So I can buy in really, really cheap. Meantime, these currencies rise as I move manufacturing and jobs into the places where I now have big investment positions. So my investments go up.

Well, back in the U.S. the bubble bursts, and the institutions like Fannie and Freddie that financed the housing bubble experience significant losses. Their stocks drop by a lot. That hits the pension funds, 401ks, IRAs and other savings of the people who have lost money on their homes. It’s a double whammy. A lot of them also lose their jobs. Triple whammy.

The currency drops in value a lot. This means that the dollar I pulled out and put into other currency that has been going up, up, up, is now worth multiple dollars. As asset values drop, each remaining dollar can buy things cheaply.

Indeed, with Fannie and Freddie’s stock dropping like a stone, I could have one or more of my offshore investment vehicles fund a recapitalization plan and buy control of the senior positions directly or indirectly controlling 50% of the residential mortgages in the country with my profits — that is for a small portion of that which I shifted out of the government.

Think of it. The housing bubble has reached its logical conclusion. If you can get enough people to buy a home for no money down, you can buy their country for no money down.

Over the course of the past couple of years, a background as an interest rate derivatives [swaps] broker along with the mushrooming size of J.P. Morgan Chase’s derivatives book [high-water mark, so far, of 92+ Trillion in notional at Q3/07] – the lion’s share of it being interest rate swaps – both alarmed and garnered Kirby’s attention. 

In this regard, what folks need to understand is that “if hedged” – interest rate swaps of duration between 3 and 10 years virtually always have a government bond trade imbedded in them.  This raised the specter of whether or not J.P. Morgan’s 80 or so Trillion worth of Interest Rate Swaps are “hedged” or whether the institution is taking a “naked punt” of staggering proportions. The conclusion he reached after researching the topic – J.P. Morgan, through regular daily activity in their swap book, is engaged in the on-going trade of government bonds that CANNOT LOGICALLY or LEGALLY EXIST.

Rob Kirby formally presented his findings in this regard in a paper delivered at GATA’s Washington conference in April of 2008, titled, The Elephant In the Room.

Naked Short Sales [or Monetization] – More Flavors Than Ben and Jerry’s

In the mainstream financial press, of late, there has been much-ado about NAKED SHORT SALES of equities [stocks].  That these phantom stock trades do in fact occur cannot be refuted.  The Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] has not only acknowledged that these fraudulent trades do occur, although illegal, but they have even gone so far as to announce that they will be vigilant – going forward – to ensure these illegal trades do not happen to selective financial stocks.

What this shows is that regulators – in this case the SEC – do, at least on occasions - turn a blind eye to illegal actions right under their noses and certainly within their jurisdictions.

What impressed Kirby about naked short sales of equities was how similar in appearance they were with the purchase and sales of bonds – particularly in the case of J.P. Morgan Chase – that, likewise, cannot legally exist.

In the case of “phantom” stocks, laymen cannot tell the difference between real ones or the fakes.  The only folks who do know the difference are the settlement agents – the DTCC [Depository Trust Clearing Corporation] – whose leadership is made up of the very firms [banks and investment firms] who perpetrate these crimes.  To date, neither the DTCC nor the SEC have shown any willingness to expose the firms who have participated in these activities – citing bogus reasons of not wanting to reveal trade secrets.  For all intent and purpose, the trade data is buried and will never see the light-of-day.

Folks would do well to remember the most predominant character trait of international bankers; namely, they’ve never paid allegiance to ANY nation and their conduct is best described as supra-national.  History proves this point:

During the Civil War (from 1861-1865), President Lincoln needed money to finance the War from the North. The Bankers were going to charge him 24% to 36% interest. Lincoln was horrified and went away greatly distressed, for he was a man of principle and would not think of plunging his beloved country into a debt that the country would find impossible to pay back.

Eventually President Lincoln was advised to get Congress to pass a law authorizing the printing of full legal tender Treasury notes to pay for the War effort. Lincoln recognized the great benefits of this issue. At one point he wrote:

"... (we) gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they have ever had - their own paper money to pay their own debts..."

The Treasury notes were printed with green ink on the back, so the people called them "Greenbacks".

Lincoln printed 400 million dollars worth of Greenbacks (the exact amount being $449,338,902), money that he delegated to be created, a debt-free and interest-free money to finance the War. It served as legal tender for all debts, public and private. He printed it, paid it to the soldiers, to the U.S. Civil Service employees, and bought supplies for war.

Shortly after that happened, "The London Times" printed the following:

"if that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in th history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

The Bankers obviously understood. The only thing, I repeat, the only thing that is a threat to their power is sovereign governments printing interest-free and debt-free paper money. They know it would break the power of the international Bankers.

After this was published in "The London Times", the British Government, which was controlled by the London and other European Bankers, moved to support the Confederate South, hoping to defeat Lincoln and the Union, and destroy this government which they said had to be destroyed.

They were stopped by two things.

First, Lincoln knew the British people, and he knew that Britain would not support slavery, so he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that slavery in the United States was abolished. At this point, the London Bankers could not openly support the Confederacy because the British people simply would not stand for their country supporting slavery.

Second, the Czar of Russia sent a portion of the Russian navy to the United States with orders that its admiral would operate under the command of Abraham Lincoln. [The Czarist regime would pay dearly for this transgression in the future.]  These ships of the Russian navy then became a threat to the ships of the British navy which had intended to break the blockade and help the South.

The North won the War, and the Union was preserved. America remained as one nation.

Of course, the Bankers were not going to give in that easy, for they were determined to put an end to Lincoln's interest-free, debt-free Greenbacks. He was assassinated by an agent of the Bankers shortly after the War ended.

Thereafter, Congress revoked the Greenback Law and enacted, in its place, the National Banking Act. The national banks were to be privately owned and the national bank notes they issued were to be interest-bearing. The Act also provided that the Greenbacks should be retired from circulation as soon as they came back to the Treasury in payment of taxes.

In 1972, the United States Treasury Department was asked to compute the amount of interest that would have been paid if that 400 million dollars would have been borrowed at interest instead of being issued by Abraham Lincoln. They did some computations, and a few weeks later, the United States Treasury Department said the United States Government saved 4 billion dollars in interest because Lincoln had created his own money. So you can about imagine how much the Government has paid and how much we owe solely on the basis of interest.

Selling something that does not exist [naked shorting], besides being fraudulent, is tantamount to printing money out of thin air.  Most problematic for the perpetrators, perhaps, are the paper trails generated by these larcenous transactions. 

With Kirby’s background having so much to do with bonds – trading and settlement – owing to the fact that he once helped set up an institutional bond-desk, Ms. Fitts’ little vignette [especially the time frame of 1997-2000 cited] really stuck in his craw.

With the events of 9/11 being forever etched in his mind – having lost so many good friends at bond broker, Cantor Fitzgerald, the world’s largest broker of U.S. Government Securities – floors 100-105 North Tower, WTC – he happens to remember intimate details of things like, the 658 Cantor employees that died that day and how quickly the firm re-commenced operations.  In case none of you remember, here’s a little refresher:

Cantor Fitzgerald Finds Permanent NYC HQ, Will Add 200 Jobs

by JACK LYNE, Site Selection Executive Editor of Interactive Publishing

NEW YORK — Cantor Fitzgerald (www.cantor.com), which suffered the most devastating corporate casualties on 9/11/01, has picked a permanent new headquarters home in New York City. 

….Perhaps the most critical steps in the company’s comeback came immediately after the attacks. Somewhat miraculously, Cantor and eSpeed managed to be back up and running when the New York bond market reopened at 8 on the morning of Sept. 13 — not yet 48 hours after 9/11’s attacks. 

       One key recovery element was the mirror site that Cantor had established at its data center in Rochelle Park, N.J. The New Jersey operation replicated all of the machines, connections and functionality inside the company’s WTC headquarters…..

…One of the biggest assists came from rival electronic trading company ICI/ADP (www.iciadp.com). While eSpeed’s IT staff was able to restore many trading system applications, it couldn’t resuscitate the system for settling transactions — which would’ve made reopening for business impossible.

Kirby wrote to Ms. Fitts after reading her Mortgage Market Musing piece,

          Catherine;

Your little story posted at the café about a gang of scoundrels who sold bonds that might not have existed. If I was a betting man – I’d say and in fact have no doubt that those bonds were “monetized” through Cantor Fitzgerald in the time period 1997 – 2000. Trillions were undoubtedly involved.

Best,

Rob Kirby

Whether or not Trillions of dollars worth of bonds were really “monetized” through Cantor Fitzgerald form 1997 – 2000, perhaps no one will ever really know for sure.

However, this tidbit [or smoking gun, perhaps?] emphatically states that Trillions worth of bonds issued “disappeared into a black hole”,

            Discrepancies in America's accounts hide a black hole

`By Daniel Gros

Published: June 15 2006 03:00 | Last updated: June 15 2006 03:00

The global financial system seems to have a black hole at its centre. Over the last two decades, US residents have sold a total of about $5,500bn worth of IOUs to foreigners, yet the officially recorded net investment position of the US has deteriorated only by a little more than half of this amount ($2,800bn). The US capital market seems to have acted like a black hole for investors from the rest of world in which $2,700bn vanished from sight - or at least from the official statistics.

How can $2,700bn disappear?

It is often argued that the US can simply make large capital gains on its gross positions because its assets are denominated in foreign currency and its liabilities in dollars. However, the available data indicate that over the last two decades this factor has netted the US at most $300bn-$400bn. This still leaves a loss of well over $2,000bn to be explained…..

Ladies and gentlemen, the only way that I know that 2.7 Trillion worth of bonds can disappear like this – is if they were “monetized” - on the sly.

If such an event did occur, the Federal Reserve would categorically and necessarily have been aware that something was amiss - if not outright complicit in the act.  That, of course, would be saying something awfully nasty about the Federal Reserve [an institution that has no reserves and is no more ‘Federal’ than Federal Express] as well as the institution of “Central Banking” now – wouldn’t it?  As GATA secretary and treasurer, Chris Powell, recently wrote,

Is central banking inevitably deceitful, corrupt, and grafting?

Working with GATA, you eventually discover that you're working with not just the secret knowledge of the universe -- the power of gold -- but also and just as important the largely forgotten knowledge of the ages. A powerful reminder of this can be found in an essay written five years ago for the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, by one of its adjunct scholars, H.A. Scott Trask, "The Fed's Predecessors in American History."

Trask's essay is a brief history of the Second Bank of the United States, which functioned from 1817 to 1836. Trask shows how this central bank quickly resorted to market manipulation, deceit, patronage, and corruption to maintain its power and subvert democracy. Some of the methods cited by Trask are identical to those being used now by the successors of the Second Bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

Trask quotes the economic historian William M. Gouge as attributing the failures of the Second Bank of the United States to the very concept of central banking. "The fault is in the system," Gouge wrote. "Give the management of it to the wisest and best men in the country, and still it will produce evil."

Each day's news out of Washington and New York makes it harder to argue with those who think so.

You can find Trask's essay at the Mises Internet site here:

http://www.mises.org/story/1395 

Whether or not those towers were really brought down to obscure a number of Trillions of dollars worth of illegal money creation would certainly lend credence to the 9/11 Truth Movement – who refuse to accept – as I do – the official explanation as to how and why those towers were brought down.

One can only speculate that if such a thing ever did occur – an OBSCENCE amount of money would have been created “out of thin air” which would have been more than enough to “blow a few asset bubbles with”.

Another thing, if such an event really ever did happen, the traceable records of the phony bond trades are all buried too.

All that would remain to give anyone a sniff would be unacknowledged or reported “untraceable fiat cash” – wreaking inflationary havoc on an economy somewhere.

“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” – James Paul Warburg, whose family co-founded the Federal Reserve - while speaking before the United States Senate, February 17, 1950

Notes:

Officialdom is still trying to silence the voice of Catherine Austin Fitts.  Just this week she was ‘censored’ from KPFA radio in the San Francisco Bay area where Fitts had been doing a 15 minute segment once a week called "Community Business" on Flashpoints, a show on KPFA which is a Pacifica affiliate. 

Fitts was offered this as an explanation, “that only academics and not for profits may be allowed on Flashpoints to cover economic issues. That means no investors, no business people including small business people or independent small investors”.

As a result, the show host, Dennis Bernstein, has requested that Project Censored investigate.

For more on Ms. Fitts' theory that covering up $4 trillion missing from the US Treasury was an essential part of the 9-11 operations, see:

9-11 Profiteering

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0403/S00244.htm

Will the Real Economic Hit Men Please Stand Up?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00090.htm

The Most Profitable Economic Hit in History

http://www.solari.com/blog/?p=978

Rob Kirby on Central Banking

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/kirby/2006/0510.html

-- Posted Tuesday, 5 August 2008 | Digg This Article