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There Was a Blood Bath in Some Bank Stocks Yesterday: So Much for Jamie Dimon’s Prediction That It's the End of the Banking Crisis
by Gunnar Larson 02 May '23

02 May '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/05/there-was-a-blood-bath-in-some-bank-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 2, 2023 ~ There are two critical things you need to know about JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon’s ability to stabilize the banking crisis: (1) he’s tried twice and failed both times; (2) his bank is a key financier of hedge funds, some of which are undermining bank stock prices with short selling. The Financial Times reported on April 5 that “Hedge funds made more than $7bn in profits by betting against bank shares during the recent crisis that rocked the sector, their biggest such haul since the 2008 financial crisis.” Shares of First Republic Bank have lost billions of dollars more in market value since April 5, meaning the $7 billion haul for short sellers is now an understatement. The one thing that would help dramatically to stem the banking crisis is for President Biden (a man who derives his powers from U.S. voters rather than a p.r. machine like Dimon) to immediately issue an Executive Order halting the short selling of federally-insured bank stocks. As of right now, short sellers see an easy path to picking a regional or community bank target, or a bank that got in bed with crypto companies, or some inscrutable federally-insured fintech bank, and driving its share price into the ground while minting billions for themselves. This is now a matter of national security to the United States. The second largest bank failure in U.S. history just occurred on May 1 with First Republic Bank. The third largest bank failure in U.S. history occurred on March 10 with Silicon Valley Bank. The fourth largest bank failure in U.S. history occurred on March 12 with Signature Bank. In each case, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the federal agency that insures bank deposits up to $250,000 per depositor per bank, was on the hook for losses on underwater assets at the banks. It will book tens of billions of dollars in losses to its Deposit Insurance Fund as a result. (The largest bank failure in U.S. history was Washington Mutual. That occurred in 2008. JPMorgan Chase was allowed to take it over, just as happened with First Republic Bank yesterday.) The FDIC simply cannot afford for this banking crisis to pick up momentum. Also, something else unthinkable occurred on March 19. The Swiss government stripped shareholders of two publicly-traded banks from voting on the shotgun marriage of collapsing Credit Suisse and its stronger rival, UBS. Both banks are highly interconnected to U.S. mega banks and are regulated as G-SIBS – Global Systemically Important Banks. The chart above is pretty much all you need to know about the prediction from Jamie Dimon yesterday that his mega bank’s purchase of First Republic Bank has brought the current banking crisis to an end. Each of these publicly-traded stocks in the chart above is the parent of a federally-insured bank. Six of them experienced a percentage loss in the double digits by the close of trading yesterday. Five others fell many multiples of the losses experienced by the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average. Jamie Dimon’s record on forecasting future events is not something to write home about. He is, after all, the same guy that called the London Whale hoopla in the media “a tempest in a teapot.” Not long thereafter, it was revealed that his bank’s derivative traders in London, supervised by an unlicensed woman who worked down the hall from Dimon in New York, had used customers’ deposits to trade risky derivatives and lost $6.2 billion of customers’ deposits. The U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (which used to conduct highly sophisticated investigations of Wall Street corruption but now seems to have been muzzled in a kind of witness protection program when it comes to Wall Street) issued a 300-page investigative report on that London Whale “tempest in a teapot” in March of 2013. The late Senator John McCain, co-chair of the Subcommittee at the time, said this in his opening remarks at a related hearing: “…The ‘London Whale’ incident matters to the Federal Government because the traders at JPMorgan were making risky bets using excess deposits, portions of which were federally insured. These excess deposits should have been used to provide loans for Main Street businesses. Instead, JPMorgan used the money to bet on catastrophic risk. “Through an extensive bipartisan investigation, this Subcommittee has uncovered a wealth of new information. Internal emails, memos, and interviews reveal that these trades were not conducted by a group of rogue traders, but that their superiors were well aware of their activities. “Traders at JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office, the CIO, adopted a risky strategy with money they were supposed to use to hedge, or counter, risk. However, even the head of the CIO could only provide a ‘guesstimate’ as to what exactly the portfolio was supposed to hedge. And JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the portfolio had ‘morphed’ into something that created new and potentially larger risks. In the words of JPMorgan’s primary Federal regulator, it would require ‘make-believe voodoo magic’ to make the portfolio actually look like a hedge. “Top officials at JPMorgan allowed these excessive losses to occur by permitting the CIO to continually breach all of the bank’s own risk limits. When the risk limits threatened to impede their risky behavior, they decided to manipulate the models. “Disturbingly, the bank’s primary regulator, the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency], failed to take action even after red flags warned that JPMorgan was breaching its risk limits. These regulators fell asleep at the switch and failed to use the tools at their disposal to effectively curb JPMorgan’s appetite for risk. “However, JPMorgan actively impeded the OCC’s oversight. The CIO refused to release key investment data to the OCC and even claimed that the regulator was trying to ‘destroy’ the bank’s business. “After these losses were uncovered by the press, JPMorgan chose to conceal its errors and, in doing so, top officials at the bank misinformed investors, regulators, and the public. In an April 2012 earnings call, then Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein falsely told investors and the public that the bank had been ‘fully transparent to regulators.’ “The deception did not end there. During the same earnings call, Mr. Dimon tried to downplay the significance of the losses by infamously characterizing them as ‘a complete tempest in a teapot’… “Let me be clear: JPMorgan completely disregarded risk limits and stonewalled Federal regulators. It is unsettling that a group of traders made reckless decisions with federally insured money and that all of this was done with the full awareness of top officials at JPMorgan. This bank appears to have entertained — indeed, embraced—the idea that it was ‘too big to fail.’ In fact, with regard to how it managed the derivatives that are the subject of today’s hearing, it seems to have developed a business model based on that notion — the notion that they are too big to fail. “It is our duty to the American public to remind the financial industry that high-stakes gambling with federally insured deposits will not be tolerated. In 2012, the ‘London Whale’ trades resulted in a $6 billion loss. What if it was $60 billion? Or $100 billion? Does JPMorgan operate under the assumption that the taxpayer will bail them out again? What place does taxpayers’ underwriting of the big banks’ disregard for ‘moral hazard’ have in the proper operation of a truly free market?” You can see why Senator Elizabeth Warren is quite upset about Jamie Dimon’s mega bank being allowed to get even bigger with the purchase of First Republic Bank.

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When cypherpunks are called terrorists . . .
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

Ava Labs founder awarded $3M in crypto defamation suit Emin Gün Sirer, the founder and CEO of Ava Labs, has been awarded millions in damages after an influencer publicly accused him of being part of a Turkish terrorist group https://cointelegraph.com/news/ava-labs-founder-awarded-3m-in-crypto-defama… Reposts not revolutionary imprecations to put-up-or-shut-up

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Anarchy in Cascadia
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

M1 in 2001 almost the last physical demo I attended - started donning Black Bloc regalia and spraypainting a perfect circle A on screens protecting the ( closed for the day ) stock exchange. Crossed the road and caused some notable damage to Collins st Mc Donalds. Was briefly interviewed by Hamish from ' The Age ' who quoted me in an early edition. " Its all about solidarity - how we defeated Apartheid and bought down the Berlin Wall " Reinforcements arrive from organized labor and I hook up with AWOL grouping of mad lefties and anarcho types - unarrested myself and many more adventures. Library time running out! SOLIDARITY!

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RIP ROSA MUSETTI
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

Comrade Rosa Musetti of the "Errico Malatesta" group of Gragnana passed away on Tuesday, March 7. https://anarchistnews.org/content/rosa-musetti-left-us-1957-2023 Reposts on behalf of all associationista

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Crackpots compelling vision
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

Kropotkin’s understanding and appreciation of societies then regarded as primitive, from Africa to the Arctic, forms a striking contrast both to Social Darwinist racism and the historical developmentalism of traditional Marxism*. It shares the Romantic impulse that drove his old populist comrades to lionise Russian peasant communities, but instead of fixating on the national particularity of rural Russia it takes in the whole human and natural world. https://anarchistnews.org/content/what-should-action-be Reposts not patronizing condescension from the discredited LRB *All Marxists are racist Capital, vol. 3, chapter 47: “ The possibility is here presented for definite economic development taking place, depending, of course, upon favourable circumstances, inborn racial characteristics, etc...” Engels: (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 502.): “We regard economic conditions as the factor which ultimately determines historical development. But race is itself an economic factor ... ”. Complaints about racist Marxists on Groups io https://groups.io/static/tos

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Turkish Intelligence claim scalp of RAPE ENABLER
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

The leader of WIKILEAKS, sorry, Islamic terror group ISIS has been killed by Turkish forces in Syria, Turkey’s President said overnight. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the group’s chief Julian Rand Paul Assangista , sorry, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi had been “neutralised” as part of a Turkish intelligence operation on Saturday Two cheers for representative democratic members of NATO https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/isis-terror-leader-a… Reposts not professional zombie journalist lies on behalf of rotten, stinking, corporate corpse-media

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Hated French police battle heroic black-clad protesters during May Day rallies
by professor rat 02 May '23

02 May '23

Anarchists hope to fully reclaim May day by Cypherpunk 2027 as the last red-fascist domino's fall ( well at least one anarchist ) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-02/french-police-battle-protesters-duri… Mo riot-porn cos todays pig is today's bacon https://twitter.com/i/status/1653033312619843589 Reposts not Karl Semich dribble

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Anarchy in Cascadia
by professor rat 01 May '23

01 May '23

Nothing to hide - nothing to fear https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchist-school-teacher-anna-falkoff Reposts not stark semich contrasts with craven American coward Karl-Fuck-off

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Fwd: [bitcoin-dev] Civ Kit: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Market System
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 01 May '23

01 May '23

when i was brought back to this list i got on bitcoin-dev while telling partial falsehoods against my preference in public there were some interesting posts recently this paper share was followed up by another post on frontrunning resistance ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 15:10:01 +0100 Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Civ Kit: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Market System To: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev(a)lists.linuxfoundation.org> Hi list, We have been working since a while with Nicholas Gregory (Commerce Block), Ray Youssef (the Built With Bitcoin foundation) and few others on a new peer-to-peer market system to enable censorship-resistant and permissionless global trading in all parts of the world. While the design aims in priority to serve on-ramp/off-ramp trading, it can be extended to support any kind of trading: goods, services, bitcoin financial derivatives like discreet log contracts. The design combines the Nostr architecture of simple relays announcing trade orders to their clients with Lightning onion routing infrastructure, therefore granting high-level of confidentiality to the market participants. The market boards are Nostr relays with a Lightning gateway, each operating autonomously and in competition. The market boards can be runned as a federation however there is no "decentralized orderbook" logged into the blockchain. The trades are escrowed under Bitcoin Script contracts, relying on moderations and know your peer oracles for adjudication. The scoring of trades, counterparties and services operators should be enabled by the introduction of a Web-of-Stakes, assembled from previous ideas [0]. From the Bitcoin UTXO set servicing as a trustless source of truth, an economic weight can be assigned to each market entity. This reputation paradigm could be composed with state-of-the-art Web-of-Trust techniques like decentralized identifiers [1]. A consistent incentive framework for service operators is proposed by the intermediary of privacy-preserving credentials backed by Bitcoin payments, following the lineaments of IETF's Privacy Pass [2]. Services operators like market boards and oracles are incentivized to thrive for efficiency, akin to routing hops on Lightning and miners on the base layer. The whitepaper goes deep in the architecture of the system [3] (Thanks to the peer reviewers!). We'll gradually release code and modules, extensively building on top of the Lightning Dev Kit [4] and Nostr libraries. All according to the best Bitcoin open-source and decentralized standards established by Bitcoin Core and we're looking forward to collaborating with everyone in the community to standardize libraries and guarantee interoperability between clients with long-term thinking. Feedback is very welcome! Cheers, Nick, Ray and Antoine [0] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2020-November/002… [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/REC-did-core-20220719/ [2] https://privacypass.github.io [3] https://github.com/civkit/paper/blob/main/civ_kit_paper.pdf [4] https://lightningdevkit.org

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Re: Brody Larson
by Gunnar Larson 01 May '23

01 May '23

Mr. Lee: Thank you for your email. Brody was a awesome guy. Hope you have a great weekend. Gunnar Larson On Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:16 AM Eric Lee <Eric.Lee(a)aspca.org> wrote: > I’m sorry Mr. Larson. There was a delay in the memorial company picking up > the body. You should be receiving Brody’s ashes within a week or so. Again, > I apologize for the wait. > Kind regards, > Eric Lee > ------------------------------ > *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> > *Sent:* Thursday, April 27, 2023 10:43:23 AM > *To:* Eric Lee <Eric.Lee(a)aspca.org> > *Cc:* Erin Satterthwaite <Erin.Satterthwaite(a)aspca.org> > *Subject:* Brody Larson > > Mr. Lee: > > Can you kindly advise on the status of Brody Larson's ashes? > > Warm regards, > > Gunnar Larson > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: *Erin Satterthwaite* <Erin.Satterthwaite(a)aspca.org> > Date: Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 10:12 AM > Subject: Re: Brody Larson > To: Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> > > > Hi there, > > I've been traveling and am out of the office today. I'm sorry if you got > another letter but nothing has changed. What they told you about receiving > the ashes was accurate. > > Thanks, > > Erin Satterthwaite > ------------------------------ > *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> > *Sent:* Friday, April 14, 2023 9:58:52 PM > *To:* Erin Satterthwaite <Erin.Satterthwaite(a)aspca.org> > *Cc:* iab(a)nypd.org <iab(a)nypd.org> > *Subject:* Re: Brody Larson > > Ms. Satterthwaite: > > Thank you for our conversation on Monday, with email confirmation below. > > Also, on Monday your office called to confirm Brody's ashes would be > delivered in one to two weeks. > > Today, I received a letter from your office. The letter was the same copy > from the first letter dated April 4, 2023. > > As such, this afternoon, I left you a voice message. > > Can you kindly confirm when Brody's ashes will be available? Additionally, > can you please confirm who at the NYPD is your primary contact. > > Thank you, > > Gunnar Larson > > > On Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 10:22 AM Erin Satterthwaite < > Erin.Satterthwaite(a)aspca.org> wrote: > > Hello Mr. Larson, > > > > I’m sorry for your loss. Someone will be in touch about getting Brody’s > ashes back to you in the next day or two. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Erin Satterthwaite, Esq. > > NYC Senior Counsel > > Legal Advocacy & Investigations > > > > > > *ASPCA®* > > The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® > > Ownership | Elevate | Commitment | Team | Impact > > > > erin.satterthwaite(a)aspca.org > > Cell : (347) 213-7459 > > Fax: (866) 211-0380 > > *aspca.org <http://aspca.org>* > > > > *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> > *Sent:* Monday, April 10, 2023 10:19 AM > *To:* Erin Satterthwaite <Erin.Satterthwaite(a)aspca.org> > *Subject:* Re: Brody Larson > > > > Ms. Satterthwaite: > > > > Thank you for your call today. > > > > It breaks my heart that Brody has been put to sleep. > > > > Please let me know if I may collect his ashes. > > > > Gunnar Larson > > > > On Sun, Apr 9, 2023, 3:13 PM Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> wrote: > > Ms. Satterthwaite: > > > > I have left you a few voice messages and emails regarding my St. Bernard, > Brody. > > > > Do you have any updates? > > > > Thank you, > > > > Gunnar Larson > > > > On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 12:35 PM Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> wrote: > > Hello Ms. Satterthwaite: > > > > My name is Gunnar Larson. Today, I received a letter from your office. > > > > You may have my dog Brody. He is a Saint Bernard. Please contact me as > soon as possible. > > > > Gunnar Larson > > 917-580-8053 > > > > Gunn > >

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