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

[Peter Presland]

There are some interesting theories and links to take us further down the rabbit hole in posts from yesterday at these two sites:

1. Cryptogon - run by a US expat in New Zealand
2. Cannonfire - Joe Cannon (bans '911 consiracy nuts')

Both are interesting mainly for the links to other sources rather than the editorial opinions expressed (IMHO anyway). Site 2 makes copious reference to 'Yamashita's Gold' with comment that is frankly risible. Nonetheless the links are worth some study.

Personally I'm uncertain how to categorise this whole caper, other than that it appears to be something more significant than the regular sucker scams warned about in various Fed circulars

[Peter Lemkin]

How could this story have just stopped in its 'tracks'? Why are none of the inconsistancies or impossibilities resolved - let alone whether these instruments are real or not? Also, maybe I'm going crazy, but I just tried on google to find new info and couldn't even find the old ones.....the whole story seems to have disappeared!........???

[Ed Jewett]

How could this story have just stopped in its 'tracks'? Why are none of the inconsistancies or impossibilities resolved - let alone whether these instruments are real or not? Also, maybe I'm going crazy, but I just tried on google to find new info and couldn't even find the old ones.....the whole story seems to have disappeared!........???

Folks, you might want to side-bar this article, but...

Google censors article on censorship


June 3, 6:40 PM ·

Google for the first time has censored one of my examiner.com articles on its main search engine. Most intriguing is that this case of censorship originates in a very inspiring news event.

My censored article, published on examiner.com one week ago today, told about the wonderfully refreshing story of Stanford professor Ronald Levy being the first ever Jewish recipient of the Arab equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. It's a very encouraging development which you think would be widely reported. Yet as pointed out in my article, there was practically no media coverage of this heartening news.

A careful Google search showed that the only major U.S. or English-language European media to report this landmark event was Reuters. Yet even the Reuters article completely failed to mention Levy's Jewish heritage and the incredible significance of a Jew being awarded the prestigious $200,000 prize for the very first time.

It's quite interesting that the only major media source I found anywhere which reported this wonderful peace overture from Saudi Arabia was Israel's respected daily Haaretz, which posted a detailed and optimistic article titled "U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win 'Arab Nobel Prize'".

This media censorship in itself was astonishing, but I was even more astounded when the day after I published this article, I could not find it in a Google search. I often check Google after I publish articles to see how each article is listed, and to check its ranking. Every article I have ever checked usually shows up on the main Google search page within 12 hours, and always within 24 hours. Why on Earth did Google censor this particular article for the first time?

You can verify this for yourself. It's now been over a week and Google still has not indexed the article. Go to my article at this link. Take any string of 10 words or so in length (other than the quote from Haaretz and the first paragraph). Copy the string of words into the search box at www.google.com and put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the string of words. When you then click the search button, you will likely find no results, and certainly no results with that article. (Example here)

You can do this with any other article I've written for examiner.com before that one, and it will show up in the search. Note that if you do a search on the title or first paragraph of my article, you will find that a number of other websites reported the article, giving only the title and an introduction, and were listed on Google.

Since I posted that article, I've written three other, non-related articles. Two of those posted normally to Google, but the one on CIA mind control programs is now the second article ever not to be listed. So it appears I may now have someone monitoring which of my articles get indexed and which don't. On Google's specialized search for news, this kind of censorship of some of my more sensitive articles has been going on for a long time, but now it is happening on their regular searches, too.

[Update June 4th: Not long after I posted this message at 4:40 PM PDT yesterday, the article on the CIA was indexed on Google. On checking this morning, the nobel prize censorship article still had not been indexed. I checked again at 1 PM and it was indexed! Yea!!! Thanks to all who contacted Google. I also sent a call-to-action message on this to our WantToKnow.info emial list of over 6,000 subscribers this morning, so that may have played a role, too. Together, we make a difference!]

Why all the censorship?

Why did Google censor this article? Many people are not aware that the military and intelligence services have embedded key agents in all major media organizations (including Google and Yahoo) to monitor what is reported. Often, these agents work under cover. They are hired on as regular staff, yet secretly they are working for the military, FBI, or CIA to influence news selection and content. I highly suspect that these agents somehow censored my article at Google (and Yahoo) and may even have had a role in the original inspiring article not being published.

For one clear example of this, read the Project Censored news article titled "Embedded in media, U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN." Here's a quote from that article:

"Psyops personnel, soldiers, and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training With Industry,’" Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service said in a telephone interview. Collins asserted, "They worked as regular employees of CNN. They helped in the production of news." The military/CNN personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1,200 soldiers and officers is to spread “selected information."

Two New York Times articles also reveal infiltration of the media. The first describes "an extensive and largely hidden Pentagon campaign to transform network military analysts into 'surrogates' and 'message force multipliers'". The second, titled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," states:

"Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity ... is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air."

To read key excerpts of these two revealing New York Times articles with links to the full originals on the Times website, click here and here.

In my work as a top language interpreter at the U.S. Department of State, I worked with a number of FBI agents and military officers of all ranks. I probably encountered a number of CIA agents, as well, though they are careful never to admit it. I learned from a few of these insiders first-hand how politics is sometimes manipulated in big ways to profit those in power at the expense of the public.

Though I think there is a need for organizations like our military and intelligence services to protect the public and prevent violent groups from endangering public safety, I find the excessive secrecy and blatant manipulation of public perception in which these agencies engage to actually work against the public interest. Too often, they end up supporting the interests and war agenda of the power elite, while neglecting the interests of the general public. Why do you think they might want to censor inspiring articles on Jewish-Arab relations? Could such articles defeat their war agenda?

Katharine Graham, former owner of the Washington Post, once commented, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." For more on this, click here. Thankfully blossoming citizen-based Internet news websites like examiner.com and articles like this are increasingly breaking through this blatant media and Internet censorship.

The box immediately below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself on these important matters and work to stop the censorship. Note that though it is very difficult to contact Google directly, you can leave messages on their "Help Forum" at this link or this one, asking them to reinstate my original article and stop censoring others. I also invite you to comment below and let me know what you think. Should the military and intelligence services be able to censor our news? Why do you think they censored the inspiring article on a Jewish professor winning a major Arab prize?


What you can do:

• Inform your media and political representatives of this important information. To contact those close to you, click here. Urge them to discuss news censorship by military and intelligence agencies and to work to stop this disempowering behavior.
  
• Contact Google and Yahoo and insist that they not censor news articles from reliable news sources, and that they keep the military and intelligence services out of the process.
  
• Learn more about media censorship in this powerful lesson from the free Insight Course.
  
• Read concise summaries of revealing media reports revealing censorship available here.
  
• Visit our Media Information Center at www.WantToKnow.info/mediainformation.
  
• Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the icons listed below so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.
  

Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world. For more, see articles and links in the right column of this page.

[Peter Lemkin]

Google, Yahoo, wiki, etc...all seem to have some assets - just as the MSM does. However, they can shape and try to eliminate some articles/subject on the internet, but can't fully control them short of turning the whole damn thing off - yet. I just checked again and the old stories on this topic were listed, but when one looks on google for urls within the past 24 hours one gets 9 only and each of them is just a new repost of an older story. I still can NOT quite believe this story which is most significant if the bonds are real or not, if the event was 'invented' or not is just being sat on by someone or many someones. Apparently not one major news source considered 'mainstream' in the USA and only one outside of Italy has touched this - not even the financial press. Amazing. Last I heard even those in the Italian Press who were covering it have now ceased in the last days, without even saying why. That it would take the USSS ten days to determine what those pieces or paper were, is not believable; nor that the two men were released, apparently - and much else about the story. We live in a controlled Alice-In-Wonderland world! We really are at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party - yet few seem to realize it. Glad we have this website as a reality check. :help:

[David Guyatt]

There are some interesting theories and links to take us further down the rabbit hole in posts from yesterday at these two sites:

1. Cryptogon - run by a US expat in New Zealand
2. Cannonfire - Joe Cannon (bans '911 consiracy nuts')

Both are interesting mainly for the links to other sources rather than the editorial opinions expressed (IMHO anyway). Site 2 makes copious reference to 'Yamashita's Gold' with comment that is frankly risible. Nonetheless the links are worth some study.

Personally I'm uncertain how to categorise this whole caper, other than that it appears to be something more significant than the regular sucker scams warned about in various Fed circulars

Peter, the Cannonfire article has a number of interesting points. Not least is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's 2005 announcement in which they statep:

The Federal Reserve has never issued any bonds or notes with coupons attached. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is not aware of any currency or debt stockpile of large denomination Federal Reserve notes from the 1930s and warns that any institution that pays out on such a claim does so at its own risk.

It so double-speak that it opens up lots of questions. For instance, surely the Fed would be aware of any currency or debt stockpile issued in the past and not redeemed? I would be if it were my debt. And while I am at it, being "unaware" is not the same thing of never having issued currency or debt in the past that was stockpiled. To wit: when the Soviet Union reverted to Russia with Yeltsinman, the US Fed flew out a Boeing 747 stacked from floor to ceiling with brand spanking new US$100 bills on shipping pallets to float the new Russia in the American way (the Russian Mafiya were overjoyed). The same thing happened to Iraq: billions of dollars loaded on pallets of brand new 100 dollar bills. I also know of $4 billion worth of brand new $100 bills that were shipped to South Africa when Mandela became head honcho. In other words it happens a lot.

There is, imo, something being hidden here and, therefore, some culpability on the part of the FedRes of NY.

[Ed Jewett]

I make no comment about the validity or veracity of this. I'll leave that to wiser folk than I.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/143462-s...nd-mystery

Strange Inconsistencies in the $134.5 Billion Bearer Bond Mystery

June 16, 2009

Here’s yet another huge financial story that has been virtually blacked out by the US financial media. Although on the surface, this story appears to be a non-event, if we consider some of the released facts about this case, you will understand why I consider it to be a huge story. On June 8th, the Asia News reported the following story:

“Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has 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. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollars each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; 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.”

Here are just a few fascinating facts about this case (at least they are being reported as “facts” at this current time):


(1) Though the smugglers have been identified in the press as “Japanese nationals” there has yet to be any confirmation if the smugglers were indeed Japanese or of some other ethnicity. How difficult is it to confirm the ethnicity of the smugglers and why is this information being kept secret?

(2) According to a brief Bloomberg article regarding this story, the seized bearer bonds allegedly were dated as of 1934. Since bearer bonds in denominations of $500 million did not exist in 1934, the bonds were deduced as fake, though the Italian police are still waiting for a declaration regarding the bonds’ authenticity from the SEC. There is something truly “off” about this declaration. How can the quality of the forged bearer bonds be so meticulous that they “are indistinguishable from the real ones”, yet the people involved in the alleged forgery so ill-informed as to not date the bearer bonds with a more recent year that would not immediately identify them as fraudulent? How hard would it have been to date the bearer bonds with a more recent year? An equivalent analogy would be if an expert art forger meticulously re-created a Picasso oil canvas and then erroneously signed the work with the wrong artist’s name. This story just does not add up.


(3) The Bloomberg story also reported that there is no known existence of the alleged 10 Kennedy bonds that were discovered in the smuggler’s suitcases, each with a denomination of $1 billion. Again, this discovery defies any logical explanation. Why would expert counterfeiters make 249 bearer bonds with denominations of $500 million apiece, each indistinguishable from the real thing, and then instead of just making 20 more such bonds, decide to make 10 bonds in denominations of $1 billion a piece in a bearer bond design that has never existed? Were the alleged counterfeiters just too lazy to confirm if Kennedy bearer bonds were ever a legitimately issued security? Again, this story makes no sense.


(4) On March 30, 2009, the US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in its Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion. Coincidence?


(5) 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? Again, this part of the story defies all logic.


(6) The bearer bonds were discovered in a hidden briefcase compartment after a customs inspection. Again, 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.
Thus, all of the above irreconcilable and illogical points, other than the coincidence of the amount of the bearer bonds exactly matching the remaining TARP fund amount declared on March 30th, seem to indicate that not only were the seized bearer bonds counterfeit, but also that the smugglers were intent on being caught.

Before I continue, let’s review the purpose of bearer bonds.
Here is the Wikipedia definition of bearer bonds:

“A bearer bond is a debt security issued by a business entity, such as a corporation, or by a government. It differs from the more common types of investment securities in that it is unregistered – no records are kept of the owner, or the transactions involving ownership. Whoever physically holds the paper on which the bond is issued owns the instrument. This is useful for investors who wish to retain anonymity. The downside is that in the event of loss or theft, bearer bonds are extremely difficult to recover.”

If you recall the Michael Mann movie “Heat”, starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, during a daring daytime armored car robbery, the criminals specifically targeted millions of dollars of bearer bonds for theft precisely because of the above qualities of bearer bonds that make them very difficult to trace. Again, due to the properties of bearer bonds, it seems highly unlikely that $134.5 billion of bearer bonds would be transported, if they were real, by two men with no security, since theft almost guarantees that they would be lost forever.


Thus far, about the only piece of information that appears to be reliable as reported by various news sources regarding this huge mystery is the remarkable authenticity of the 249 seized bearer bonds in denominations of USD $500 million. If any of the other facts, as they are being reported, are remotely accurate, then the bearer bonds were likely counterfeit. Still, the interesting part of this story, at least to me, is that the smugglers seemed intent on being caught with the counterfeit bonds. This leads me back to my previous question. What possible reason would the smugglers have for wanting to be caught? One of the quickest ways to sabotage and usher in the death of a currency is to raise legitimate questions about its ability to withstand counterfeiting efforts. Prove that counterfeiting is not only possible but highly likely, and the world’s confidence in the sabotaged currency will undoubtedly plummet.


In fact, this very tactic was applied during World War II when the Nazis launched Operation Bernhard in an attempt to crash the British economy by producing, by 1945, 132 million expertly counterfeited British pounds, a figure that represented roughly 15% of all real British pounds in circulation at the time. The counterfeit pounds were produced by expert printers and engravers supervised by an SS officer named Bernhard Krueger. As well, historical evidence exists that the Allies considered launching a counter-counterfeit plan against the Nazis as well. During this time, it was also alleged that the Bank of Italy counterfeited their own money by issuing the same securities twice with identical registered numbers and codes in order. The purpose of this counterfeiting was to secretly expand monetary supply without public transparency or accountability. Perhaps then, this $134.5.billion bearer bond mystery was an attempt of a nation state to shake the world’s confidence in the position of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.


There should be little debate that the world’s emerging economies in Russia, Brazil, China and certain Gulf Nations are at economic war today with the world’s Western nations and their economic allies. The currency war being fought today is sure to get much uglier in the foreseeable future, in both open tactics as well as secretly executed tactics. Currently, if the currency war were the world series of poker, the US and the UK would be holding a pair of 2s and relying on nothing but bluffs to keep the rest of the world at bay. Conversely, the Chinese and other emerging nations with large surpluses would be holding straight or royal flushes, and likely quietly maneuvering to go “all in” at some point.


Given that the discovery of $134.5 billion of bearer bonds in the suitcases of two Japanese nationals in Chiasso, Italy on the border of Switzerland qualifies as one of the largest smuggling operations in history, and given the various implications of such an act and the possible players involved, the silence regarding this huge story is simply stunning. It is not a huge story, per se, because of the counterfeiting operation, because accusations and revelations of massive money counterfeiting operations have occured in the past. It is a huge story, rather, due to all the inconsistencies of the story and the potential explanations that could explain these inconsistencies. The larger story at hand is, who are the players (nations) involved, and what was the intention of this likely counterfeiting operation? Maybe the future will reveal the answers to these questions. But maybe not.


Author's Profile: http://seekingalpha.com/author/j-s-kim


There are also 40 comments at the link above.



The original was linked in to the web site www.whatreallyhappened.com ...

[David Guyatt]

Another interesting report Ed. I was taken by the same amount of the bonds as by the TARP programme. Very curious.

It is also a highly valid argument that no counterfeiter would fake a bundle of (Kennedy) bonds that have never, ever existed. Who would cash them? Disney studios? Certainly no one else would consider exchanging them for cash, so why do it. Clearly they are modeled on originals and that, to my mind, is where the real legs of this story lies --- the Kennedy Bonds.

Just for the record, bearer bonds bear numbers which can and are used to trace them. No banker or financier in his right mind would accept/purchase a bearer bond at face value without firstly establishing its authenticity. Usually this is a fairly simple process. So to that extent they are not like cash money.

[Peter Lemkin]

134b matching what's left in TARP and Geithner being in Switzerland as this happens.
Looks like some sort of three way .gov deal, no?
Question is, who tipped the Italians off?
------------------------
After long thought, this is my opinion on what will happen with the bonds.

The Japanese, the Americans, and the Italians will not say one more official word about this for the following reasons:
1. The Japanese would lose tremendous face. They trusted the round eyes to make good on the bonds and got stabbed in the back.
2. The Americans would be admitting to financing debt under the table.
3. The Italians would queer the deal with their 40 billion "finders fee".

Now, under the table, arrangements will be made. The Italians won't get 40B, but they'll get something out of the Americans to keep their collective mouths shut. Same goes for the Japanese. 134.5 B is alot of money.

The governments involved will stonewall the whole thing, marginalizing any nosy windmill tilter who keeps asking questions.

But the Japanese won't forget. Remember the scene out of the Godfather, the undertaker whose daughter was violated by two punks? "Godfather, I want justice!!!"

The Japanese will go to the Chinese with the same tale of woe, and just might form an alliance they otherwise would not have. Blood is thicker than water.

This affair will become the "grassy knoll" of the financial world.
-----------------------------
:marchmellow:

Amazing still no word on what is what in this mystery deal and it now reported the two 'Japanese' have vanished...
Best discussion, speculations and laughs on this topic to be found here. (both quotes above from that Forum)

Only MSM report here
http://www.youtube.com/v/LKjKBr9DFzA

[Peter Presland]

More from Karl Denninger.

It's the wishy-washy caveat-loaded character of the Treasury and other official statements that scream 'there's more to this than we're telling'

Bearer Bonds Resolution?
Yes and no.
First, the "yes" part. Treasury says they're fakes:

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. government bonds found in the false bottom of a suitcase carried by two Japanese travelers attempting to cross into Switzerland are fake, a Treasury spokesman said.
“They’re clearly fakes,” said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Washington. “That’s beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what’s out there.”

Ok, let's accept both parts of that statement (yes, there are two) at face value:

• The "bonds" seized in Italy are fake.
  
• "The face value is far beyond what's out there."
  

The latter is exactly what I noted is out there in authorized issuance in my second story on the matter:

Mr. Holmes would be initially puzzled by such a caper. On the one hand we have the impossibility of the bonds being real, because there simply isn't $130 billion of issues remaining outstanding.

As it turns out, the Bloomberg update tells us something surprising:

Meyerhardt said Treasury records show an estimated $105.4 billion in bearer bonds have yet to be surrendered. Most matured more than five years ago, he said. The Treasury stopped issuing bearer bonds in 1982, Meyerhardt said.

$105 billion? Uh, that's a lot more than the DTC estimates I've seen, which were in the area of $3.5 billion outstanding! Suddenly there's thirty times that on deposit with the DTC out there according to Treasury?
This also leaves the second part of the question open:

On the other hand we have the impossibility of negotiating a fake $500 million bearer instrument, making the exercise of counterfeiting one expensive and futile.

Finally, what happened to the two gentlemen caught with them?
The latter is a rather important question, I'd think. See, counterfeiting is a serious offense. Just try printing up some fake $100s or $20s and see how amused the Secret Service is (hint: don't try this at home unless you are interested in a free stay at Club "This Ain't Fun" Fed.)
There are conflicting reports: Some that the two individuals were not arrested or charged. Detained briefly, but not charged, with some sources claiming that an Italian lawyer is involved and essentially sprung them (whether on their own recognizance or via bail is unreported, and if on bail, how it was posted.) Others, particularly a recent article out of the UK, simply says they were "arrested." I have seen nothing from a credible news stream stating that they are being held at the present time. And then there's this:

We can't read Japanese, and Google Translate isn't particularly helpful, but a reader informs us that the gist of this story is that a newspaper sent a reporter to Como, Italy and found that the men had been released, with their whereabouts unknown.

Uh, do you really let two counterfeiters (suspected felons under American law and I suspect Italian as well) go without having any idea where they are and, it would appear, without retaining their passports?
The new questions that have now arisen are:

Why did it take Treasury six days to issue a statement that these bonds are "clearly fakes"? Does it really take more than one business day for the Italians to email someone a photo of the faces of the bonds, showing serial numbers and such? Either they're real or they're not - was Treasury hoping the story would "just die"?
Exactly who are the two who got caught with these things and where the hell are they? There's an English-language news report out of Japan that states:

Italian police say the 2 Japanese passport holders, one in his 50s, and the other in his 60s, were caught on July 3rd at the Swiss-Italian border on a train from northern Italy. They say one man is a resident of Kanagawa Prefecture, central Japan, and the other is from Fukuoka Prefecture, western Japan.

If they're not under indictment from the US side with an extradition request to Italy, why not? After all, counterfeiting $134 billion in alleged bonds is rather more serious than the usual guy who gets caught printing up a bad $20 or two, right?
And oh, by the way, America seems to get justifiably angry when an American counterfeits Japanese bonds:

The Commission alleges that, since at least October of 1997, the Northeast defendants have been engaging in an apparent scheme to defraud U.S. investors through the offer of fraudulent Japanese treasury bonds.

How many more bad bonds are out there? One would assume the answer is "not many", given that the US hasn't issued bearer-form debt since 1982. But then again the assumption by virtually everyone (myself included) was that the ~$3.5 billion that the DTC has in their vaults was the majority of outstanding issue in these instruments. Now we find out that Treasury itself says the number - just for Treasuries - is in fact $100 billion - 30 times that number. Hmmm...
Do we have a Treasury confidence problem? Maybe. The latest data released Monday shows that China was a net seller of Treasuries in April. Given that we think we can issue $2 trillion of new ones over the next year or so to pay for our profligate government spending programs......

There's still things that make you go "hmmmmmm" in this story.
Let's hope we get the rest of the answers.
CNBC has asked me to appear at 1:40 PM Eastern on Power Lunch in relationship to this topic; if you're around a TV at that time tune in! It should be fun considering Dennis Kneale's "lead" for it last evening....
Update: CNBC has preempted the 1:40 segment for Geithner's rambling; they MAY reschedule for this evening.
Update #2: Bloomberg has now updated its story to $105 million in outstanding Treasury Bearer bonds. That's in-line with what one would expect given the DTC data; as such (assuming the Bloomie article was simply in error) we can strike the questions related to that.

[Peter Lemkin]

Why anyone would believe what the Treasury says, without some proofs is beyond me. [They won't even tell how much gold, if any, is in Ft. Knox!] It seems it would be in everyone's interest to say they were fake, whether they are or not. The fact the men transporting them seemingly either had diplomatic immunity or were just simply 'let go' seems to lead me to suspect they are real [or 'real' fakes - off the books issues that will be honored in some fashion - if not by the USA for the US.] Whoever was 'behind' this must be quite powerful to get its couriers off so quickly. I don't think anyone is telling the full story or the truth here....and likely never will. I think one thing is for sure - nothing good for the ordinary person will come of this (and what this may be only the tip of an iceberg for). It seems the only way to succeed in the world today is to be corrupt, dishonest, misdirecting, and cut-throat. Nice. :flute: