Top international banks face US probe for alleged precious metals market fix

Published time: February 24, 2015 17:05

Edited time: February 25, 2015 00:27

The US Department of Justice is in the early stages of an investigation into at least 10 international banks—including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Barclays—over alleged manipulation of the precious metals market.

HSBC included in its annual report, published Monday, that the antitrust division of the Justice Department asked the bank to submit documents related to an investigation into the price setting ofgold, silver, platinum and palladium.

The report added that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) subpoenaed HSBC Bank USA for information on its precious metals trading. The bank said it was cooperating with American officials.

According to reports, the other banks involved in the investigation include Bank of Nova Scotia, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Societe Generale, Standard Bank and UBS.

The banks have yet to comment, although HSBC confirmed the investigation was “at an early stage.” Barclays will have to reveal if they are involved when it releases its annual report next week, accordingto The Independent newspaper.

READ MORE: Goldman Sachs, HSBC, BASF sued in first US metals price manipulation case

Investors and jewelers in the US have already sued a handful of top financial firms for an alleged eight-year manipulation of platinum and palladium prices. Those accused include units of Goldman Sachs Group (the world’s biggest global investment bank), HSBC Holdings (Europe's largest bank by market value), the metals unit of the world’s largest chemical company, BASF and Standard Bank Group from South Africa — the world’s largest producer of platinum and second largest producer of palladium after Russia.

Until recently, gold, silver, platinum and palladium prices were set by a century-old process where a small number of banks would meet for daily or twice-daily conferences. That process was overhauled last year with the help of the London Bullion Market Association. Now, an electronic, auction-based system serves as a regulatory structure for market prices.

READ MORE: Banking breeds cheating for financial gain - Swiss researchers

The DOJ’s precious metals probe has surfaced in the midst of other global banking investigations into the rigging of other financial benchmarks.

The Swiss regulator FINMA included its metals-rigging investigation into a November settlement with UBS Group over currency-rate manipulation, saying there was a "clear attempt to manipulate fixes in the precious metal market" by UBS.

Read moreBanks fined record $4.3 bn for corrupting integrity of currency trading

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is also looking into banks’ possible fixing of precious metal prices as it works through its foreign exchange manipulation probe, though wider probes by FINMA, FCA and Germany’s BaFin have stalled, according to The Independent. The latter two each have already said that there was no rigging of gold price-setting, according to Bloomberg.

Top banks — including JP Morgan, UBS, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Bank of America — were accused last year of tampering with currency interbank rates on the largely unregulated $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. Bankers allegedly worked together and sent secret signals to manipulate the important currency benchmarks to boost bank profits. The banks settled with the CFTC in November for more than $4 billion.

In addition, many of the same mega-banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Credit Suisse and at least 10 other of world’s biggest international lenders — were sued in 2013 by US regulator FDIC for causing millions of dollars in losses at credit unions by allegedly rigging the Libor benchmark rate.

The Fall of Too Big To Fail

McDonald's, Monsanto now in steep financial declines.

The Fall of Too Big To Fail

Image Credits: Luther Blissett / Flickr

by INFOWARS.COM | FEBRUARY 23, 2015

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In a series of headlines that would pass as virtually unbelievable several years ago, mainstream economists are sounding the alarm over the financial decline of both fast food giant McDonald’s and biotech juggernaut Monsanto.

kit
Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:33:32 GMT

Obama-Nominated Judge: New Illegal Immigrants Must Be Released

9:55 AM 02/23/2015
NEIL MUNRO White House Correspondent
A federal judge has ordered the federal government to grant U.S. civil rights to illegals who are caught at the border, and to release all migrants except for those who may endanger Americans.
The migrants “may have legitimate claims to asylum … [and] their presence here may become permanent … [so] that they are entitled to the protection of the Due Process Clause, especially when it comes to deprivations of liberty,” said the judge, who was nominated by President Barack Obama.
Under current rules, border-crossers who are released are also allowed to compete against Americans for jobs, and to attend U.S. schools and to receive welfare, until their cases are decided by immigration judges.
But immigration courts are already so clogged with asylum-seekers that many cases aren’t decided for several years. The slow process gives migrants many opportunities to find other legal avenues to become citizens, and full access to U.S anti-poverty programs for themselves, their parents and their children.
Unless reversed, the decision opens a huge hole in U.S. border security, and likely will dramatically increase illegal immigration and competition for jobs, partly because immigration enforcement has already been greatly reduced by President Barack Obama.
The judge’s decision was released late Friday, but political pushback is growing.
“If liberal federal judges and the president are determined to trash the rule of law in this manner, we are on the verge of a full-blown constitutional crisis,” said Jonathan Tobin, an editor of Commentary magazine, which generally favors large-scale immigration.
“As much as there is reason to grant many illegals a path to legality if not citizenship, without first securing the border, such proposals ought to be off the table,” he wrote in a short article titled “Immigration and the End of the Rule of Law.”
The decision comes amid a partisan standoff over the 2015 budget for theDepartment of Homeland Security.
Obama and his political allies are insisting the agency be allowed to implement his November amnesty plan, even though a court ruled Feb. 16 that Obama’s plan violated federal law. Unless the Democrats stop their filibuster of the 2015 agency budget, they will force a partial shutdown of the agency by Feb. 28.
The Democrats’ amnesty is so lawless that the GOP should change the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow the GOP majority to defund Obama’s November amnesty, columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote Feb. 19.
The judge’s decision requires border officers to go through a lengthy legal process if they want to keep a border-crosser in jail while a judge decides if the illegal is repatriated or put on a path to citizenship. “Such detention harms putative class members in myriad ways, and as various mental health experts have testified, it is particularly harmful to minor children,” the judge declared.
The government “maintains that one particular individual may be civilly detained for the sake of sending a message of deterrence to other Central American individuals who may be considering immigration,” the judge wrote.  But the government’s “ current policy of considering deterrence is likely unlawful… [and] causes irreparable harm to mothers and children seeking asylum,” he wrote.
The anti-jailing decision increases the already huge incentive for millions of foreigners to fly, sail, walk or drive across the U.S. border, and then claim asylum from foreign criminal gangs, political oppression or domestic abuse. In March 2013, Gallup reported that at least 138 million foreigners want to migrate into the United States.
The decision was issued late Friday, Feb. 20, by Judge James Boasberg of D.C.-based Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. Boasberg was nominated by Obama, and was confirmed in 2011.
Obama is likely to appeal the decision, partly because it reduces his ability to manage the inflow of migrants.
Obama favors high levels of immigration but he knows the public is overwhelmingly opposed to greater immigration.
The American public — including most Latino voters — is strongly opposed to lax border controls.
The immigration issue has dominated federal politics since 2013, when Obama’s allies in the Senate tried to push through a bill that would have increased immigration and given an amnesty to all 12 million illegal immigrants now living in the United States.
Since then, Obama has lost the battle for public opinion, lost the congressional debate over immigration, lost his Senate majority, and in February lost the first round of a lawsuit that is trying to block his November amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants.
But Obama has used his power over the immigration agencies to minimize enforcement of immigration laws. Since 2009, Obama’s senior deputies have repeatedly instructed his immigration agencies to reduce enforcement of immigration laws. For example, since 2009, his aides have given work-permits and temporary residency to 4.7 million migrants, including illegal immigrants, tourists, guest-workers and students.
That 4.7 million is in addition to the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants. Roughly 4 million American youths enter the workforce each year.
In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal datahighlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies.
In 2014, 130,000 Central American asylum-seeking adults, youths and children crossed the border. Under Obama’s rules, a large percentage were immediately allowed to get work permits plus access to welfare programs and free schooling, ad were allowed to ask judges for permanent residency.
American’s hostile reaction to the inflow that killed Obama’s top second-term legislative priority — passage of a comprehensive immigration reform law that would have sharply increased legal immigration.
The public’s hostility also contributed to the Democrats’ crushing defeat in the November Senate elections, when the GOP gained nine seats and won a strong 54 vote-majority in the Senate.

Three-parent babies could risk the future of the human race, warn 55 Italian MPs

THREE-PARENT BABIES COULD RISK THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE, WARN 55 ITALIAN MPS

Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons

by LEVI WINCHESTER | DAILY EXPRESS | FEBRUARY 22, 2015

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THREE-PARENT babies could risk the future of the human race by “modifying genetic heritage in an irreversible way”, warned 55 Italian MPs.

The group of Italian politicians have called on the House of Lords to reject a law to allow so-called three-parent babies – stating the notion “cannot possibly be contained within the confines of the UnitedKingdom”.

The stern warning comes after MPs in Britain voted overwhelmingly in favour of the controversial technique of mitochondrial donation – which would allow children to be conceived with genetic material from a trio of individuals.

In a strongly worded letter to The Times, the Italian Mps wrote that the legalisation of such a technique “could have uncontrollable and unforeseeable consequences, affecting future generations and modifying genetic heritage in an irreversible way, inevitably affecting the human species as a whole”.

Full story here.

Three-parent babies could risk the future of the human race, warn 55 Italian MPs
steve_watson
Sun, 22 Feb 2015 14:31:49 GMT

Trey Gowdy OWNS Joel Rubin At Benghazi Hearing. DO WE HAVE ALL OF THE DO...

U.S. Army Using Giant Blimp To Surveil Movements Of Maryland Residents

Warhawks: Kagan and Nuland advocate U.S. activism and intervention throughout the world

KAGAN + NULAND: LIBERAL INTERVENTIONISTS

Image Credits: Voice of America

by MICHAEL S. ROZEFF | LEWROCKWELL.COM | FEBRUARY 21, 2015

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Why is Victoria Nuland reliably confrontational and antagonistic toward Russia? Why does she push power, force, and military might to the forefront in Ukraine? Why does she risk war with Russia? Why does she even care about Russia’s relations with Ukraine enough to inject the U.S. government into their affairs and conflicts?

Her philosophy is the same as her husband’s, Robert Kagan. One article calls them “THE ULTIMATE AMERICAN POWER COUPLE“. It says “Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan fell in love ‘talking about democracy and the role of America in the world’ on one of their first dates. It’s a shared passion that hasn’t faded over time.” Presumably that inner quote is from one or both of them.

For a brief profile of Robert Kagan’s ideas, shared by Victoria Nuland, see here. That article contains some criticism of their positions coming from the academic side. It is enough to know that Kagan supports Hillary Clinton in foreign policy and that she appointed Nuland to see that in foreign policy Americans at the moment have no major party presidential choice except more of the same.

Kagan and Nuland advocate U.S. activism and intervention throughout the world. Kagan has always endorsed more and more and more U.S. commitments worldwide. In September, 2003, he endorsed “a ‘generational commitment’ to bringing political and economic reform to the long-neglected Middle East–a commitment not unlike that which we made to rebuild Europe after the Second World War.” (The phrase “generational commitment’ is Condoleezza Rice’s.) The article’s title is “Do what it takes in Iraq”, which is never enough to suit Kagan. This is one of his excuses for why the policies of war and might that he advocates have failed. The U.S. doesn’t try hard enough to suit him. The U.S. tried very, very hard in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, however. It still did not produce what Kagan and Kristol glowingly wanted in any of these countries and in Libya: “American ideals and American interests converge in such a project, that a more democratic Middle East will both improve the lives of long-suffering peoples and enhance America’s national security.” The very opposite has resulted!

The projection of American power and might into these lands has not produced what Kagan and Kristol forecasted would be the result.

The ideas and policies of Kagan and Nuland are influential in Washington and on Obama. They are always the most hawkish. In a Sept. 5, 2014 essay, Kagan wrote “The most hawkish members of Congress don’t think it safe to argue for a ground attack on the Islamic State or for a NATO troop presence in Ukraine.”

Kagan wants both an American ground attack on IS, which would mean attacks in three or more countries, and NATO in Ukraine. Nuland has constantly made provocative statements about Russia and she supports every move by Washington deeper and deeper into Ukraine’s politics and military campaigns. If Poroshenko is removed from office by another coup, Nuland will be there to influence and control the new leaders. She will anoint and bless them, even if they are neo-nazis.

The same article contains Kagan’s distorted interpretation of history. Kagan stands for the liberal values that came out of the Enlightenment and characterize the Western states. But he also believes that these states are pansies who need to be muscular in defense of these values. “Muscular” means interventionist and ever-willing to insert force and arms in foreign lands; not in classic self-defense but on a pro-active, preemptive basis. In other words, to maintain liberal values and promote liberalism worldwide, the liberal states have to behave illiberally. They have to attack other countries that they deem threatening. They have to be provocative toward any country that doesn’t meet their standards of liberality.

Kagan prefers the title “liberal interventionist” (Nuland presumably is the same.) This policy position is self-contradictory. A liberal position allows for self-defense, but it does not allow for remaking the world and attacking other countries. It is not necessarily the case that when the U.S. government provokes and confronts, or even invades, other nations that have different political setups, this benefits Americans.

Kagan’s idea is that there are military solutions to what he assumes are American problems in Syria and Ukraine. He bemoans “‘There is no military solution’ is the constant refrain of Western statesmen regarding conflicts from Syria to Ukraine…”, implying that there are such solutions. But are these lands actually problems for Americans in the first place? It’s hardly obvious that they are. They become problems only when the U.S. government follows the Kagan-Nuland philosophy of liberal interventionism and inserts itself into these conflicted lands. Kagan wants military solutions for problems that he has helped to create by his constant support and promotion of interventions.

Kagan’s justification of pro-active and preemptive military interventions and military solutions goes back to his interpretation of 20th century history, in particular, the role of Germany and Japan versus the western powers. He sees appeasement as a basic component of World War II. And he argues that Germany and Japan had grievances and resentments that could not be assuaged by concessions or accommodations from the West. He transfers this argument to the present and sees new enemies and threats in Russia, China and the Middle East.

Kagan’s ideas about Japan are oversimplified. The history of Japanese-American relations has to go back to armed U.S. naval expeditions in 1846, 1848 and 1852. It has to go back to friction over the Open Door Policy and U.S. immigration policy. China became an important bone of contention. Appeasement is hardly a consideration in any of this. Just the opposite. It is American resistance to Japan’s policies in China that is a nexus of frictions.

To engage in appeasement is to make a concession over what one owns or has a legitimate interest or obligation in. What concessions or legitimate interests did the U.S. sacrifice in order to avoid war with Japan and Germany? The U.S. did not have a treaty obligation to Czechoslovakia. The U.S. didn’t sign the Munich Agreement. The U.S. didn’t undertake to enforce Wilson’s idea of self-determination of nations when they came under threat from larger powers. It cannot be said that the U.S. appeased Germany. Furthermore, the U.S. participation in World War I, which would have been approved of by the Kagan-Nuland philosophy, had results that led to World War II. It cannot be argued that the U.S. appeased Germany in and before World War I.

With respect to the U.S. and NATO, it cannot be argued today that Ukraine is another Sudetenland or Czechoslovakia. The U.S. has no treaties with Ukraine to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine or prevent it from breaking apart in a civil war. If it did have such a treaty, as it does with a good many other countries, it would only be asking for trouble.

Kagan’s understanding of the 19th century and appeasement is subject to serious questions. And when one considers how different the situations are today with respect to those states or countries that he seeks to replace Germany and Japan with, such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Islamic State, Russia and China, the Kagan-Nuland philosophy of American force projection is far more simply needless provocation and war-making than the non-appeasement that Kagan and Nuland envision it to be. Furthermore, the military intrusions of the U.S. can hardly be said to have appeased anyone; and they have done nothing to promote those liberal interventionist aims that Kagan and Nuland fell in love over.

Common Core is the Communist Core I Went Through in China

Feds: Anti-Government Groups a Bigger Threat Than ISIS

While Islamic State brags about sleeper cells within U.S., DHS frets about right-wingers

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
February 20, 2015

As President Barack Obama continues to receive criticism for his refusal to use the term “Islamic extremism,” some federal authorities and law enforcement groups in the United States assert that anti-government groups pose a bigger threat than ISIS.

The Department of Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment earlier this month which focuses on right-wing sovereign citizens and other domestic extremists.

“Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to — and in some cases greater than — the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention,” reports CNN.

While hyping the threat posed by sovereign citizens, who have been involved in sporadic violent confrontations mainly targeting police officers over the last five years, the DHS has completely dismissed intelligence obtained by Judicial Watch that ISIS militants stationed in Juarez, Mexico could be planning attacks inside the United States.

ISIS militants are openly bragging about the fact that they have sleeper cells within the country waiting to conduct devastating attacks on U.S. soil as the Obama administration frets about not using the term “Islamic” while worrying about right-wingers committing traffic violations.

As we have exhaustively documented, the federal government has consistently downplayed the threat of Islamic terror in favor of pushing hysteria about right-wing extremism.

The FBI’s most recent national terror threat assessment list completely omits Islamic terrorists, instead focusing on sovereign citizens and the militia movement.

A 2012 University of Maryland study funded to the tune of $12 million dollars by the DHS characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists while glossing over the threat posed by Islamic extremism.

Last August, over a year after the Boston bombing, the Department of Homeland Security also listed sovereign citizens as a more deadly potential terror threat than Islamic extremists, placing sovereign citizens number one on the list.

PSA’s for the Department of Homeland Security’s See Something, Say Something program also failed to portray terrorists as Muslims on numerous occasions, preferring instead to depict the bad guys as white middle class Americans.

Returning veterans have also been characterized by the federal government as a bigger threat than Islamic extremism.

The Obama administration’s obsession with hyping the threat of domestic extremism seems clearly geared towards demonizing its ideological adversaries – libertarians and conservatives – while the true threat posed by the Islamic State, whose members have repeatedly threatened to attack the United States, continues to be sidelined.

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http://www.prisonplanet.com/feds-anti-government-groups-a-bigger-threat-than-isis.html

National Vaccine Information Center - Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.

National Vaccine Information Center - Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.