
A 32 MB connection is really only 4 megabytes.
Yo, I gotta correct this. The case of the 'b' makes a difference.
Capital 'B' is byte. Lower case 'b' is bit.
32Mb = 32 Megabits x (1 byte / 8 bits) = 4 MegaBytes = 4MB
Also, RAM is always physically addressable as a power of 2. 4GB of RAM = 4294967296 bytes. The rounding off thing does not apply to RAM, as large, software-defined virtual memory spaces are implemented as projections into smaller physical memory spaces, and non-power-of-2 calculations are impractical to account for in hardware.
Try looking at the marketing material for ISP's and cable providers. Everything is in MB but they actually mean Mb. Comcast, Century Link, etc all do it. An IT buddy just switched his service because he fell for the MB bait and switch. He stood in my office and said over and over, "Big B is bytes dude." So a week later he calls me, "Those fuckers, it is Mb."
Someone should have sued them for false advertising years ago.
Surprisingly, every low-level telecom customer service gruntworker I've spoken to always knew the difference, at least enough to confirm that it is indeed a line advertised at x Megabits.
The telecoms have likely been sued multiple times over this, but I'd place a high probability on the gains in revenue from the misadvertisement trumping the lawsuit expenses.
Oh it gets better... maybe you all have heard about this
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from...
Wrong. True for data storage media but not volatile memory.
"Many still believe in the myth of the free market. They have an ideal situation in mind where everyone will be free from the state suppression and the free market will drive societies and individuals to balance and prosperity. It's just an illusion because in reality the game is more rigged than ever. We are not talking about capitalism, not even neoliberalism. We are talking about the new global, brutal feudalism!"
Rigging is the one certain way to remove that pesky uncertainty and make some money....
/s
No wonder he is corrupt and warped. Who with the nickname amongst peers of Tubby wouldn't be?...
</s>
Tubby...
A hangover from English Public school prolly.I won't tell you mine at school.
Its about future connections old boy.
Maybe I should have gone to the reunions after all ?
Long nail guns and cyanide tablets.
..and for no other reason than the irony....Mallets
the closer the FRN gets to ZERO, the more rigging/plundering occurs........
Score:
Pentagon 5
Bank lobby 2
Lobby war is over.
Pentagon wins. Bank lobby is dead.
Blowing real $hit up is better than paper anyways, ain't it?
As long as you're not on the receiving end, that is.
Tick Tock Bitchez!
Dude the bank lobby just passed Cromnibus. They are not losing power, they just got the biggest backstop in history.
There are between $40 to $60 trillion created.
Assuming a 10% bail-in agreed upon at G20, that would be 6 trllion.
Peanuts compared to $1.4 qudrillion derivatives under multiple jurisditions worldwide
Hence that clause is about bailing out goldman, citi and few more and killing sacrificial lambs to be determined.
I'd say Barclays, merryl lynch are going down. There is literally not enough money to bailout all bank lobby
what happened to just printing like they did before ????
As they did before, they printed for some like goldman, citi etc and they killed sacrificial lambs like Lehman.
If they print $10 trillions, world will stop using dollars. Everybody is screwed
What are you talking about? In 2008/2009 the FED doled out multi trillions to banks all over the world. Even the Canadian banks took the money (considered the strongest in the world at the time). They weren't asked to take the money either, they were forced to take it. It was the only way to keep the daisy chain of derivatives from breaking.
"the FED doled out multi trillionsto banks all over the world"
One way to take out competition is to cause a crash and then bailout everyone except the targets. Th erecent bill could be a precursor to a major competitor cull.
Bullshit, I guess you didn't bother to read the last bill pasted by congress. The taxpayers are on the hook for more bank derivatives.
Sorry ekm1, you have no credibility anymore. How are things at BofA or NSA?
I spit on my credibility
Cromnibus was 50% about military spending. Absolute Pentagon victory.
The so called "citibank" bill is totally useless and is utter humiliation for bank lobby. They were begging publicly rather than giving orders like in the past.
There is not enough money created worldwide to bailout $1.4 quadrillion derivatives under multiple worldwide jurisdictions.
That citibank clause about linking derivatives with deposits, is about selecting sacrificial lambs. Citibank, Goldman etc will be bailed out, others won't, just like Lehman, Bear stearns and MF Global.
I don't interpret Jamie getting on the phone and wrangling votes out in the open to be humiliation, I see it more as open acknowledgement of the lobbying process itself. I see it as brazen. Jamie's called people before to wrangle a vote, he just never did it on the nightly news before.
@ Ekm1 i am trying to understand you
please explain ?
More printed dollars without the corresponding real economic output is just money for bank lobby.
More printed dollars makes the world drop USD, which is happening, and makes Pentagon useless if USD is not used worldwide. There wouldn't be any need for Pentagon services.
Strong USD = good for pentagon, bad for bank lobby
Weak USD = good for bank lobby, bad for Pentagon.
Bullshit again. ZIRP means that these fuckers can access as many dollars as they want for nothing.
The dollar is not strong. just tell everyone which TBTF bank you work for already.
Yeah, I don't get him at all. To think the bank lobby is "dead" is pretty laughable on its face. They own Wash DC and certainly dont take any orders from the fucking Pentagon.
Decent synthesis, ekm1. You are definately on the money IMHO.
How does a guy like you get that smart? What is your academic
background, profession?
cough up, svp.
The bank lobby is dead? Really? How many prosecutions from the financial crisis? And these recent cases overturned on appeal:
"In a stunning rebuke of Preet Bharara's insider-trading prosecutions record, Businessweek reports a federal appeals court overturned and threw out the guilty verdicts of two hedge fund managers, Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson, ruling jury instructions tainted their verdictsand imperiling other cases brought in his multiyear probe"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-10/insider-trading-legal-following...
"A federal appeals court said the U.S. government had waited too long to prosecute three formerGeneral Electric Co bankers for conspiring to defraud cities in a municipal bond bid rigging scheme, and ordered the case to be dismissed.
Monday's ruling by a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York was issued 13 days after the court reversed the May 2012 convictions of the three bankers.
The 2-1 decision, which a dissenting judge called "misguided," is a setback for government efforts to patrol the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market, including when cities and towns might be facing financial harm long after the purported corruption took place."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/ge-bidrigging-decision-idUSL1N...
What's this rigging/plundering you speak of?
This is just business as normal, eh?
One decade, I only had one trading day I lost money...
You too!? We'z special.
Me too. But I only traded for one day.
Tyler wrote..........
"In the meantime, after the mandatory pause of 3-6 months, all rigging, all manipulation, and all criminal abuse with blessing from the central bank itself will quietly return, because until the great (and as increasingly more predict, very violent) reset finally comes, nothing can possibly change in a system as corrupt as this one.''
Tyler, for the record, can you define reset?
no dollar in system, turn it off of equation
Promises were lies.
You have what you have in your sock drawer....or lost in the lake.
RIPS
Reset? Well, it might start with say Krugman's neighbour going round to Krugman's house...and burning it down.
There's a simple fix.
Kill them, all of them. Kill their families, all of them. Bury them deep in unmarked graves and wipe their names from history.
Burn wall street to ashes then salt the earth. Kill every regulator, hang every politician, slaughter everyone who's name is Rothschild or Windsor-Gotha and start over.
The reset in inevitable. So hopefully the acts of vengeance will be something for us victims to enjoy.
You missed some, let me add:
Politicians' families, everyone in the CFR, FBI, CIA,DHS, White House, every bank employee above a teller, 98% of hedge fund companies, every bond trader, all mercenaries for hire, the entire "deep state," and then rinse and repeat in every country around the world following the same system.
That would be....a good start.
what about media whores (propaganda department)? they have made it all possible.
We can call itt a Cultural Revolution
Oh wait...
The media are the worst imo as the banking mafia bribe people in the shadows while the MSM betray the people who trust them to their face.
Even if you could kill every single Oligarch, their system would endure and new Oligarchs would fill their shoes. The real target here needs to be their system. Destroy the system used to control us, and free mankind.
The French tried that a couple hundred years ago....didn't work. Satan's kids are everywhere...
Bullshit, nothing lasts forever anyways.
Events like the french revolution and nazi germany just help the Blackhand thin the herd a little. The ruling class is planning on controling the great deflation that has started now and they will control the killing and direct the violence away from themselves. If a few million jews and americans die they don't care
Parasitism is an inevitable part of life so it will always return eventually but regular culls can keep it to a minimum.
to be precise, it works, for a period of time, but after a while, things always go back to normal ... so, to me , i think, it must be a regular thing to do the revolution, just for one simple principle :
never let those on the chairs think it is comfortable enough over time.
this is the only way to maintain the balance, every 200 years we should wipe the system and rewrite all to fit the world's shape.
i wish the next is soon. ...it's urgent...
"A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, 'Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?' With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, 'A republic, if you can keep it.' ” Well, it turns out we couldn't keep it.
ther's a certian %age of all currencies that move that is earmarked for the BIS.
Privatize the gains. Socialize the losses. Same as always.
Someone was just saying the other day ZH jumped the shark by not providing enough of the goods that turn conspiracy theory into conspiracy fact. Today we have more insight into FX manipulation and "momentum ignition" trading crack down.
Just another two conspiracy theories turning into facts.
epic ZH day, yes
It seems reality beats every conspiracy theory by far.
And yes, zombies do exist, too. Those who denounce others by calling them "conspiracy theorists".
...
Like the 9/11 attack beat every Hollywood action movie by far...
I think time is not far off when we will have a single world bank with JPMorganites running things... too big to fail...