Confused Why So Many Foreign Banks Are Suddenly Being Charged By The US? Here’s Why

via: ZeroHedge
By: Tyler Durden
August 8, 2012

It’s very simple really. Please point out where on the below list of Top 20 contributors to a randomly selected US politician, in this case New York’s Chuck Schumer, can one find Standard Chartered, Barclays, or HSBC?

And there’s your answer, which should also explain why banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, etc, will never be subject to the same kangaroo court in which suddenly everyone is shocked, shocked, that banks were manipulating Libor and laundering money or doing any other thing which bankers do day after day, every day.Oh yes, there is an election coming up too…

Read More At: ZeroHedge.com

The US Is Not Japan Or Your Average Stagnation: It Is Much Worse

via: ZeroHedge
by: Tyler Durden
July 26, 2012

Every day we are told how this recovery is the slowest since WWII and that nothing is working. Well, we think we can trump that for dysphoria. Not only is this the slowest recovery since WWII, it is even slower than the average ‘stagnation’. Based on Goldman’s analysis of 93 stagnations the US GDP per capita is growing even more stagnantly than ever (and dramatically worse than during Japan’s ‘lost decade’).

US GDP per capita is still below its peak, well below the average crappy ‘stagnant’ recovery, and dramatically below the Japanese stagnantion…

Continue Reading At: ZeroHedge.com

Criminal Inquiry Shifts To JPMorgan’s Mispricing Of Hundreds Of Billions In CDS: Is Dimon The Next Diamond?

via: ZeroHedge
by: Tyler Durden
July 16, 2012

On the last day of May, when we first learned via Bloomberg that there was even the scantest likelihood that JPM may have been massaging its CDS marks within the (London-based of course) CIO organization – the backbone of hundreds of billions in notional exposure, and thus a huge counterfeitedbenefit to trader bonuses and corporate earnings – we wrote, “The Second Act Of The JPM CIO Fiasco Has Arrived – Mismarking Hundreds Of Billions In Credit Default Swaps” in which we explained precisely how this activity would and did take place, precisely why other traders caught doing the same are on the verge of being thrown in jail, precisely why everyone else does it, and precisely why the biggest CDS self-reporting and client/banker owned-organization (this is where images of Libor should appear), MarkIt, may well be implicated in everything – very much in the same way that the BBA is the heart of Lie-borgate. Because unlike all other allegations of impropriety, most of which rely on Level 2 and Level 3 assets whose valuations are in the eye of the oh so very sophisticated beholder (in this case JPM) who has complex DCFs and speaks confidently when explaining marks to naive, stupid outsiders (in other words baffles with bullshit), when it comes to one of the last places where Mark to Market is still applicable and used: the OTC CDS market, and where daily P&L records are kept, it will take any regulator, enforcer, or criminal investigator precisely 1 minute to find out if there was fraud, or gambling, going on here.

Then lo and behold, none other than JPM admitted minutes before releasing its Q2 earnings that it had been doingprecisely what Zero Hedge accused it of doing nearly 2 months earlier (but of course Jamie Dimon had no idea, no idea, what the media accused his firm of doing), and in doing so exposed itself to just as much litigation risk as Barclays in the Lie-borgate scandal, while further throwing a monkey wrench into the CDS market, where all the other banks (who had been doing just the same), will no longer be able to pick off the bid/ask spread in the process crushing CDS trader bonuses, and resulting in billions in foregone imaginary profits.

Most importantly, it opened up the firm to a criminal investigation. Which as Reuters reports, is precisely what has now happened.

Continue Reading At: ZeroHedge.com

JPM Admits CIO Group Consistently Mismarked Hundreds Of Billions In CDS In Effort To Artificially Boost Profits

via: ZeroHedge
by: Tyler Durden
July 13, 2012

Back on May 30 we wrote “The Second Act Of The JPM CIO Fiasco Has Arrived – Mismarking Hundreds Of Billions In Credit Default Swaps” in which we made it abundantly clear that due to the Over The Counter nature of CDS one can easily make up whatever marks one wants in order to boost the P&L impact of a given position, this is precisely  what JPM was doing in order to boost its P&L? As of moments ago this too has been proven to be the case. From a just filed very shocking 8K which takes the “Whale” saga to a whole new level. To wit: ‘the recently discovered information raises questions about the integrity of the trader marks, and suggests that certain individuals may have been seeking to avoid showing the full amount of the losses being incurred in the portfolio during the first quarter. As a result, the Firm is no longer confident that the trader marks used to prepare the Firm’s reported first quarter results (although within the established thresholds) reflect good faith estimates of fair value at quarter end.”

As a result of this, regulators who now are only 3 years behind the curve, are most likely snooping to inquire not only how JPM did it (call us: we can brief you in 2 minutes), but who else has been doing this? Hint: everyone.

Continue Reading At: ZeroHedge.com

The Four Scariest Charts For Hope-Filled ‘De-Cuppers’

via: ZeroHedge
by: Tyler Durden
July 6, 2012

In a follow-up to last week’s deep dive on the end of the US CapEx boom (and the possibility that the Fed is out of bullets) and the growing hope once again that the US can remain the ‘decoupled’ least syphilitic-hooker-in-a-whorehouse, we thought it useful (given this week’s somewhat disappointing reversion to reality in macro data and markets) to highlight four clear un-decoupling indications. From Economic Surprise Index similarities between Europe and the US, to record negative pre-announcements and fading US CapEx growth rates, the reversion in US manufacturing and new orders data to Europe’s (and Asia’s) sad reality is not going to be ‘saved’ by the supposed housing recovery – as we noted here earlier. With credit and FX markets already signaling a hope-less market, we wonder how long before stocks catch-down (and the ‘De-Cuppers’ smell the napalm).

Continue Reading At: ZeroHedge.com

And Now The Fed Gets Dragged Into LiEborgate

via: ZeroHedge
by: Tyler Durden
July 3, 2012

As was first reported two days ago, and confirmed today, Barclays’ natural response to allegations it single-handedly manipulated the interest rate complex for up to $500 trillion notional in IR-sensitive swaps and other products (it didn’t – everyone else did it too), was to drag everyone into the scandal, starting off with the Bank of England (and about to drag Whitehall into it too), and specifically the man who was next in line for governorship of the English Central Bank: Paul Tucker. What does this mean? Well, as we suggested also two days ago, now that the natural succession path at the BOE has been terminally derailed, it brings up those two other gentlemen already brought up previously as potential future heads of the BOE, both of whom just happened to work, or still do, at… Goldman Sachs:  Canada’s Mark Carney or Goldman’s Jim O’Neil. Granted both have denied press speculation they will replace Mervyn King, but it’s not like it would be the first time a banker lied to anyone now, would it (and makes one wonder if this whole affair was not merely orchestrated by the Squid from the get go… but no, that would be a ‘conspiracy theory’.) Yet the fact that Goldman is hell bent on global domination by stretching its tentacles into every monetary policy administration is no secret: it is only a matter of time before GS also runs the English CTRL-P macros. More interesting is that in addition to the BOE, Barclays today also dragged America’s very own Federal Reserve into the fray.

Continue Reading At: ZeroHedge.com