2 Japanese carrying $134 bil worth of U.S. bonds detained in Italy

[Peter Lemkin]

Official announcement by Italian Financial Police with best photos of 'bonds'.....
http://www.agenziadogane.it/wps/wcm/conn...OD=AJPERES

[David Guyatt]

Thanks to Google translate, you too can laugh at the above Italian announcement in English:

Rome, 4 June 2009

PRESS RELEASE CUSTOMS OFFICE OF COMO SOT CHIASSO OF GUARD AND FINANCE BOND FOR SEQUESTRATION USA 96 BILLION EURO

Officials of the Chamber of Chiasso Operativa Territoriale, in collaboration with the military of the Guardia di Finanza, when controlling for combat illicit trafficking of capital through the railway crossing seized at the international station of Chiasso a significant amount of U.S. securities totaling 134.5 billion dollars, equivalent to a equivalent in euro of more than 96 billion.

The values were owned by two Japanese fifties, fell from a train coming from Italy, at the time of customs claimed to they have nothing to declare. Thorough checking of luggage made it possible to find, hidden on the bottom a suitcase in a compartment separate from that of the garments personal, 249 bond of the "Federal Reserve" American with a nominal value of 500 million each, and 10 "Kennedy Bond" with a nominal value of 1 billion dollars each, as well as a large bank documents in original.

For bonds and documents of interest rates that followed them, also subject to seizure, are currently under investigation to establish authenticity and origin. If the titles were genuine, according to the applicable currency the applicable administrative penalty could reach 38 billion euro, equal to 40% of the amount exceeding the permitted exemption of € 10,000.

With a bit of luck on the Glemorangie front, I, too, might "fell from a train", and if I wake up and have $134.5 billion in strange securities stuffed in my pocket, then I'm going to be buying the next several cases of the Scottish mist...

[Peter Lemkin]

134.5 Billion buys quite a bit o 'whiskey....I'd hate to even calculate how much!!!!!!...enough (and then some) for a nice weekend, or fifty:bike: million..... Barkeep, a bottle of your finest for everyone on the Planet who can tell deep political things when they see 'em! Oh, I forgot, the other Peter was buying. :hmmmm2:

NB - those loquacious Italian Border/Financial/Customs Police 'ain't talkin' no more....silencio!!!!! :marchmellow:

NBB - and wouldn't ya just love to have a few glasses with those supposed Japanese 'mules'......I'll bet, if they are still alive, they have quite an interesting tale to tell!

I'm reminded of the line in Loose Change, when the moderator asks, 'Who writes this stuff!!!??? - to wit:

:hahaha: "For nearly two weeks, Italian authorities probed their authenticity and eventually requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s appraisal. Asked what it concluded, SEC spokesman John Heine told me [this] Wednesday: “I think I need to decline to comment on this.” ....Treasury spokesman Stephen Meyerhardt called the bonds “clearly fakes” and added: “That’s beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what’s out there.” Meyerhardt noted that only $104.5 billion in bearer bonds exist ..." [[i.e. it is more than they admit exists in bearer bonds, but they don't seem convincing on their being fake...and they let the men with them go....go figure!] :dong:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjc...zk=&w=MA==

David, your the funny-bond expert here....what do you make of this caper?! This one seems to 'take the cake'!!....though I'm sure you've seen more of these than I currently have problems. tickyman:

...and I just LOVE this from someone on the Ticker Forum: "The only skill you need in American now, is the skill to schmooze with those in power. I'm actually angry with my parents and teachers for having brainwashed me into being decent, helpful, truthful, productive, honest and resourceful. They have shackled me with mental chains that keep me down in a time where chaos and criminality are valued as virtues." :tee:

Japanese TV on this.

[Peter Lemkin]

I can't believe there are STILL no real developments one can believe. They HAVE to be real. If they were counterfeit, they would have been definitively denounced and those transporting them arrested. The fact the G8 were meeting in Switzerland then and the Japanese FM the day after this broke said he had full faith in T Bonds is weird. There are also reports [semi-official] that don't match on the details - what few there are.....it smells of Deep Deep Poo! No one would 'buy' this stuff if it were a movie....or cheap novel, but it is 'real'. Could it have been to threaten confidence in and stop market in all US Bonds? At first they were said to be Fed Bonds - which are not supposed to exist. Days later they were T Bonds. No one has mentioned anything about the many bank documents that are said to authenticate them. They must have details, dates, names, serial numbers and more...so why the delay, hemming and equivocation, no comments, etc.?! Nothing fits - as in all deep political ops. :damnmate:

And as if all that wasn't strange enough, it turns out a little known reporting/intelligence group in the Vatican that reports mainly (ans some say also spies) on China scooped this story[and may be involved!?].....Calvi lives!?

Involved soverigns (maybe):
Japan
U.S.
Italy
Vatican
Switzerland
Unknown others....

Pass the tea, said Alice.....

How the Bearer Bonds Saga Could Bring Down the US
Contrarian Profits
Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:40 UTC

Today's Notes reads more like a John le Carre novel than an investment newsletter. But bear with us. It tracks one of the most fascinating news stories you've never heard of. The news reports are maddeningly sketchy. And the mainstream media is doing a damn good job of not reporting the story.

But it's clear the arrests by Italian authorities of two "Japanese-looking" men allegedly attempting to smuggle $134.5 billion worth of US bearer bonds across the Swiss border is the biggest financial crime in history. And one with major implications for America's economic security.

For those of you who don't know, a report surfaced on Monday, June 8, on an obscure Vatican-sponsored news website, AsiaNews.it, that Italy's financial police (Guardia Italiana di Finanza) had "seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland."

According to the report, these securities included "249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth $500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar [sic] each."

If the report is true (it has been relayed by the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Times and the Dow Jones news service), it means these two as-yet-to-be-identified men were carrying securities amounting to the GDP of New Zealand - or enough money to fund three Beijing Olympics - in non-negotiable bonds in their suitcase.

As Bloomberg put it, "If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia."

The story is filled with bizarre and incongruous details. Enough, in fact, to make the mind of even the most determined news hound spin.

First, there's the obvious question of whether these billion and half-billion dollar notes are real or fake. According to the AsiaNews report, "Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake but [...] if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones."

The story has received a lot of coverage in Europe and Asia. But US media outlets have ignored it, despite the fact that it concerns either the biggest ever counterfeiting or the biggest ever smuggling of US bonds. (A third possibility is that the story itself is a fake. Even so, this would merit serious attention as it implies that someone or some state or state agency is interested in destabilizing the value of US debt at a time when it's most sensitive to destabilization, i.e., when America is issuing most of it.)

The story broke smack in the middle of heightened concerns over the stability of US bonds markets. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has just completed a trip to China, where he did his best to assuage Chinese fears that US fiscal and monetary policy is undermining the value of US government and agency debt. And the BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - have recently stirred the pot by calling for a less dollar-centric global currency system.And following the report of the bond arrests, Japan - the second largest foreign holder of US debt after China - felt it necessary to come out with the following statement via its finance minister: "We have complete trust in the fact that the U.S. views its strong-dollar policy as fundamental. So our trust in U.S. Treasuries is absolutely unshakable." (As Karl Denninger points out on his blog, The Market Ticker, the Japanese said in December 1941 that all was well, too.)

According the Dow Jones Business News, "An official at Japan's Consulate General in Milan said Tuesday that Italy was still investigating the case, adding it wasn't confirmed that the two men are Japanese."So are the alleged smugglers/counterfeiters Japanese or aren't they? And if they aren't, why did the press reports say they were? According to Dow Jones, the Japanese have "sent a letter asking for further information to the Italian tax police as well as prosecutors." But why the delay?

A breaking report from Joe Weisenthal at The Business Insider, snatched from Japanese TV, says the "Japanese" bond smugglers are now missing. If this was a simple case of counterfeiting (albeit the biggest in history), it's highly unlikely the Italian and US authorities would have let the men carrying the bonds simply slip off into the night...

The amount seized should ring alarm bells. On March 30 2009, the Treasury Department announced that $134.5 billion remained in the TARP. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion.

According to JS Kim of investment research company SmartKnowledgeU, "The two well-dressed Japanese men opted to travel to Chiasso on a local train normally full of Italian manual laborers commuting to Switzerland. If they were really intent on successfully smuggling these bonds, counterfeit or real, why would they not take more care to select a travel route in which it was literally impossible for them not to stick out like two sore thumbs?

The bearer bonds were discovered in a hidden briefcase compartment after a customs inspection. As Kim also points out, "If the bonds were indeed authentic and owned by a nation state, they could have been transported in a diplomatic pouch exempt from customs searches that would have guaranteed transport without detection."

Here at Notes we have two theories about the bond arrests, presuming the story is legit. (That is to say presuming the reporting on the story is legit. More on this later.) Both have serious implications for the US economy and all who depend on it for their livelihoods.

The first possibility, as we see it, is that the events in Italy are evidence of sophisticated economic espionage and an attempt by a (hostile) foreign power to undermine US economic power.

In other words, somebody wants to destabilize the US bond markets by spreading the word that US bonds can be forged, but that "the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones " (as the original report put it). Raising legitimate concerns about the ability to withstand counterfeiting efforts is a sure-fire way of sabotaging a currency.

It wouldn't be the first time that such a strategy has been used to destabilize an enemy power. During World War II, Hitler launched Operation Bernhard to crash the British war economy. By the end of the war, it had produced 132 million expertly counterfeited British pounds - a sum that represented about 15% of all British pounds in circulation at the time. The British ran a similar counterfeiting operation against the Nazis.

It seems careless, to say the least, to get caught with $134.5 billion dollars worth of securities by a regular inspection on a train. We've already ruled out that this wasn't an official state operation (otherwise the bonds would have traveled in a diplomatic pouch). So it's certainly odd that people sophisticated enough counterfeit or steal $134.5 billion worth of US government bonds couldn't think of a safer way to transport them.

The implication is the "Japanese" interlopers wanted to be caught. And they wanted the world to know that US bonds could be so expertly forged.

Who would want to destabilize US economic power? Who would have the technology and the know-how to print such convincing forgeries? Who is a declared enemy of the US? Who might have "Japanese" looking agents working for them? North Korea would have to top the list of suspects...

Also, there's the question of why the Italian authorities didn't allow the "Japanese" couriers to deliver their illicit cargo to its destination (and therefore also apprehend the intended recipient/s of the bonds). Surely, that would have been of interest to the Italian authorities, who seem to have been acting on a tip-off. (Unless you believe that the Italians are in the habit of searching false-bottomed suitcases of well-dressed Asians on their way to Switzerland.)

One explanation for this is that the Italians believe these bonds are real. Italian law prevents people importing or exporting more than €10,000 in cash. And the penalty for violating the law is 40% of the money seized. That would mean the jackpot of the Italian government - the fine for this particular haul would be €38 billion. This would go a long way to eliminate the country's public debt.

This brings us to our second theory. If the bonds turn out be real, it points to the possibility that the US Treasury may have been secretly issuing bonds to foreign nations to finance America's deficits. This has worse implications than the sabotage theory. Let us explain...

The bonds the Italian authorities seized earlier this month were bearer bonds. That means they are unregistered - whoever holds the physical piece of paper owns the instrument.

This is where the plot really thickens. Since the passing of the US Tax and Fiscal Responsibility Act in 1982, the US doesn't officially issue this kind of bond anymore. And according to the Treasury's own figures, the approximate amount of debt outstanding in bearer bonds as of May 2009 is just over $100 billion - roughly $34 billion less than the amount wound up in a false-bottomed suitcase on a train from Milan to Switzerland.

It seems the only way the bonds could be real is if the Treasury has been issuing bonds it doesn't want anyone to know about.

According to underground investor Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker, this is "one of the few explanations that actually fits the facts." And Denninger goes a step further. He writes:
If in fact previous administrations were issuing "off-book" Treasury debt in this fashion to sovereigns then implications are truly explosive as such issues are blatant and outrageous unlawful acts and would expose everyone involved to severe criminal penalties.
This wouldn't surprise us in the least. Right now the US government is on a $12.8 trillion spending spree. As we've said before, it's now the biggest player in the US economy. And it's destined to be this way for a long time to come.

Put simply, the government money, and a handful of chosen stock shoot up. (To find out which stocks are benefiting from this unprecedented spending splurge, read on here. )

This story has more holes than a Swiss cheese. We know from experience here at Notes (your co-editor spent two years working as an investigative reporter in his native Ireland) that there is rarely smoke without fire when it comes to news stories. But one aspect of this story still puzzles us... and it's a part of the story nobody to date has questioned: What was an obscure Vatican-sponsored news outfit doing breaking the largest financial crime story all time?

As far as we can tell, AsiaNews.it broke the story on June 8. Major news services followed on with their own reports much later. Bloomberg, for instance, only got to it yesterday. So how did AsiaNews.it, a website linked to the Ponticial Institute for Foreign Missions and funded by the Vatican scoop the major news agencies on the bond story?

AsiaNews.it's About Us page freely admits that it is an anti-Communist organ of the Roman Catholic Church, "nobly dedicated to China and her people." The organization's missionary zeal is not difficult to detect:

Since [Chinese] university students have internet access, we think that AsiaNews will help them to be familiar with the impact Christianity has on Asian and Chinese society. Already many Chinese intellectuals think China can be saved by Christianity, so as not to explode into a soulless market or a dictatorship that humiliates the individual.Whatever the truth behind the bearer bond arrests , we know it doesn't bode well for America's economic future. At best, it demonstrates that the US faces economic sabotage from an (as yet) unknown source. At worst, it's evidence of underhand behaviour by US authorities to finance the country's spiraling debt problem.

Even if the case can be put down to (a highly incompetent) nation trying to offload its dollar holdings, it underscores our argument here at Notes that investors need to closely watch US debt markets to determine the future of their investments.

This year, it's estimated that the US Treasury Department must raise $15 billion a day in debt just to keep the country afloat and Team Obama in pocket. It's our view that this is America's Achilles' heel.

The US economy has already been brought to its knees by too much private debt. We believe its public debt problem could one day deal the country a deathblow.
http://www.contrarianprofits.com/article...e-us/18081

[David Guyatt]

134.5 Billion buys quite a bit o 'whiskey....I'd hate to even calculate how much!!!!!!...enough (and then some) for a nice weekend, or fifty:bike: million..... Barkeep, a bottle of your finest for everyone on the Planet who can tell deep political things when they see 'em! Oh, I forgot, the other Peter was buying. :hmmmm2:

NB - those loquacious Italian Border/Financial/Customs Police 'ain't talkin' no more....silencio!!!!! :marchmellow:

NBB - and wouldn't ya just love to have a few glasses with those supposed Japanese 'mules'......I'll bet, if they are still alive, they have quite an interesting tale to tell!

I'm reminded of the line in Loose Change, when the moderator asks, 'Who writes this stuff!!!??? - to wit:

:hahaha: "For nearly two weeks, Italian authorities probed their authenticity and eventually requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s appraisal. Asked what it concluded, SEC spokesman John Heine told me [this] Wednesday: “I think I need to decline to comment on this.” ....Treasury spokesman Stephen Meyerhardt called the bonds “clearly fakes” and added: “That’s beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what’s out there.” Meyerhardt noted that only $104.5 billion in bearer bonds exist ..." [[i.e. it is more than they admit exists in bearer bonds, but they don't seem convincing on their being fake...and they let the men with them go....go figure!] :dong:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjc...zk=&w=MA==

David, your the funny-bond expert here....what do you make of this caper?! This one seems to 'take the cake'!!....though I'm sure you've seen more of these than I currently have problems. tickyman:

...and I just LOVE this from someone on the Ticker Forum: "The only skill you need in American now, is the skill to schmooze with those in power. I'm actually angry with my parents and teachers for having brainwashed me into being decent, helpful, truthful, productive, honest and resourceful. They have shackled me with mental chains that keep me down in a time where chaos and criminality are valued as virtues." :tee:

Japanese TV on this.

Firstly Pete it seems to me that there has been an an assumption made that these are bearer bonds. So far as I can see this assumption is made because the bonds are apparently US bonds. I'm not at all sure they are. And if I'm correct then this assumption allows all sorts of wriggle room for the boys with green visors - Stephen Meyerhardt for example. Meyehardt's comment that the bonds are "clearly fakes" strikes me as a very clever usage of the English language. Most curiously, he's not actually stating they're counterfeit is he. He seems to me to be purposely speaking personally when making his comment. Perhaps I'm hair-splitting but bureaucrats can be amazingly creative with language when the need arises.
John Heine' statement that he thinks he "needs to decline comment on this", speaks loudly and clearly that there is something to this affair that is deeply political rather than deeply criminal.

The official Italian press release categorically states that these are "US securities". This is a statement made for the record. In other words they are genuine US securities even if they are not public issuance or "bearer" in nature. Ditto the statement about "Kennedy Bonds".

I have come across a lot of past stories about deniable US government securities that were issued under conditions of secrecy for specific purposes. For example, I have an awful lot of material on one particular CUSIP issued in the Nixon Administration day that were used to launder mafia and other hot money so that it could be unofficially repatriated and thus recycled back nto the overall economy. We can also look at the sudden growth of the Eurodollar market for similar strategies.

Not least we can use the Japanese Series 57 notes of redemption as a case study. There is no question that Japan has regularly stated these notes are fakes. And, indeed, some of them are fake - but there are also some genuine ones, witnessed (for example) by the fact that the Japanese government collected taxes on the genuine ones. Putting into circulation fake copies is really a master-stroke of unshakeable deniability that can be carefully and effectively used against both classes of securities - genuine and fake alike.

Personally, I suspect that these seurities have been issued as collateral instruments that, in turn, were to be used by a sovereign nation for a specific purpose (increasing the size of the economy being one possibility). The size of $134.5 billion clearly is a key to this affair. I also remain focused on the "Kennedy Bonds" angle, but this might just be me. However, the Kennedy connection to Surkarnoe gold has always seemed to have an element of truth to it imo.

So my overall conclusion is that these are bona fide but secret securities/obligations that might well be connected to Black Eagle gold. And we will never be able to get behind the wall thrown up around this and other stories.

But I bet the bonds will not be destroyed but will quietly disappear into Never-land, as is usually the case in such situations.

[Peter Lemkin]

Thanks David. Wouldn't it be nice to live in 'Neverland'?! (where all the big Bonds are!...and no doubt the black gold). We posted at the same time...take a look at my last post about the Vatican breaking the story and perhaps being the ones that tipped off the Italians...something is Calvi strange here, perhaps. The Vatican ever been involved in Bond Intrigue?

And what do you make of this??? Who's this clown in Singapore who can buy 1 B in whatevers....and if something like this was with the 134.5 B Bonds it wouldn't take a day to ascertain their fitness.....(if they wanted to...) I agree, it serves no one's 'interest' to say they are real or do anything other than spin this and make it disappear. Odd that the big ones are 'Kennedy' bonds....and this is to be like Dallas in its mysteries.

By the way, the Ponticial Institute for Foreign Missions which is reported to be connected to or own Asianews.it which broke this story has a special Vatican mission in: Phillipines, China and Japan.....:girl::bebored: odd coincidence, that.

This is way out of my usual areas of expertise, professor, but it is my distinct impression that for the USA to 'issue' bonds in secret is illegal....not that that would stop anyone, these days. :evil: [laws are only for us little people] If they are 'real' [I guess that means negotiable for someone] and they were printed and given to someone sub rosa, who's to say how many others like this there are...and what does that say about the financial situation - the real one?!?!? Anyway one looks at this it reads as: 'and you thought the financial situation was bad....you don't know 1% of how bad it is!!!!!' I think its time to go back to barter and forget paper anything or electronic anything anymore...they are (nearly) worthless and can't be trusted; and can be manipulated...and seemingly regularly are!!!!! :marchmellow:

What is reality?!....Deep!

[Peter Lemkin]

Not least we can use the Japanese Series 57 notes of redemption as a case study. There is no question that Japan has regularly stated these notes are fakes. And, indeed, some of them are fake - but there are also some genuine ones, witnessed (for example) by the fact that the Japanese government collected taxes on the genuine ones. Putting into circulation fake copies is really a master-stroke of unshakeable deniability that can be carefully and effectively used against both classes of securities - genuine and fake alike.

Amazingly clever and sinister way to handle 'things'..... Are you aware of some secret power the President or others have in the USA to issue 'secret' securities - or are any such strictly illegal? I wonder what the statute of limitations is...but don't expect anyone will ever be prosecuted when it comes to big money. Doesn't this 'reality' which must be known to big investors and countries make them nervous to buy even 'real' bonds etc...as the issuer can always claim they are fake if they don't want to honor them?! :eviltongue: On the other hand, are you aware of instances when knowingly forged bonds were 'honored' and paid out?! What a strange world - and quite different for the different ends of the spectrum.

Steal a little money, go to jail; steal billions, go to your tenth home in Antigua......
Kill one person, go to jail; kill millions, become political leader of a profitable war with no legal consequences.....
Try to save and have a pension and you'll likely have it stolen; be the thief of this via banking and finance, corporations and politics and you'll get richer....even the victims' tax dollars being used to further aid the thieves.

[Peter Presland]

This is a guy that's rigid in his intolerance of what, in his more generous moments, he terms 'the tin-foil hat brigade', regularly chucking people off his forum when they are deemed to have offended by such things as questioning the official 911 narrative etc - a traditional patriotic US capitalist to the core. That, together with the fact that he is one sharp Cookie when it comes to matters financial, is why I find his thoughts on this issue interesting. His latest post:

The Bond Saga: It gets more odd:

Well, just when you thought that the Bearer Bond story was finished, it gets twisted yet again.
Remember, this was the claim:

“They’re clearly fakes,” said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Washington.

Uh, Bloomberg..... how about an accurate quote?

"Based on the photograph we've seen online, they are clearly fake. And not even good fakes," said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the Treasury's Bureau of the Public Debt.

Online? You mean that the Treasury Department hasn't been sent a high-resolution digital photo of what was seized? A week after the fact?
I don't believe you Stephen.

In the last two years, Italian authorities have seized some $800 million of U.S. bonds in the Como area in northern Italy.

Those would be real bonds, I assume? But I thought Stephen said....

He added that there is only $105 million in Treasury bearer bond securities outstanding, so the $134 billion amount seized far exceeds the universe of outstanding securites.

Wait a second...... $800 million in real bonds have been seized, but there are only $105 million outstanding? There may be some confusion here as to whether all these bonds are "bearer" instruments or not, but even if not, a registered paper bond is worthless if stolen, as its purchaser is known and before anyone is going to redeem it for you they're going to verify not only its authenticity but that you're the rightful owner.

Another U.S. official said the seized bonds were purported to be issued during the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, but the certificates showed a picture of a space shuttle on it -- a spacecraft that first flew in 1981. Some of the bonds were purportedly issued in a $500 billion denomination that never existed.

If there's a picture of a shuttle on the bond with an issue during the Kennedy Administration, its definitely fake of course. But... where are the actual pictures of these seized bonds?
And are they still seized? That's an even better question; there appear to be (at least) two different stories there too:

Under Italian law when law enforcement agencies seize fake bonds or counterfeit money they are under the obligation to arrest the bearers. And in order to avoid misappropriation, the agency seizing the material, in this case the financial police, must quickly proceed to its destruction (i.e. incineration).
However, in case of real securities, after the securities holders are identified, the financial police must release them immediately after issuing a statement of confiscation and imposing a fine valued in this case at € 38 billion (US$ 53.4 billion). In this case, why were the two men released right away without any fine imposed?

It doesn't end there:

If what Meyerhardt says is true, some major financial institutions have been deceived by the securities carried by the two Asian men. This would be a bombshell and raise serious questions as to how many bank assets are actually made up of securities that for Meyerhardt are “clearly fakes.”
If counterfeit securities of such high quality are in circulation the world’s monetary system, let alone that of the United States, is in danger. International trade and exchanges could come to a halt.

Hmmmm... sensationalist conclusion without foundation? Maybe.
Now for the somewhat-tin side of things - or maybe, a LOT of tin. Warning - this "source" isn't someone I'd trust to bring me a cup of coffee. Read and believe at your own risk:

(Turner Radio Network) -- Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan.
Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts.

And attached to this post are a few pictures and a Youtube link, all but one of which I've seen before. The close-up I have not, but unfortunately the detail is insufficient for me to do anything more than observe that it looks rather odd compared to what I've seen as specimens, and does NOT match the apparent paper on the table picture. Heh, whatever. IMHO Turner has nothing and may have been fed a bunch of garbage (which he immediate regurgitated); certainly his "pictures" and "video" are NOT a scoop.
It gets even more strange (back from the tin brigade - I think?) - this time with a claim that the mafia (yes, the real one over in Sicily) is involved, and the bonds are fake:

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia.
....
The mystery deepened on Thursday as an Italian blog quoted Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como provincial finance police as saying the two men had been released. The colonel and police headquarters in Rome both declined to respond to questions from the Financial Times.

What?
So let's see if we can try to sort out what we're "learning":

• The bonds are declared fake by the Treasury, stating that there's only $100 million outstanding and obviously $134 billion have to be fake.
  
• Italy claims to have seized $800 million in real US Bonds in the last year.
  
• The last legitimate issue of paper US Treasuries (that is publicly admitted to) was in the early 1980s when bearer instruments were outlawed. All are now stated to be electronic (just a serial number and amount.)
  
• The two gentlemen are allegedly Japanese, and there are various stories about who they really are - from notorious counterfeiters who have served hard time for previous offenses to Japanese finance officials. Most notably, there has been no public statement from Italy about these gentlemen's actual identities.
  
• It appears from all reports that these two were detained but not arrested, with some reports that they were not only released but took the allegedly-fake instruments with them, even though Italian law precludes both your release and return of your fake instruments if you are caught with fake securities or currency.
  

This is stuff out of a Tom Clancy novel, and the longer it goes on and the more twisted the "explanations", the less sense it makes.
I find it incomprehensible that the Italian government released these two if they were actually caught in a massive counterfeiting operation with $134 billion in fake US Securities.
I find it equally incomprehensible that there was not an immediate indictment out of a US Prosecutor coming from such an event and a demand for extradition back to the United States.
And further, I find it equally incomprehensible that if the securities are in fact real, and Treasury is lying, that Italy would not impose the fine.
Only the latter scenario, however, covers what apparently has happened - the two "couriers", whoever they are, have been released and, according to some accounts, they took the allegedly "fake" instruments with them, and there has been no US indictment issued for counterfeiting the instruments.
Uh, can we have some truth here folks, because none of what is being reported adds up and my BS detector is ringing off the hook.

[Peter Lemkin]

This is a guy that's rigid in his intolerance of what, in his more generous moments, he terms 'the tin-foil hat brigade', regularly chucking people off his forum when they are deemed to have offended by such things as questioning the official 911 narrative etc - a traditional patriotic US capitalist to the core. That, together with the fact that he is one sharp Cookie when it comes to matters financial, is why I find his thoughts on this issue interesting. His latest post:

The Bond Saga: It gets more odd:

Well, just when you thought that the Bearer Bond story was finished, it gets twisted yet again.
Remember, this was the claim:

“They’re clearly fakes,” said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Washington.

Uh, Bloomberg..... how about an accurate quote?

"Based on the photograph we've seen online, they are clearly fake. And not even good fakes," said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the Treasury's Bureau of the Public Debt.

Online? You mean that the Treasury Department hasn't been sent a high-resolution digital photo of what was seized? A week after the fact?
I don't believe you Stephen.

In the last two years, Italian authorities have seized some $800 million of U.S. bonds in the Como area in northern Italy.

Those would be real bonds, I assume? But I thought Stephen said....

He added that there is only $105 million in Treasury bearer bond securities outstanding, so the $134 billion amount seized far exceeds the universe of outstanding securites.

Wait a second...... $800 million in real bonds have been seized, but there are only $105 million outstanding? There may be some confusion here as to whether all these bonds are "bearer" instruments or not, but even if not, a registered paper bond is worthless if stolen, as its purchaser is known and before anyone is going to redeem it for you they're going to verify not only its authenticity but that you're the rightful owner.

Another U.S. official said the seized bonds were purported to be issued during the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, but the certificates showed a picture of a space shuttle on it -- a spacecraft that first flew in 1981. Some of the bonds were purportedly issued in a $500 billion denomination that never existed.

If there's a picture of a shuttle on the bond with an issue during the Kennedy Administration, its definitely fake of course. But... where are the actual pictures of these seized bonds?
And are they still seized? That's an even better question; there appear to be (at least) two different stories there too:

Under Italian law when law enforcement agencies seize fake bonds or counterfeit money they are under the obligation to arrest the bearers. And in order to avoid misappropriation, the agency seizing the material, in this case the financial police, must quickly proceed to its destruction (i.e. incineration).
However, in case of real securities, after the securities holders are identified, the financial police must release them immediately after issuing a statement of confiscation and imposing a fine valued in this case at € 38 billion (US$ 53.4 billion). In this case, why were the two men released right away without any fine imposed?

It doesn't end there:

If what Meyerhardt says is true, some major financial institutions have been deceived by the securities carried by the two Asian men. This would be a bombshell and raise serious questions as to how many bank assets are actually made up of securities that for Meyerhardt are “clearly fakes.”
If counterfeit securities of such high quality are in circulation the world’s monetary system, let alone that of the United States, is in danger. International trade and exchanges could come to a halt.

Hmmmm... sensationalist conclusion without foundation? Maybe.
Now for the somewhat-tin side of things - or maybe, a LOT of tin. Warning - this "source" isn't someone I'd trust to bring me a cup of coffee. Read and believe at your own risk:

(Turner Radio Network) -- Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan.
Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts.

And attached to this post are a few pictures and a Youtube link, all but one of which I've seen before. The close-up I have not, but unfortunately the detail is insufficient for me to do anything more than observe that it looks rather odd compared to what I've seen as specimens, and does NOT match the apparent paper on the table picture. Heh, whatever. IMHO Turner has nothing and may have been fed a bunch of garbage (which he immediate regurgitated); certainly his "pictures" and "video" are NOT a scoop.
It gets even more strange (back from the tin brigade - I think?) - this time with a claim that the mafia (yes, the real one over in Sicily) is involved, and the bonds are fake:

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia.
....
The mystery deepened on Thursday as an Italian blog quoted Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como provincial finance police as saying the two men had been released. The colonel and police headquarters in Rome both declined to respond to questions from the Financial Times.

What?
So let's see if we can try to sort out what we're "learning":

• The bonds are declared fake by the Treasury, stating that there's only $100 million outstanding and obviously $134 billion have to be fake.
  
• Italy claims to have seized $800 million in real US Bonds in the last year.
  
• The last legitimate issue of paper US Treasuries (that is publicly admitted to) was in the early 1980s when bearer instruments were outlawed. All are now stated to be electronic (just a serial number and amount.)
  
• The two gentlemen are allegedly Japanese, and there are various stories about who they really are - from notorious counterfeiters who have served hard time for previous offenses to Japanese finance officials. Most notably, there has been no public statement from Italy about these gentlemen's actual identities.
  
• It appears from all reports that these two were detained but not arrested, with some reports that they were not only released but took the allegedly-fake instruments with them, even though Italian law precludes both your release and return of your fake instruments if you are caught with fake securities or currency.
  

This is stuff out of a Tom Clancy novel, and the longer it goes on and the more twisted the "explanations", the less sense it makes.
I find it incomprehensible that the Italian government released these two if they were actually caught in a massive counterfeiting operation with $134 billion in fake US Securities.
I find it equally incomprehensible that there was not an immediate indictment out of a US Prosecutor coming from such an event and a demand for extradition back to the United States.
And further, I find it equally incomprehensible that if the securities are in fact real, and Treasury is lying, that Italy would not impose the fine.
Only the latter scenario, however, covers what apparently has happened - the two "couriers", whoever they are, have been released and, according to some accounts, they took the allegedly "fake" instruments with them, and there has been no US indictment issued for counterfeiting the instruments.
Uh, can we have some truth here folks, because none of what is being reported adds up and my BS detector is ringing off the hook.

Thanks for that good summary of all, but the Vatican's possible connections. If he's such a smart cookie, he may soon stop kicking-off his forum those who challenge the official conspiracy version of 9/11 et al.! hakehands:

[Magda Hassan]

(Turner Radio Network) -- Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan.
Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts.

So, if this source is correct, the Bank of Japan has been caught in the act of trying to smuggle fake US bonds into Switzerland presumably to divest itself of the US holdings before it all collapses in a few months. And this is not considered newsworthy? This is a huge and major crime. A major bank involved in totally nefarious actions which can only undermine any faith in the banking industry and the corporate criminals are released as if it was a parking infringement? Well, what little faith there is left in it. This should be the leader on every form of media. Until there are jail sentences. Nothing about this is making sense. Banking is a faith based organisation no different to some hillbilly snake handling flim flam man out fit. I'm an atheist.