Juggling Dynamite

Risks in the global financial system are more concentrated today than they were heading into the 2008 financial crisis.  The facts are incontrovertible:  97% of all trading assets in the US banking system and 95% of all derivatives are controlled by the largest six US investment banks.  The 30 global investment banks that are deemed ‘systemically important’ control 40% of all lending and 52% of all financial assets in the world.  Not only that, but in the US the big 6 bank lobby has been able to queer bankruptcy laws to give derivative claimants (them) priority to seize capital ahead of all other creditors (including customer accounts) in an insolvency. (Recall how counter-party JP Morgan was able to step in and seize MF Global’s re-hypothecated customer assets in 2011.)

Since these institutions are too big to regulate, manage, protect depositors or bail out, we have to sever off the advising and deposit taking arms (backed by government deposit insurance) from the product creating, risk selling arms (who must be forced to live and die at their own risk with their own capital).  We also have to jam the revolving door between financial firms and regulators…

Nomi Prins, author of “All the Presidents’ Bankers” explains how taxpayer risks are higher today in ‘Too big to fail’ investment banks than they were in 2008. Here is a direct video link.

They can run but it’s getting harder to hide.  With capital deficiency and deficits the norm in most governments, pensions, not for profit organizations, institutions and foundations today, tolerance for those hiding money from taxation is in retreat.  The fact that many of those hiding these funds have gleaned said funds from taxpayer funded subsidies, government jobs and abuse of trust, makes these maneuvers all the more brazen.  Biting the hands that feed has become an international mainstay.  Let them eat cake encore…human behavior is nothing if not repetitive.

See:  Politicians should keep their money at home for further discussion. Also:  The world’s favorite new tax haven is the United States and Big Banks top users of off-shore services.

Video link: Panama leak reports world leaders’ hidden billions

More specifics in this report. Here is a direct video link.

Yesterday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion used by a host of politicians, celebrities and other elites. Hopefully this will provoke further public unrest and demand for change…

The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets….about 2,000 times larger than the WikiLeaks state department cables,” it’s indeed the biggest leak in history.  See: How reporters pulled off the Panama Papers, the biggest leak in whistle blower history.

…Based on a trove of more than 11 million leaked files, the investigation exposes a cast of characters who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking.  Behind the email chains, invoices and documents that make up the Panama Papers are often unseen victims of wrongdoing enabled by this shadowy industry. This is their story. Here is a direct video link.