NOTE: Since they are REAL bonds, money or other securities being smuggled then ITALY has a 40% PENALTY SEIZURE OF SUCH FUNDS. that is a whopping lot of money for Italy to come into.(about 1/8 of Italy's total annual revenue from all sources!)
Quote:
Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.
Fair use for discussion/education purposes:
ALSO SEE PHOTO OF LOOT IN POST 3
Original story:
Quote:
Milan (AsiaNews) – Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
Karl Denninger
THE MARKET TICKER:

The Saga Of The Bearer Bonds

It just gets more and more odd after my original report, with the latest coming from a German newspaper (translation courtesy of Google):

Hit for the Zöllner: The contraband securities valued at 134 billion U.S. dollars are apparently real. Die italienische Finanzpolizei hatte zwei Japaner ertappt, die im doppelten Boden eines Koffers milliardenschwere Anleihen in die Schweiz schaffen wollten. The Italian financial police had two Japanese caught in the false bottom suitcase billion-dollar bonds in Switzerland wanted to create. Von dem Fund profitiert das hochverschuldete Italien.

Note that this has received very little coverage in the so-called "mainstream US media" - but it is everywhere in Europe and Asia.

Japan, for its part, oddly said the following as soon as this story started to hit the press:

“We have complete trust in the fact that the U.S. views its strong-dollar policy as fundamental,” Yosano, 70, said in an interview in Tokyo on June 10 before attending a Group of Eight meeting of finance ministers starting today in Italy. “So our trust in U.S. Treasuries is absolutely unshakable.”

Uh huh. And the Japanese said in December of 1941 that all was well too. Anyone remember what happened on the morning of the 7th?

Let's apply a little "Occam's Razor" to this entire story.

You're not going to walk into a bank with $130 billion in bearer bonds and cash them. Nor are you going to sell a bond with a $500 million face value to someone without them authenticating it. They will be authenticated before you get one dime out of them - no matter who you think you're going to "give" them to.

So if they're fakes and you're "just screwing around", there is no reason to hide them. Nor is there any particular reason to have authentic and recent original bank documents in your luggage with them, as has been reported.

Next, unless someone knew you were smuggling them, why would you be subject to that sort of search? What made the people involved "interesting" to the authorities? This doesn't sound like a random stop to me; how many people are carrying $130 billion in bearer bonds at any given point in time? No, someone was tipped off that this was happening. Now why would you bother to stop them here, prior to their attempted delivery of such instruments, if they were fake?

Think about this: You know someone is smuggling a load of drugs. You can either bust them immediately or you can tail them and bust them when they show up at the "meet" to exchange the dope for the money. If you do the former the guys with the money get away, having committed no crime. But if you do the latter, you get to bust both the courier and the purchaser - two times the effectiveness for the price of one, and double the seizure value, since you get to seize the cash too!

So let's assume that the certificates are real, as German media seems to believe and which, by the way, makes logical sense given what they were and the sheer impossibility of cashing a fake $500 million bond.

Ok, who has $130 billion in bearer bonds? Remember, bearer instruments haven't been issued by the Treasury since 1982, when they became illegal to issue, at least to US institutions and residents (there was an exception carved out for Treasury instruments issued to non-US residents in 1985 - a time of high deficits) The answer to that question: it is rather unlikely that there remains $130 billion of legitimate US Bearer issuance outstanding anywhere - to anyone.

Mr. Holmes would be initially puzzled by such a caper. On the one hand we have the impossibility of the bonds being real, because there simply isn't $130 billion of issues remaining outstanding. On the other hand we have the impossibility of negotiating a fake $500 million bearer instrument, making the exercise of counterfeiting one expensive and futile.

This leaves us with more questions than answers at this point.

Or does it?

As Mr. Holmes is famously rumored to have said, "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth."

So what remains? Let's run a theory here - one of the few possible remaining options, given the exclusion of what we know not to be true...

Are we willing to assume that all the "issue" of Treasury bonds has been done "above board" as required by law. If Treasury has been surreptitiously issuing bonds to, say, Japan, as a means of financing deficits that someone didn't want reported over the last, oh, say 10 or 20 years, then the following is about to occur:

Who could have possibly been complicit in such a scheme? I can come up with only two nations (and only nations could be involved due to size): The Japanese and Chinese. Since the two individuals who were arrested were reported to be Japanese nationals......

There are tremendous implications in an event like this, again, assuming the bonds are real.

The owner is going to want them back, of course. But Italy is going to keep a third as their statutory penalty for non-declaration on the border. Oops. That's great for Italy, but it blows bananas for the actual owner.

Of course Italy (or the US!) could declare them "fake" and as a consequence simply burn them. If they are in fact real, that's an even bigger problem. See, Bearer Bonds are issued without registration - they are as anonymous as a $100 bill in terms of who owns them. That's one of their "features", and why they were often used for various clandestine money operations. So if they are real and are destroyed, the owner is out of luck - their money is gone just as it is if you burn a $100 bill in an ashtray.

How much is $130 billion in this context? About 1/5th or so of what Japan legitimately owns of US Treasury debt. How would you like to take an instantaneous (and permanent!) 20% haircut on your securities? That's what I thought.

To add some balance here, there have been stories about fake bearer bonds coming out of North Korea and other places for years. But the idiocy of attempting to pass a $500 million certificate belies this possibility - who in the name of God would take such a thing and give you anything for it without authenticating it first? While bearer instrument are "anonymous" in terms of who owns them, their authenticity is easily verified as they ARE serialized instruments.

I remain puzzled, and am not advancing the above theory as fact.

It is, however, one of the few explanations that actually fits the facts, and for that reason, I think we need some answers. If in fact previous administrations were issuing "off-book" Treasury debt in this fashion to sovereigns then implications are truly explosive as such issues are blatant and outrageous unlawful acts and would expose everyone involved to severe criminal penalties.

Let's hope we get those answers, and this isn't one of those "funny things" that just disappears into the night.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

I'd bet dollars to donuts more then 1 person is gonna end up dead from this. I mean shit, I'd start offin fools for a 100th of that amount!

I mean....Theoretically speaking mind you.....

a promisary note of value shouldn't be able to be regulated by some other country, this is bs they were taken and possibly charged.

Some Chianti gonna be missing tonight!

Wow.

I don't know, if I was told one of my guys lost 134 billion dollars I'm pretty sure I'd stroke out right there If I didn't, I'd be making somebody tell me wtf went wrong and what their plans are of getting my money back, one limb at a time

No fucking shit,

I find it funny that was was 299 of thr $500,000,000 bonds, and not 300 even.

Who says they are real? Has the US confirmed it?

The US does not seem to want to talk about it.

Funny that.

you guys are reaching



I dont see a single area on that entire document that says they are definately real.

i am too damn ignorant to even understand this.

Pretty sure if they're real it's going to be swept under the rug and they'll be destroyed.

This guy is going to be pissed.

Things will be bad either way. How secure would you feel if someone could counter fit YOUR bonds?

I can't believe the Italians didn't SSS every person that even smelled those bearer bonds.. I could kill a lot of people for $134.5B if I were a .gov.

Italy is in the shitter financially right now, it could have fixed a lot of their problems. I think this was set up, they were caught on purpose. It will be interesting to see if Japan's banking industry tanks on Monday.

Not a promissary note. These are treated like cash. Cash has value and is an asset. Taxation of assets moved thru a country is not a new thing.

Yep, those serial numbers will be invalidated and new ones will be issued if they are real.

If they were fakes I guarantee someone would have already said something. Silence in this instance speaks quite loudly.

Yep,  nothing in there that confirms that they are indeed real.  

This story intrigues me quite a bit and searching the net for any real news about it is very frustrating.  The lack of information is disturbing for something that on the surface would appear to be the story of the century.

Sounds like some heads might roll.

Imagine that.






 

Blatant Dupage, to the point of even duplicating Denniger's comments in the original thread...

'Bearer Bonds' are bonds sold with no name on them, and no registration...



They are 'as good as cash' (and just as untraceable) if issued by a reputable organization (with the US Treasury considered 'the most reputable')....



For this reason, they haven't been issued by the US since the 80s (as they were very popular with criminal money laundering rackets - and still are)...



The author of the above article is speculating that the following possibilities exist:



1) They are fake



2) They are real, but illegally issued



3) They are real, legally issued, and old as hell...



He then goes out to all but eliminate (1) by saying 'no one in their right mind would try to redeem such bonds'....



But of course, that assumes that the 2 guys who got caught with them are 'in their right mind', and not absolute morons...



The thing is, if his 'conspiracy theory' about illegally issued bonds were true, the 'conspirators' would just have any authentication attempt return 'fake' and the bonds would be destroyed...



If the conspiracy were real, anyhow...


 

No, it's not...



Money laundering is a crime...



If they had tried to bring them into the US, it would ALL have been seized, and they would go to jail...



They will be 'lucky' if they only lose 40% - that's assuming the bonds are real....



 

For many of the 'organizations' that move money around via smuggling bearer bonds, this statement is very, very true...



 

I'm wildly speculating here...



They'll be declared fakes and destroyed.  New ones with new serial numbers will be issued to the owners, whoever they are.  And I'll bet nobody talks about it.  



 

And it's also entirely possible that if they had openly declared them, the bonds would have been seized anyways.

"Prove you DIDN'T get these by some illegal venture and we'll give them back.  Maybe."

Openly declaring something like that would have resulted in a minimum of an investigation (to determine if the assets are involved in an illegal activity).  There would also probably be some tax implication - it is not uncommon for a country to tax the transfer of wealth outside their jurisdiction.

Questions in my mind:

1  Why were they being smuggled into Switzerland to be sold?
2  Under which administration were they issues?  Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II?
3  Who actually owned those bonds?  Japanese banks, yakuza, the imperial family?
4  Why is the MSM not all over this?  (actually no suprise there)
5  If these bonds are real, what are the real implications of this?
6  Is this nation already bankrupt and is the sky about to fall in?
7  What can we do to defend or help ourselves at this point?

Every Treasury note pays interest.



I would expect that interest is not paid on Bearer Bonds until they are redeemed.



A 1980 500 million dollar bond is probably worth 2 billion.

Prediction:This story will disappear within two weeks when the next crisis happens along. Bonds will have to be declared fakes to avoid trail to white house.

I just wonder if it's part of the money that the Fed doesn't want to account for.

I would feel really weird if someone could fit my bonds into a counter. Not that I would think it would be impossible, it would just be weird.  I guess the best way would be to mount them under a glass top so you could still read them, that would be cool.

Your getting closer

If the two "Japanese" turn out to be Filipinos, then this is a con job that has been busted.



The Italians have a stake in these "bonds" being real in order to get 40% of their value for being undeclared.



This story will turn out to be some dumbasses trying to get someone even dumber to buy counterfeit bonds from them.

Now that is a damn interesting thought...

This could be a MAJOR problem if they turn out to be legit.  This is it folks...  Go time...  I just hope we haven't reached the Zombies and radioactive wasteland phase until sometime next week, that way I have time to get my Colt 6920 I just bought off GunBroker...

I need to get one of those. Does the seller have any others, and will he take payment in the form of a bearer bond?

He has a ton of them...  I'll PM you...

A ton of Clots or $500-billion bonds?  

-X

They were fake! No such thing as "Kennedy Bonds" and I quote "If the notes are genuine,
the pair would be the U.S. government’s fourth-biggest creditor,
ahead of the U.K. with $128 billion of U.S. debt and just behind
Russia, which is owed $138 billion". My guess; they were counterfeited by North Korea.





http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=afJXAA1ahZyo



 

US Bearer bonds were always coupon bonds, meaning you cashed in a coupon every six months for your interest payment. Virtually all the outstanding bearer bonds the US issued have already been called by the Government because they bore high interest rates and were callable. The last year that the US issued bearer bonds they were yielding 15.5%. No one in their right mind would have failed to cash those coupons for the past 27 years.

The more you look at this, the more likely it is that the bonds are fakes.

Eg, an IRL version of the Nigerian scam...



Probably with some 'US Dollar is going down' sort of spin on it, good enough to fool the extremely gullible...



The question is:



Are these two the cons, or the marks....





 

Especially since they are VERY likely fake.



 

North Koreans.  Trace the two Japanese smugglers and you will find the conspiracy.





Here is my thought...NK knew the Japanese held these.  NK is planning on flexing muscle and destroy the location where these bonds were being held..Only these fake bonds were discovered before the real bonds were destroyed.



Perfect conspiracy for economic destruction of  the Japanese holders of these bonds, making them easy for take-over.

It's hard to believe that anyone would try and off-load 134 billion in fake bonds.

cant wait for the made for TV movie

Beck just did a story on it: there is speculation that they are fake because the issues dates may be from the 50's or 60's