Greece Officially Defaults, UK Prepares For Euro Collapse

Greece has now become the first developed western nation to default on its sovereign debt and, while the media is downplaying the consequences, no amount of propaganda and deception will be able hide the debris that will be scattered across Europe once the the financial shit-storm is done blowing over.

The consequences will be severe indeed as the spotlight focuses on the rest of the PIIGS nations while investors are forced to consider the situation in Greece, which does not bode well for the economic future of these nations nor is it a good omen for the future of the Euro.

While this can easily be written off as the speculation of some blogger, you’ll see below that the BBC reported that even the UK government issued a red alert warning just yesterday running the headline “UK must prepare for the collapse of the Euro” predicting that the events that unfolded today would soon come to fruition.

For those not following what just happened, earlier the IDSA declaration of a “credit event” that triggers credit default swaps and Fitch downgraded Greek debt to “restricted default” following a debt swap deal to keep the Greek government alive by securing an EU bailout.

Reports have now just hit the wire that Moody’s has declared Greece in default, which will have dire consequences on Greece and the entire Euro-zone area.

For those wondering which EU nation is next, the answer is of course Portugal.

Recent days have seen a mass exodus of investors’ money as the Troika gave their first indications that Portugal will be forced to restructure their debt in the same manner as Greece.

via Activist Post: Greece Officially Defaults, UK Prepares For Euro Collapse.

The Crazy Things Happening At JP Morgan Will Blow Your Mind

Rampant silver manipulation?  Rampant gold manipulation?  Rampant LIBOR manipulation?  Hiding MF Global client assets?  These are all happening at JP Morgan according to an open letter reportedly written by an anonymous employee of the firm.  The whistleblower also warns of a “cascading credit event being triggered” by derivatives related to Greek government debt.  Unlike Greg Smith at Goldman Sachs, this whistleblower has chosen to remain anonymous for now.  According to the letter, the whistleblower is still an employee of JP Morgan and has not resigned.  But that does make it much more difficult to confirm what he is saying.  With Greg Smith, we know exactly who he is and what he was doing at Goldman.  As far as this anonymous whistleblower is concerned, all we have is this letter.  So we must take it with a grain of salt.  However, the information in this letter does agree with what whistleblowers such as Andrew Maguire have said in the past about silver manipulation by JP Morgan.  And this letter does mention Greg Smith’s resignation from Goldman, so we know that it must have been written in the past few days.  Hopefully this letter will cause authorities to take a much closer look at the crazy things that are going on over at JP Morgan and the other big Wall Street banks.

This anonymous letter was addressed to the CFTC, but unfortunately it looks like the CFTC has already chosen to ignore it.

The original letter from this anonymous whistleblower has already been taken down from the CFTC website. When you go there now, all you get is this message….

“The Comment Cannot Be Found. Please Return to the Previous Page and Try Again.”

Fortunately, there are many in the alternative media that copied this entire letter from the CFTC website.

The following is a copy of the original letter that the anonymous whistleblower from JP Morgan submitted to the CFTC….

———-

Dear CFTC Staff,

Hello, I am a current JPMorgan Chase employee. This is an open letter to all commissioners and regulators. I am emailing you today b/c I know of insider information that will be damning at best for JPMorgan Chase. I have decided to play the role of whistleblower b/c I no longer have faith and belief that what we are doing for society is bringing value to people. I am now under the opinion that we are actually putting hard working Americans unaware of what lays ahead at extreme market risk. This risk is unnecessary and will lead to wide-scale market collapse if not handled properly. With the release of Mr. Smith’s open letter to Goldman, I too would like to set the record straight for JPM as well. I have seen the disruptive behavior of superiors and no longer can say that I look up to employees at the ED/MD level here at JPM. Their smug exuberance and arrogance permeates the air just as pungently as rotting vegetables. They all know too well of the backdoor crony connections they share intimately with elected officials and with other institutions. It is apparent in everything they do, from the meager attempts to manipulate LIBOR, therefore controlling how almost all derivatives are priced to the inherit and fraudulent commodities manipulation. They too may have one day stood for something in the past in the client-employee relationship. Does anyone in today’s market really care about the protection of their client? From the ruthless and scandalous treatment of MF Global client asset funds to the excessive bonuses paid by companies with burgeoning liabilities. Yes, we at JPMorgan that are in the know are fearful of a cascading credit event being triggered in Greece as they have hidden derivatives in excess of $1 Trillion USD. We at JPMorgan own enough of these through counterparty risk and outright prop trading that our entire IB EDG space could be annihilated within a few short days. The last ten years has been market by inflexion point after inflexion point with the most notable coming in 2008 after the acquisition of Bear.

I wish to remain anonymous as of now as fear of termination mounts from what I am about to reveal. Robert Gottlieb is not my real name; however he is a trader that is involved in a lawsuit for manipulative trading while working with JPMorgan Chase. He was acquired during our Bear Stearns acquisition and is known to be the notorious person shorting in the silver future market from his trading space, along with Blythe Masters, his IB Global boss. However, with that said, we are manipulating the silver futures market and playing a smaller (but still massively manipulative) role in manipulating the gold futures market. We have a little over a 25% (give or take a percentage) position in the short market for silver futures and by your definition this denotes a larger position than for speculative purposes or for hedging and is beyond the line of manipulation.

On a side note, I do not work directly with accounts that would have been directly impacted by the MF Global fiasco but I have heard through other colleagues that we have involvement in the hiding of client assets from MF Global. This is another fraudulent effort on our part and constitutes theft. I urge you to forward that part of the investigation on to the respective authorities.

There is something else that you may find strange. During month-end December, we were all told by our managers that this was going to be a dismal year in terms of earnings and that we should not expect any bonuses or pay raises. Then come mid-late January it is made known that everyone received a pay raise and/or bonus, which is interesting b/c just a few weeks ago we were told that this was not likely and expected to be paid nothing in addition to base salary. January is right around the time we started increasing our short positions quite significantly again and this most recent crash in gold and silver during Bernanke’s speech on February 29th is of notable importance, as we along with 4 other major institutions, orchestrated the violent $100 drop in Gold and subsequent drops in silver.

As regulators of the free people of this country, I ask you to uphold the most important job in the world right now. That job is judge and overseer of all that is justice in the most sensitive of commodity markets. There are many middle-income people that invest in the physical assets of silver, gold, as well as mining stocks that are being financially impacted in a negative way b/c of our unscrupulous shorts in the precious metals commodity sector. If you read the COT with intent you will find that commercials (even though we have no business being in the commercial sector, which should be reserved for companies that truly produce the metal) are net short by a long shot in not only silver, but gold.

It is rather surprising that what should be well known liabilities on our balance sheet have not erupted into wider scale scrutinization. I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. We are only helping reality come to light therefore allowing a real valuation of our banking industry which will give investors a chance to properly adjust without being totally wiped out. I will be contacting a lawyer shortly about this matter, as I believe no other whistleblower at JPMorgan has come forward yet. Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.

Kind Regards,
-The 1st Whistleblower of Many

u.s. kidnaps british student because of links on his website

The crony-capitalist empire has grabbed a British student, and will kangaroo-try and cage him, for running a website in his own country that was perfectly legal in his own country. That website, however, linked to external sites that streamed US TV shows. Mere links, even in foreign countries, are criminal in the US of Copyright, a regime run in cahoots with the music, tv, publishing, and movie industries. NB: one of Tony Blair’s first acts as UK PM and Bush Poodle was to strip British citizens of all rights when the US empire wanted to kidnap them for such non-crimes. (Thanks to Lee Shelton)

via LewRockwell.com Blog.

The Great Fakeroo Recovery

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

What is of concern here is the timing. The problem keeps getting worse, which suggests that in fact the bust has not played itself out entirely. And this is backed by other trends.

Let’s first talk about housing statistics that are off the cliff. Consider housing starts. Over a year, the crash from the height of 1.8 million per month to 390 thousand per month. The latest rebound looks like a blip on the radar screen. July numbers on foreclosures are the worst we’ve seen, and the third time in five months that we’ve seen a new record. Already 2.9 million homes have been foreclosed on, and there are probably at least that many still on the chopping block. Banks are reluctant to do the deed because foreclosures devastate their books, so they delay as long as possible.

There is the sleeping giant of commercial real estate, which rose as much as residential housing, tripling loaned dollars in the course of a mere 10 years. And yet there has not been a crash here. Looking at the numbers, one gets the sense of a high-flying jet about to run out of gas.

And when you broaden the perspective past housing, to the whole of domestic investment, it looks like an Olympic high dive with no end in sight. In fact, ten years of investment has been effectively reverted. We stand today where we stood in 1999. Investment is a very important piece of data for assessing our future, because it is always forward looking. In this case, there doesn’t look to be progress in the future at all. Even from the point at which this figure turns, we have another few years before real economic growth returns.

Why do matters in the financial sector look better? It is wholly a consequence of trillions in artificial stimulus, a market re-jiggered and falsified through money creation and partial nationalization and bailouts. These do not last.

via The Great Fakeroo Recovery by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..

Major US Airport To Evict TSA Screeners

One of America’s busiest airports, Orlando Sanford International, has announced it will opt out of using TSA workers to screen passengers, a move which threatens the highly unpopular federal agency’s role in other airports across the nation.

“The president of the airport said Tuesday that he would apply again to use private operators to screen passengers, using federal standards and oversight,” reports the Miami Herald.

With Sanford International having originally been prevented by the TSA from opting out back in November 2010 when the federal agency froze the ability for airports to use their own private screeners, a law passed by the Senate last month forces the TSA to reconsider applications.

Larry Dale hinted that the move was motivated by the innumerable horror stories passengers have told of their encounters with the TSA, noting that the change was designed to provide a more “customer friendly” operation.

via

» Major US Airport To Evict TSA Screeners.

Blogger Who Exposed TSA Files More Lawsuits Against Agency

Corbett was the first person in the country to sue the TSA for invasion of privacy. That case is still ongoing and is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Corbett’s original video shows him carrying a metal case through the scanner, away from his body in his side pocket. Corbett explains that because metallic objects appear as black on the image the scanners produce, the machines do not pick up such objects if they are obscured by the background, which is also black.

The video has now been watched over 1.8 million times, a staggering figure that prompted the TSA to respond via its official blog.

The agency attempted to discredit Corbett by describing him as “some guy” who launched a “crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures.”

However, nowhere in the response does the TSA actually address or attempt to disprove Corbett’s demonstration that the body scanner can be easily fooled.

In labeling Corbett’s successful effort to evade the body scanner as “crude,” the TSA has inadvertently admitted that its $1 billion dollar body scanner system can be defeated by “crude” methods.

via » Blogger Who Exposed TSA Files More Lawsuits Against Agency