Haystack December 2011

[Rasta]

Chris Martenson and James Turk talk about Europe and the global economy [47:51]

[Rasta]

Now making headlines too. The fallout of the MF Global is soon to reach epic proportions

Reuters: Exclusive: MF Global mixed funds, transferred abroad

(Reuters) - Regulators investigating the collapse of MF Global have determined that the firm combined money between securities and futures accounts owned by customers, and transferred funds outside the country to at least one entity, a source said on Friday.

"The further we get into (the investigation) the more complex it is ... but we're making progress," the source said, adding that the commingling and transferring of money is making it harder for regulators to determine what money belongs where.

MF Global took futures segregated money and put it into the account for customer securities, essentially mixing futures and securities that were both owned by customers, said an official familiar with the matter.

Until now, it was believed that only customer futures accounts were affected.

The source also told Reuters that MF Global had been using customer funds for "several days if not weeks" rather than just a few days before the firm collapsed.

Regulators had previously thought the firm was using customer funds on the Thursday and Friday before it filed for bankruptcy on October 31.

CME Group, the Chicago exchange where MF Global traded, said it had reviewed the company's books a week before the bankruptcy and found no issues with the customer money.

If MF Global started improperly dipping into its customers' accounts long before the firm's collapse, the allegation would raise questions of why the regulators and auditors failed to spot such behavior.

Congress has already started asking questions about potential lapses in regulatory oversight of MF Global. The pressure on regulators would only increase if MF Global turns out to have misused customer funds over an extended period of time.

"Establishing the specifics of what happened is key to figuring out how the system failed and how to fix it going forward," Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a statement on Thursday. "Congress will need to keep drilling down."

MF Global collapsed in late October after the firm was forced to reveal that it had made a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt.

An effort to sell the firm failed, partially due to the revelation that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money were not where they should have been.

Investigators such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been scouring the company's books, described as messy and unorganized, for the fund shortfall that has been estimated as much as $1.2 billion by the liquidating trustee..

However, regulators have been at odds with the trustee, believing that figure is too high.

[Boefke]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/ ... 5L20111204

When this really will go to the $250, I'm curious to see how much it is in €'s than

[Boefke]

What the hell? Buy Gold versus the Euro? Let's check this out....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-top- ... ns-oil-250

"David Woo, global head of rates and currencies in New York at the Bank of America Corp. unit, told clients in research note that “the ECB will be buying more government debt and doing QE, so buy gold against the euro.”

“The second major theme is U.S. fiscal tightening is about to come and the U.S. economy will slow, and this will be very good for the U.S. dollar.”

“The general theme for the year ahead is pretty negative for the risk environment,” Woo said."

Now my own version....closer to reality I think

David Woo, global head of rates and currencies in New York at the Bank of America Corp. unit, told clients in research note that “the FED will be buying more government debt and doing QE, so buy gold against the Dollar.”

“The second major theme is Europe fiscal tightening is about to come and the European economy will slow, and this will be very good for the Euro.”

Fiscal tightening in the U.S.....Yeah right.

Conclusions either way stays the same........BUY PHYSICAL GOLD!

[Rasta]

Zerohedge: Oil Surge Begins

[Boefke]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/sp-about- ... itwatch-ne

We're going to play this out until the bitter end. looks like we are entering the end-phase now....

[Indiana Jones]

You know there is a real physical resemblance between these two key world leading players, and Laurel and Hardy.

[Paul]

http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.co ... y-out.html

[Rasta]

There you go. The nuclear fallout of MF Global is coming to you, to burn your paper.

Reuters: MF Global and the great Wall St re-hypothecation scandal

By Christopher Elias (UK)

(Business Law Currents) A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients.

MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MF’s dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for the wholesale acquisition and sale of client funds through re-hypothecation. A loophole appears to have allowed MF Global, and many others, to use its own clients’ funds to finance an enormous $6.2 billion Eurozone repo bet.

If anyone thought that you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too in the world of finance, MF Global shows how you can have your cake, eat it, eat someone else’s cake and then let your clients pick up the bill. Hard cheese for many as their dough goes missing.

Read on

[Rasta]

http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.co ... y-out.html

Loss of confidence. It is happening everywhere. Now let's all wait for the velocity of money to pick up.....