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Secret Service Accidentally Killed JFK and covered it up.
by professor rat 17 May '23

17 May '23

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (1992) by Bonar Menninger (ISBN 0-312-08074-3) alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and the shot fatally hit JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear." (italics added).[501] George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in Mortal Error. The case was dismissed as its statute of limitations had run out. The theory received public attention in 2013 when it was supported by Colin McLaren's book and documentary titled JFK: The Smoking Gun (ISBN 978-0-7336-3044-6). LBJ apparently believed this and there was a report of gunpowder smell at ground level that day. Oswald was high above on the sixth floor. Carcano used by Oswald also drilled neat holes - unlike AR-15 rounds.

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FOIA: CIA Did JFK
by professor rat 17 May '23

17 May '23

For my 2c the Secret Service killed JFK while trying to protect him from Oswald. Two acoustics experts said there was a 95 percent certainty that the recording revealed that four shots had been fired at the presidential motorcade. Oswald fires once straight ahead but bullet fizzles. Oswald fires again misses and hits kerb. Another shot - the ' Magic Bullet " hits two targets, Gov and Potus. Fourth shot coincides with accidental firing of ' Dum Dum " round from SS car behind Potus. Gunpowder smell reported at ground level - Oswald was well above that and indoors! And no more neatly drilled Carcano holes - a chuck of Potus head goes flying up in air before falling on trunk where Mrs K recovers it. No CIA plot required where stupidity and insanity will cover it. Oswald's motives also possibly included ' South will rise again ' resentment against arch-Yankee, JFK and a large dollop of Marxist-Communism that started when O was 15 in NYC. O saw himself as a left-fascist revolutionary and took a pot-shot at a local rightwinger before this. TL/DR Lee Harvey Oswald CAUSED the death which was then obfuscated to some extent by the US Secret Service.

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How to take action on digital crime?
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 17 May '23

17 May '23

Paypal confirmed the 72975 number (rather than 729725) my family gets confirmation codes is not owned by them. This is very clear evidence our web is persistently compromised. Personally I blame my insane behavior on this compromise and years of digital gaslighting. Does anybody know how to take action on this evidence from paypal?

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Overthrowing the Network State
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/otns-network-states-is-what-you-get-when… My trial - your funeral

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Big plans for A.I., energy, and crypt? . Well la-de-da.
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Sam Altman is going to need killing shortly if he doesn't start talking-up quantum-PKI leading directly to cryptoanarchism. The quantum internet. State-of-the-art encryption too cheap to meter. Come ON! Cryptoanarchism is the only cybernetic system that can manage ever-stronger AI, Fusion and global UBI. Its not just foolish in the extreme to pretend the existing powers can handle all this - its suicidal. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-altman-plowing-ahead-nuclear-200434840.h… Reposts not allegedly benign versions of Peter Thiel and/ or Elon Musk

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Secret recordings of ex-partner continue to haunt law firm Freedman Normand | Reuters
by Gunnar Larson 16 May '23

16 May '23

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/secret-recordings-ex-partner-conti… (Reuters) - The plaintiffs firm once known as Roche Freedman, now redubbed Freedman Normand Friedland, has been ousted from another crypto class action because of clandestine – and embarrassing — video recordings of onetime name partner Kyle Roche. But this time, the problem wasn’t the content of the videos, in which Roche appears to boast of his lucrative stake in blockchain company Ava Labs Inc and to suggest that he filed class actions against Ava competitors to boost Ava’s prospects. Instead, U.S. District Judge James Donato of San Francisco removed Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a securities fraud class action against blockchain company Dfinity USA Research LLC because he found the firm to be so consumed with vindicating its own reputation that it could not be relied upon to protect the interests of class members. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Donato’s May 8 decision followed seven months of litigation that the judge described as “a bitter war" that included "charges of personal vendettas, deepfake videos and other events not typically encountered in securities lawsuits.” (More on that below.) He is the second federal judge to remove Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a crypto case, after U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Manhattan booted the firm from a class action against stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd and crypto exchange Bitfinex last October. After Failla’s ruling, Freedman Normand voluntarily withdrew from two other crypto class actions in Manhattan federal court. The firm has defeated disqualification motions in several other cases, including litigation against self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright, who unsuccessfully sought to remove Freedman Normand from the appeal of a $143 million judgment the firm obtained for Wright’s onetime business partner. Advertisement · Scroll to continue The Dfinity fight before Donato was particularly heated, though, because Freedman Normand blamed Dfinity’s founder and CEO for the entire Roche mess. According to the firm, it was Dfinity that engaged a Norwegian businessman with ties to international intelligence agencies to lure Roche to London to discuss a supposed investment in a litigation funding venture. Those meetings, according to Freedman Normand, were actually a set up: The Norwegian operative got Roche drunk and secretly videotaped him making intemperate remarks, including a comment that crypto class members were “100,000 idiots out there” and that jurors are “10 idiots [who] control the flow of all the money that happens in American class actions.” Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity then launched an anonymous website, Crypto Leaks, to post the secret recordings of Roche. The firm has espoused different positions on the authenticity of the recordings at various points in its fight to stay in the Dfinity class action. Early on, it acknowledged that Roche – who left the firm soon after Crypto Leaks published the videos – had made inappropriate and inexcusable comments. But later in the disqualification litigation, Freedman Normand sought to file an expert report purporting to show that many of the Crypto Leaks videos were inauthentic “deepfakes.” Advertisement · Scroll to continue Donato noted the shift in his opinion ousting the firm. He called it a “flipflop,” and said Freedman Normand’s renunciation of its “forthright” acknowledgement had added to his concern that the plaintiffs firm “is heavily invested in protecting its own interests, to the detriment of those of the class.” Roche, who now has his own eponymous firm, did not respond to my email query. Freedman Normand said in an email statement that it is "disappointed" with Donato's order. "It criticized the firm for merely defending itself from Dfinity’s accusations [and] did not address central aspects of our arguments," the statement said. "The firm has never 'flipflopped.' We continue to disavow the problematic statements in the videos, but when new evidence indicated the videos are deepfaked and that Mr. Roche never made those statements, we sensibly advised the court of that development." Dfinity counsel from Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan did not deny Dfinity’s involvement in the secret recordings in their brief responding to Freedman Normand’s assertions. Dfinity merely said that it didn’t matter if Roche was set up because he was not coerced into making the statements that landed him in hot water. Dfinity’s lawyers did not respond to my email request for comment. After initial briefing on Dfinity’s motion to disqualify Freedman Normand, Donato ordered a deposition to determine the extent of Roche’s remaining ties to Freedman Normand, including the extent of Roche's control of the firm's Ava-issued tokens, which are held in a crypto wallet. The deposition of name partner Freedman generated yet more bizarre allegations. In a letter asking Donato to seal the deposition transcript because it revealed confidential information about the firm’s relationship with its now-former client Ava, Freedman Normand also told the judge that it feared Dfinity executives would “misuse” the sensitive information to threaten and intimidate Roche and his former colleagues. Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity had already “made threats on Mr. Roche’s life, necessitating FBI involvement.” Advertisement · Scroll to continue In Monday’s decision, Donato said he did not need to probe that claim, which turned out to have been based on “multiple layers of hearsay.” (Apparently, a Freedman Normand associate told the firm's in-house general counsel that a friend, also a lawyer, reported hearing that “people associated with Dfinity were planning to kill Mr. Roche.”) Donato said he regarded Freedman Normand's assertion of a murder threat as yet more evidence that the firm was so “deeply immersed in a toxic perception of the defendants in this case” that it was not capable of fulfilling its fiduciary obligations to the class. Donato also said that the record showed Roche remains entangled with his former firm. Roche’s new firm is co-counsel with Freedman Normand in three cases – none of them class actions, according to the firm – and is still in joint control, with Freedman, of the digital wallet containing tokens from Ava. (Ava, according to Freedman Normand, terminated its relationship with Roche and the successor firm after Crypto Leaks released the Roche tapes.) It has now been six months since the Roche tapes shook up the crypto bar. Most of the disqualification motions based on the tapes have already been decided, so Donato’s Dfinity ruling serves as a sort of coda on the entire fiasco. In the end, it turns out, Freedman Normand's fight to delegitimize the tapes seems to have only made things worse.

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Cryptocurrency: Debt, People Buying Hard Assets with Cheapening Fiat
by grarpamp 16 May '23

16 May '23

US Now Spends More Servicing Its Debt Than On National Defense By Mark Cudmore, Bloomberg Markets reporter and strategist Thanks to rising yields, the US government now has to spend more each year on servicing its immense debt burden than it spent on national defense in 2022. The calculation is based on estimated annualized debt payments as of end of April versus the Treasury’s release of last year’s budget expenditures. If you want one stat to sum up why debt-ceiling negotiations are so fraught this time around, making them both harder to conclude and yet more important for markets, this is probably it. Estimated annualized debt-servicing costs are about 90% higher than they were back in 2011. This is partially due to an exploding debt pile, but also due to a significant shift higher in US yields. In 2022, based on how the Treasury breaks down line items, the US government only spent more on social security ($1,244b) and health ($909b), with income security in line with today’s debt-servicing costs at $813b. A Disorderly Reset With Gold Revalued By Multiples Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com, Tectonic shifts lie ahead. These will involve a US and European debt crisis ending in a debt collapse, a precipitous fall of the dollar and the Euro with Gold emerging as a reserve asset but at multiples of the current price. The next phase of the fall of the West is here and will soon accelerate. It has been both precipitated and aggravated by the absurd sanctions of Russia. These sanctions are hurting Europe badly and affecting the US in a way that they didn’t expect, but was obvious to some of us. The Romans understood that free trade was essential between all the countries that they conquered. But the US administration blocks have both the money and the ability to trade of the countries they don’t like. But shooting yourself in the foot really hurts and the consequences are in front of our eyes. No foreign country will want to hold US debt or dollars. That is a catastrophic problem for the US as their deficits will grow exponentially in coming years. So a debt collapse is not just a looming disaster but a bomb hurling towards the US economy at supersonic speed. With the imminent death of the petrodollar and explosion of US debt, there is only one solution for the funding requirements of the US Government – the FED which will stand as the sole buyer of US Treasuries. A CATASTROPHIC DEATH SPIRAL So the DEBT spiral of higher debt, higher deficits, more Treasuries, higher rates and falling bond prices will soon turn into a DEATH spiral with a collapsing dollar, high inflation and most probably hyperinflation. Sounds like default to me but that word will probably never be used officially. It is hard to admit defeat even when it stares you in the face! Yes, the US will probably obfuscate the situation with CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) but since that is just another form of Fiat money, it will at best buy a little time but the end result will be the same. US Debt Ceiling Farce belongs to Broadway rather than Wall Street The debt ceiling was created in 1917 as a means of restricting reckless spending by the US government. But this travesty has gone on for over 106 years. During that time there has been a total disdain for budget discipline by the ruling Administration and congress. The problem is not just the debt but the cost of financing it. The annualised cost of financing the Federal debt is currently $1.1 trillion. If we assume conservatively that the debt grows to $40 trillion within 2 years, the interest cost at 5% would be $2 trillion. That would be 43% of current tax revenue. But as the economy deteriorates, interest will easily exceed 50% of tax revenue. And that is at 5% which will probably be much too low as inflation rises and The Fed loses control of rates. Thus a very dire scenario lies ahead and that is certainly not a worst case scenario. THE FED IS BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE The Fed and the thus US government are now between Scylla and Charybdis (Rock and a Hard Place). As it looks today, the US will bounce between Scylla and Charybdis in coming years until the US financial system and also the economy takes ever harder knocks and goes under just as every monetary system has in history. Obviously the rest of the West including an extremely weak Europe will follow the US down. BRICS AND SCO – RISING POWERS The whole world will suffer but the commodity rich nations as well as the less indebted ones will ride the coming storm far better. This includes much of South America, Middle East, Russia and Asia. The expanding power blocks of BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) will be the strong powers where a much increasing part of global trade will take place. Barring major political and geopolitical upheavals, China will be the dominant nation and the main factory of the world. Russia is also likely to be a major economic power. With $85 trillion of natural resource reserves, the potential is clearly there for this to happen. But first the political system of Russia needs to be “modernised” or restructured. What I outline above is of course structural shifts that will take time, probably decades. But whether we like it or not, the first phase, which is the fall of the West, could happen faster than we like. A MONETARY SYSTEM ALWAYS ENDS IN A DEBT EXPLOSION In 1913, total US debt was negligible, and in 1950, it had grown to $406 billion. By the time Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, debt was $1.7 trillion. Thereafter the curve has become ever steeper as the graph below shows. From September 2019 when the US banking system started to crack, the Repo crisis told us that there were real problems although no one wanted to admit it. Conveniently for the US government, the Repo crisis became the Covid crisis which was a much better excuse for the Government to print unlimited amounts of money together with the banks. Thus, just in this century, total US debt has grown from $27 trillion to $94 trillion! But that was history and we know we can’t do anything about the past. But now comes the fun. I have been warning about a coming debt explosion for some time. Well, I believe this is it. In a recent article about the price of gold I explained that the final stages of hyperinflation are exponential. We will see a very similar exponential pattern with the coming debt explosion. If we assume that the final 5 minutes of the exponential phase started in September 2019, the stadium was then only 7% full and will in the next few years grow from 7% to 100% full or 14X from here. This is obviously just a demonstration and no exact science, but it shows that theoretically US debt could now explode. So let’s take a quick look at a few factors that will cause the debt explosion. BANK FAILURES A Hoover Institute report calculates that more than 2,315 US banks currently have assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios are $2 trillion lower than the book value. And remember this is before the REAL fall of the asset values which is still to come. Just take US property values which are greatly overvalued by the lenders: So the four US banks that have gone under recently are clearly just the beginning. And no one must believe that it is just small banks. Bigger banks will follow the same route. During the 2006-9 subprime crisis, bailouts were the norm. But at the time, it was said that the next crisis would involve bail-ins. But as we have seen so far in the US, there were no bail-ins. Clearly the government and the Fed were concerned about a systemic crisis and did not have the guts to bail in the bank customers, not even above the FDIC limit. As the crisis spreads, I doubt that bank depositors will be treated so leniently. Neither the FDIC, nor the government can afford to rescue everyone. Instead depositors will be given an offer they can’t refuse which is compulsory purchase of US treasuries equal to their credit balance. The European banking sector is in an even worse state than the US one. European banks are sitting on large losses from bond portfolios acquired when interest rates were negative. No one knows at this stage the magnitude of the losses which are likely to be substantial. Both in commercial property and housing, the situation is worse in Europe than in the US since the European banks are funding most of these loans directly themselves, including € 4 trillion of home mortgages. The banks also have a mismatch between low rates received on mortgages against high rates paid to finance them. The ex-governor of the Bank of France and ex-head of the IMF, Jacques de Larosière accuses the authorities of subverting the private banking system with deranged volumes of QE after it had become toxic: “Central banks, far from promoting stability, have delivered a Masterclass in how to organise financial crisis” $3 QUADRILLION OF GLOBAL DEBT & LIABILITIES If we add the unfunded liabilities and the total outstanding derivatives to the global debt, we arrive at around $3 quadrillion as I discussed in this article: “This is it! The financial system is terminally broken” Sadly, the Western financial system is now both too big to save and too big to fail. Still all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it. So even if the system is too big to fail, it will with very dire consequences. GOLD TO BE SUBSTANTIALLY REVALUED IN THE DISORDERLY RESET Just over a century after the creation of the Fed and the beginning of the debt ceiling, the mighty dollar has lost 99% of its value in purchasing power terms. And measured against the only money which has survived in history – Gold – the dollar has also lost 99%. This is obviously not an accident. Not only is gold the only money which has survived but also the only money which has kept its purchasing power throughout the millennia. For example, a Roman Toga cost 1 ounce of gold 2000 years ago, which today is also the price for a high quality man’s suit. You would have thought that losing 99% of its value for the reserve currency of the world would be a disaster. Well it is of course, but the US, as well as most of the Western world, has adjusted by increasing debt exponentially to make up for the disastrous debasement of the currencies. What is even more interesting, gold is up 8-10X this century against most currencies. That is a superior performance to virtually all major asset classes. And still nobody owns gold which is only 0.5% of global financial assets. More recently gold is at all-time-highs in all currencies including the dollar. But in spite of the extremely strong performance of gold or more correctly put, the continued debasement of all currencies, no one talks about gold. Just looking at the number of articles covering gold in the press in the graph below (white bars), it confirms that the most recent price increase of gold (blue line) is met by a yawn. This is obviously very bullish. Imagine if all stock markets made new highs. It would be all over the media. So what this is telling us is that this gold bull market, or currency bear market, has a very long way to go. As I often point out, no fiat money but only gold has survived throughout history. Gold’s rise over time is always guaranteed as governments and central banks will without fail destroy their currency by creating virtually unlimited fake money. Since this has been going on for 1000s of years, history tells us that this trend of constantly debasing fiat money is unbreakable due to the greed and mismanagement of governments. And now with the debt crisis accelerating, so will the gold price. Luke Groman makes a very interesting point in his discussion with Grant Williams (grant-williams.com by subscription). Luke suggests that although the dollar will not yet die as a transactional currency, that it is likely to be replaced by gold as the reserve asset currency. The combination of dedollarisation and liquidation of US treasuries by foreign holders will lead to this development. Commodity countries will sell for example oil to China, receive yuan and change the yuan to gold on the Shanghai gold Exchange. They will then hold gold instead of dollars. This will avoid the dollar as a trading currency when it comes to commodities. In order for gold to function as a reserve asset, it will need to be revalued with a zero at the end and a bigger figure at the beginning as Luke says. The whole idea would be that gold will become a neutral reserve asset which floats in all currencies. The inverse triangle of Global debt resting on only $2 trillion of Central Bank gold shown above makes the revaluation of gold obvious. A floating gold price as a reserve asset is of course much more sensible than a fixed gold price backing the currencies and would be the nearest to Free Gold. See my 2018 article, “Free Gold will kill the Paper Gold Casino”. So the consequence of gold becoming a reserve asset could involve a rise of say 25X or 50X the current level. Certainly not an improbable outcome in today’s money. The debasement of the dollar and other Western currencies is likely to have a similar effect but then we are not talking in today’s money. Time will tell. As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes and whatever the reason is for the rise. The 1980 gold price of $850, adjusted for real inflation would today be $28,300 As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes. What is clear is that fiat money, bonds, property and stocks will all decline precipitously against gold. What is important for investors is to take protection now against the most significant RESET in history which is a disorderly reset. So if you don’t hold gold yet, please, please protect your family, and your wealth by acquiring physical gold. Gold repositioning as a Global Reserve Asset could happen gradually or it could happen suddenly. But please be prepared because when it happens you don’t want to hold worthless paper money or assets. Much Of The Markets Still Don't Believe The US Can Default By Ven Ram, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist "if political [debt ceiling] kabuki ends in risk-off drama then Fed does QE (like BoE last Oct)…this is why other assets classes not worried." - BofA's Michael Hartnett Except in some specific corners, most of the markets don’t quite buy the story that the US Treasury could, after all, default on its obligations. T-bills due around the estimated time of the X-date have shown some angst, with yields on one-month instruments up some 200 basis points in less than a month. Meanwhile, credit-default swaps are pricing in a 3% chance of a default. While that may not seem alarming, that default pricing is way higher than in 2011 and 2013, when we were last witness to such stress. Yet, the rest of the markets are still pretty sanguine about the eventual outcome. The S&P 500 is still holding onto to its 7+% rally for the year, while the Nasdaq 100 is up a gravity-defying 22%. Front-end Treasury yields have come off more than 100 basis points from their peak for the cycle, but that is more a reflection of the markets positioning — rightly or wrongly — for a putative Fed pivot rather than anything to do with the debt-ceiling impasse. Gold, which BBG readers reckon will be a haven should the US indeed default, hasn’t done much so far this month. While the supposed X-date — when the Treasury will have run through its gamut of emergency maneuvers — is supposedly June 1, in reality it may turn out to be different because it’s impossible to look through the crystal ball and know precisely when, say, tax receipts may flow in. That is perhaps one reason the markets reckon that lawmakers will do what common sense dictates by the time the D-Day rolls in. X-date outlook is worsening as FDIC withdrew $12bn on May 4-5 from TGA & Treasury released new estimates of extraordinary measures remaining. Looking like $20bn cash on hand at end of day on June 1 (old expectation was $38bn) https://t.co/Zf6dIaBIkQ pic.twitter.com/cbF3LVdiwW — Donald Schneider (@DonFSchneider) May 15, 2023 The point, though, is the the US economy, already facing considerable headwinds from the turmoil in the banking industry, isn’t quite so well-placed to flirt with another Wile E. Coyote moment. And that is the part the stock markets haven’t quite priced in — yet

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Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin Miami May 18~20 2023, Lotta Pump, Nothing on Privacy or P2P Cash Scaling
by grarpamp 16 May '23

16 May '23

Bitcoin Miami May 18~20 2023, Lotta Pump, Nothing on Privacy or P2P Cash Scaling Last chance, pay $2200+ at the door to get an anti-privacy Bitcoin LN blowjob. Unlike impotent Rudy, most attendees will bust a nut all over those hoes.

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FDIC Seizure of Foreign Deposits at SVB Opens Pandora’s Box at JPMorgan Chase and Citi – Which Hold a Combined $1 Trillion in Foreign Deposits with No FDIC Insurance
by Gunnar Larson 16 May '23

16 May '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/05/fdic-seizure-of-foreign-deposits-at-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 15, 2023 ~ Federal Reserve Building, Washington, D.C.If you have been following the banking crisis, you have likely read at least a dozen times that on March 12 federal banking regulators, with the consent of the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, invoked the “systemic risk exception” in order to protect both insured and uninsured depositors at the two banks that failed in March – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. That’s why there were gasps of shock on Saturday evening at around 5:30 p.m. when the Wall Street Journal (paywall) published the stunning news that depositors in the Cayman Islands’ branch of Silicon Valley Bank had their deposits seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which they are unlikely to ever see again. As Wall Street On Parade has previously reported, under statute, the FDIC cannot insure deposits held on foreign soil by U.S. banks. What it can do, however, is to sell those deposits to the bank that acquires the collapsed bank. In the case of Silicon Valley Bank, the acquiring bank was First Citizens Bancshares which, apparently, declined to purchase the foreign deposits in the secrecy jurisdiction of the Cayman Islands, a jurisdiction most notable recently for the largest share of customers engaged with Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto house of frauds. The Journal reported that as of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank held $13.9 billion in foreign deposits with an unknown amount remaining as of the date of its failure and FDIC receivership on March 10. The Journal also reported that “On March 31, the FDIC notified SVB’s Cayman Islands depositors that they wouldn’t be covered by its deposit insurance, and that they would be treated as ‘general unsecured creditors,’ according to documents reviewed by the Journal as well as interviews with employees of multiple firms.” Adding to what is certain to be political fallout, the depositors left out in the cold in the Cayman Islands branch included “investment firms in China and other parts of Asia.” Those depositors can’t be too happy to see their deposits seized while everyone else gets protected, whether they had deposit insurance or not. What the Wall Street Journal has actually done with this report is to open a Pandora’s box regarding the vast sums of foreign deposits held in foreign branches of JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup’s Citibank – none of which are covered by FDIC insurance. It further raises the question as to why the banking regulators of these two Wall Street mega banks have allowed this dangerous situation to occur. According to the year-end call report filed by Citibank, it held a stunning $622.6 billion of deposits in foreign offices. (See page 34 of call report.) According to the year-end call report filed by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., it held $426 billion in deposits in foreign offices. (See page 34 of the linked report.) Together, these two banks held just over $1 trillion in deposits on foreign soil – which had no U.S. deposit insurance backing. As for whether the foreign jurisdiction’s deposit insurance scheme would apply to the foreign branch deposits of U.S. banks, the FDIC offers this two-sentence explanation in a recent report: “Deposits in foreign offices of U.S. banks are not insured by the FDIC. Some jurisdictions may provide some deposit insurance coverage of these deposits; the amounts of coverage, if any, vary by jurisdiction.” In most cases, foreign countries’ deposit insurance schemes offer far lower deposit protection than the $250,000 per depositor, per bank, offered in the U.S. JPMorgan Chase and Citibank also have exposure to uninsured domestic deposits – that is, deposits exceeding $250,000 per depositor in their bank branches on U.S. soil. At year end, JPMorgan Chase held $1.058 trillion in uninsured deposits in domestic branches while Citibank held $598.2 billion in uninsured deposits in domestic branches. Combining domestic and foreign uninsured deposits versus the $1.4 trillion Citibank held in total deposits at year end, means that 87 percent of Citibank’s deposit base lacked FDIC insurance protection. That is very close to the 90 percent of uninsured deposits held by Signature Bank when it blew up on March 12 and went into FDIC receivership. Given Citibank’s history of teetering on the brink and being rescued by exorbitant sums from its financial “supervisors” during and after the financial crash of 2008, it is nothing short of an outrage to U.S. taxpayers that its banking regulators today have allowed 87 percent of its deposits to lack FDIC insurance protection. From December 2007 through mid 2010, Citigroup/Citibank received the following bailouts: the U.S. Treasury injected $45 billion of capital; there was a government guarantee of over $300 billion on certain of its assets; the FDIC provided a guarantee of $5.75 billion on its senior unsecured debt and $26 billion on its commercial paper and interbank deposits; and secret revolving loans from the Federal Reserve sluiced a cumulative $2.5 trillion in below-market-rate loans to Citigroup according to the eventual audit performed by the Government Accountability Office. The FDIC’s recent report on the banking failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the options for Congress to consider in reforming the federal deposit insurance program, concedes that uninsured deposits play a pivotal role in bank runs and the ensuing failure of banks, writing as follows: “Abstracting from the specifics of the events of March 2023, several developments suggest that the banking system has evolved in ways that could increase its exposure to deposit runs. These developments include the amplification of concerns through social media and the speed of some depositor responses, the interaction of failure-resolution events and depositor behavior, and the increased volume and proportion of uninsured deposits in the banking system. “The risk of depositor runs is inherent in banking, where long-term assets are funded by short-term deposit liabilities. The FDIC was established largely in response to the widespread bank runs of the 1930s. Depositors who are unprotected by deposit insurance may consider moving their funds if they are concerned about the liquidity or solvency of their bank. If uninsured depositors believe that other depositors share their concerns and that a run on the bank and potential failure is imminent, then they may act quickly to withdraw their funds. Synchronous deposit withdrawals may then force the liquidation of assets and cause the failure of the bank. A bank failure caused by a run can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Editor’s Note: The third paragraph of this article has been corrected to show that the Cayman Islands represented the largest share of customers for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto house of frauds, not its home base, which was in the Bahamas.

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Conde Nast the next VICE
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Looking back on WIRED coverage of cypherpunks is like looking over the Grand Canyon. They used to feature regular semi-sympathetic stories and had an ' embed ' here in the form of Declan. Then - after 9-11 - they followed Eric Hughes in an unseemly rush for the exits and dropped coverage for years. In recent years they've had to cover c-punks once more due to the successful deployment of cryptoanarchist ENOUGH technologies like cryptocurrencies - but they send all their previous articles down the memory hole when they elevate the likes of Poxie Fish-hook or worse . . . Douglas Rushkoff and Malcolm Harris! Jesus Fucking Christ. The overall sinking trend is clear - they had a chance to lead and blew it - blew it so badly they may now be compared to WaPo and VICE. Failing and flailing this bad might even be compared to the NYT and Wikileaks. TL/dr? They're old - we're young - and such is life.

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