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Facebook investors are about to get unliked...

How can such a small country blow through so much money?

Those who Benefited from Wall Street Fraud Must be Prosecuted … Including Rogue Government Officials who Aided and Abetted the Crimes

When the Lieborgate scandal broke out and the Bank of England trace became publicly known, some of the more conspiratorially inclined elements saw in this epic shakedown at the English central bank nothing but an opportunity for the world's dominant investment bank, Goldman Sachs, to capitalize on the scandal and the succession panic now that Paul Tucker is obviously out of succession rotation, and to appoint its own tentacles to the head of this most important central bank that is currently squid free. In fact, on July 3 we said:"now that the natural succession path at the BOE has been terminally derailed, it brings up those two other gentlemen already brought up previously as potential future heads of the BOE, both of whom just happened to work, or still do, at... Goldman Sachs:  Canada's Mark Carney or Goldman's Jim O'Neil. Granted both have denied press speculation they will replace Mervyn King, but it's not like it would be the first time a banker lied to anyone now, would it (and makes one wonder if this whole affair was not merely orchestrated by the Squid from the get go... but no, that would be a 'conspiracy theory'.)" We wonder if this speculation can be upgraded from conspiracy theory to conspiracy fact, now that Bloomberg itself has written a major article discussing just this suddenly very likely outcome.

Why a new LIBOR based on Fed Funds (OIS) is determined by back door dealings between government sponsored failures (Fannie/Freddie) and a handful of compromised TBTF banks

It’s funny, I was worried about my Second Amendment rights just a moment ago, but now that the Council On Foreign Relations, a global governance think tank and inbred cesspool of despotic elitism, has explained the situation to me, I suddenly feel at ease… In preparation for the fast approaching UN summit on “international conventional arms trade” in New York, the CFR has published yet another disinformation piece skewing the facts and twisting reality to lull Americans into a state of apathy. Am I surprised that the CFR would rehash the talking points of the UN and declare uninhibited support for their worldwide gun grabbing bid?  Of course not.  The CFR and the UN are part and parcel of the same nefarious sea monster; each tentacle does its duty to rend sovereign ships asunder.  However, such propaganda articles from establishment organizations do give us an opportunity to dissect and annihilate a host of lies and misdirections in one fell swoop.  There may not be much sport in pulling apart the CFR’s poorly composed arguments, but, it has to be done…

Who is Sandy Weill? He is none other than a retired Citigroup Chairman, a former NY Fed Director, and a "philanthropist." He is also the man who lobbied for overturning of Glass Steagall in the last years of the 20th century, whose repeal permitted the merger of Travelers of Citibank, in the process creating Citigroup, the largest of the TBTF banks eventually bailed out by taxpayers. In his memoir Weill brags that he and Republican Senator Phil Gramm joked that it should have been called the Weill-Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Informally, some dubbed it “the Citigroup Authorization Act.” As The Nation explains, "Weill was instrumental in getting then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Republican-sponsored legislation that upended the sensible restraints on finance capital that had worked splendidly since the Great Depression." Of course, by overturning Glass Steagall the last hindrance to ushering in the TBTF juggernaut and the Greenspan Put, followed by the global Bernanke put, was removed, in the process making the terminal collapse of the US financial system inevitable. Why is Weill relevant? Because in a statement that simply redefines hypocrisy, the same individual had the temerity to appear on selloutvision, and tell his fawning CNBC hosts that it is "time to break up the big banks." That's right: the person who benefited the most of all from the repeal of Glass Steagall is now calling for its return.

Just like last time around when stocks were plunging with no knight in shining armor in sight, until the Fed's faithful mouthpiece-cum-scribe Jon Hilsenrath showed up with a report, subsequently disproven, that more QE is coming minutes before the market close on July 6, so today stocks appeared poised for a precipice until some time after 3 pm it was leaked that none other than Hilseranth once again appeared, at precisely 3:55 pm, with more of the same. Ironically, the market only saw the word Hilsenrath in the headline, and ignored the rest. The irony is that this time around the Fed's scribbler said nothing that we did not know, namely that the Fed can do something in August, or it may do something in September, or it may do nothing, none of which is actually news.

The three "de's:" deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization.

Lost generation of Spain.

There was a time when regulators caught red-handed abusing their privileges, aka, doing nothing in the face of glaring malfeasance, would quietly fade away only to even more quietly reappear, sans press release, as a third general counsel or some other C-grade menial role paying a minimum 6 figure compensation to the individual for years of doing nothing. This is no longer the case: it appears that the best such exposed "regulators" can hope for going forward is to get media positions. Such is the case with John Ewan. Who is John Ewan? None other than the director "responsible for the management of the setting of Libor" at the British Bankers' Association. In other words, the man whom The Sun of all non-captured publications (oddly enough, tabloids sometimes have more journalistic integrity than Reuters and the FT as we will shortly find) has dubbed Mr. Libor. The Sun continues: "In a staggering profile on the internet Mr Ewan reveals he joined the BBA in 2005 to “put Libor on a secure commercial footing”. That year Barclays traders began fiddling the figures they submitted for the Libor calculations. On the LinkedIn networking site Mr Ewan boasts of generating a “tenfold” increase in revenue from licensing out the Libor rate." He adds: “I introduced new products and obtained EU, US and Japanese trademarks for BBA Libor. "I successfully negotiated contracts with derivatives exchanges and all of the major data vendors." Well, in the aftermath of Lieborgate surely Ewan is going to someone receptive to his permissive and highly profitable tactics over the years, such as Barclays. Actually no: instead of a bank, the only place that is willing to accept Ewan is media conglomerate Reuters. And not just as anyone: "Thomson Reuters confirmed that Ewan has joined the company as head of business development for its fixing and benchmark business." We wonder how much revenue Mr. Ewan generated for Reuters?

From spearheads to shells, this Government-issue 1947 "Know Your Money" clip explains that "none of these met all the requirements of good money". From such trying historical experience, Gold and Silver emerged as the most durable, most convenient, and most satisfactory money. Luckily, governments took over the management of good money and saved us all the bother of worrying about credibility...

Visitor volume to Las Vegas is the highest since 2007, despite rising hotel rates, but gaming revenues are near flat.  Online gambling is popular with Europeans – the Brits and Greeks in particular – yet it has slowed over the past 3 months. ConvergEx's latest off-the-beaten-path economic indicator – gambling – shows an increasing global reluctance to leave household finances at the whims of blackjack and poker tables, be they in actual casinos or online betting parlors. Discretionary spending behavior is reliant on consumer sentiment and economic outlook; gambling is the ultimate “luxury item” because there’s absolutely no guaranteed return, so gambling behavior is a near real-time indicator of changes in consumer confidence.  Our gambling indicators, both domestic and abroad, show what feels a lot like recessionary behavior and point to another leg down in the latter half of 2012.

Too Big Leads To Destruction of the Rule of Law

Two years ago, in January 2010, Zero Hedge wrote "This Is The Government: Your Legal Right To Redeem Your Money Market Account Has Been Denied" which became one of our most read stories of the year. The reason? Perhaps something to do with an implicit attempt at capital controls by the government on one of the primary forms of cash aggregation available: $2.7 trillion in US money market funds. The proximal catalyst back then were new proposed regulations seeking to pull one of these three core pillars (these being no volatility, instantaneous liquidity, and redeemability) from the foundation of the entire money market industry, by changing the primary assumptions of the key Money Market Rule 2a-7. A key proposal would give money market fund managers the option to "suspend redemptions to allow for the orderly liquidation of fund assets." In other words: an attempt to prevent money market runs (the same thing that crushed Lehman when the Reserve Fund broke the buck). This idea, which previously had been implicitly backed by the all important Group of 30 which is basically the shadow central planners of the world (don't believe us? check out the roster of current members), did not get too far, and was quickly forgotten. Until today, when the New York Fed decided to bring it back from the dead by publishing "The Minimum Balance At Risk: A Proposal to Mitigate the Systemic Risks Posed by Money Market FUnds". Now it is well known that any attempt to prevent a bank runs achieves nothing but merely accelerating just that (as Europe recently learned). But this coming from central planners - who never can accurately predict a rational response - is not surprising. What is surprising is that this proposal is reincarnated now. The question becomes: why now? What does the Fed know about market liquidity conditions that it does not want to share, and more importantly, is the Fed seeing a rapid deterioration in liquidity conditions in the future, that may and/or will prompt retail investors to pull their money in another Lehman-like bank run repeat?