Most readers will know about Detlev Schlichter and his book Paper Money Collapse. Some readers will know about Max Keiser who presents The Keiser Report on Russia Today. Yes, Russia Today. Doesn’t sound good does it?
Well, it is not all bad. Keiser does predict global economic collapse (the non-badness here being that his prediction is (I think) correct). He does blame central banks and their printing of money. He does point out that what we are seeing at the moment is very definitely not capitalism. He does interview a good number of libertarians such as Peter Schiff. And he does advocate the ownership of gold and silver.
But then things start to go downhill again. He forever blames the global situation on “banksters” and their “fraudulent” ways. While apparently being in favour of capitalism he still manages to lambast any attempt to control government spending. The UK coalition government’s austerity programme, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and the Tea Party have all been criticised by him. He also seems to believe in global warming or to be more accurate: CAGWIT (that’s my new acronym: Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Inspired Tyranny, by the way). And he interviews a whole bunch of nutters including Keynesians and anti-Israelis.
The other night he interviewed the distinctly non-nutty Detlev Schlichter. The good news is that Schlichter managed to get most of his main points across (now if only he were allowed to do that on the BBC!)…
…The bad news is that during the interview Keiser made his usual remarks about fraud (at about 20:00). And Schlichter said nothing or, at least, nothing in response. Now I appreciate that Schlichter is new to this kind of thing and that he has a book to sell but I think he should have at least said something. To acquiesce while Keiser makes his outrageous claims, to my mind, gives the impression of agreement.
He was there to say what he had planned to say, so it seems a bit harsh to criticise him for not also getting into a cut and thrust with the show host over remarks he was not prepared for. He did what he came to do.
Keiser appears to be an hysterical fool.
But,
Patrick Crozier: “He forever blames the global situation on “banksters” and their “fraudulent” ways.”
Yes. Is he wrong?
Patrick Crozier: “While apparently being in favour of capitalism”
Good. The snug relationship between Corzine boss and Obama is anything but Capitalism.
Misappropriating you clients funds to cover your own foolish decisions is not Capitalism either.
Patrick Crozier: “he still manages to lambast any attempt to control government spending.”
Well, everyone is permitted to be wrong on at least one thing.
I’m afraid you misunderestimate the enemy, APL.
Why is it wrong to say that there was widespread fraud in the banking sector?
The bankers were a big part of the pressure/collusion that led to the Central banks actions.
I think it was on this site the other day that we had some very sensible comments about the “interesting” accoutning techniques that were used to make almost bankrupt banks appear to be “Wildly profitable”.
Markets need good information to work. The banks deliberately tried to prevent the accurate assesment of their businesses because an appropriate adjustment in share price would make them insolvent.
If we accept that the banking system is not really capitalism, what is the problem in calling it fraudulent?
For that matter even if it was “capitalism” then fraud (even if it is legalised through lobby bought legislation) should still be called what it is. For the market to work properly we need to know who is fraudulent and who is not.
The ‘fraud’ is a matter of state policies. Bankers, whilst hardly blameless, are simply operating within the perverse incentives of regulations that more or less mandated the current mess.
I agree with those defending Schlichter against the charge of guilt by silent association. When you have written a book, you have to put yourself about. Plus, when you are in tv or radio studio, there are always lots of things you might say at any particular moment. You choose one, and get on with it. This doesn’t mean you agree with a statement made to you earlier that you said nothing about, because (and remember these decisions have to be made in a few seconds and often a lot less than that) you chose to say something else.
Schlichter’s willingness to talk to anyone who’ll talk to him means his book will sell better. Which crucially also means that his next book, should he choose to write one, will be more easily publishable and hence, if you get my meaning, easier to write.
I mean, here we all are, arguing about him, and watching him plugging himself, again. Good on him.
Blaming the banks for the state of the economy is, in some ways, like blaming drug-dealing gangs for the state of public safety – to awkwardly mix some metaphors: barking up the wrong tree with a particularly low-hanging fruit.
I don’t have a problem with this from what I can tell; it would be good to hear from Detlev what he thinks about this. He has appeared on a variety of channels, including Reuters, for instance, and we all have mixed views about how Reuters has sometimes covered certain stories over the past decade, such as the Middle East, 9/11, etc.
Russia is a country that, for historical reasons, has good cause to be educated about the perils of elastic money. If Detlev can spread the word there, good.
On the bankers and fraud thing, I think it is important to understand that bankers gamed the system in the ways they did because the system had been created, in large part, by the regulators/politicians. In a proper free market with few, but strictly enforced, rules to protect property against theft and fraud, there would have been none of the following:
Central banks and lenders of last resort;
State-mandated deposit insurance;
Basel bank capital regulations;
Bailouts with taxpayers’ money;
State-backed mortgage lending agencies (Freddie Mac, etc);
Quantitative easing and its various versions;
Legal tender laws;
Sarbanes-Oxley and their equivalents;
Various EU/other directives telling banks/others how to run their businesses.
PdH: “Bankers, whilst hardly blameless, are simply operating within the perverse incentives of regulations that more or less mandated the current mess.”
Hmm, is that an argument that ‘he made me do it?’
It was specifically disallowed as a defense at Nuremberg.
Did the bankers break the law?
In the case of Corzone, it is clear – Yes.
By the way, if he didn’t know what was going on, he should have. Corruption in his organization isn’t above his pay grade!
Perry, in London it has emerged that the FSA couldn’t find its arsehole in it’s pajama bottoms.
Given the incompetence of the regulator you can hardly make the case the banks were forced to behave in a particular manner.
Another case. I have until recently worked in a lowly position in one of the large international banks. We were subject to money laundering ‘training’, knowing how useless such ‘training’ is, it is hardly a surprise to find that several large American banks have been found guilty of laundering Cartel drug money.
Facilitating criminal acts is against the law, put aside for one minute that neither you nor I believe drugs ought to be illegal, are you making the case that the banks should break the law?
APL, none of that has a great deal to do with the current state of the global economy: and it is that, not mere criminality on the part of a few bankers lining their pockets (something that has occurred ever since banking has existed) that we are talking about.
To blame ‘Bankster fraud’, as Keiser does, for the current state of affairs is laughable. It is a bit like blaming ‘The Jews’ or ‘The Illuminati’ for something.
It does not mean bankers never commit fraud or that said fraud is excusable (well, usually not), but rather that ‘Bankster fraud’ is *not* the cause of the currently accelerating global melt down, not even the banking sector part of it.
My take on the relative guilt of politicians and bankers is that they have been very close to each other from the start of all this (whenever you date that). The politicians building the horrible regulatory regimes, and the bankers making money from it and paying for the politicians to carry on with more regulatory creation.
I know you’re not supposed to mention Nazis in any connection other than actual Nazism, but I think the Nuremberg parallel (mentioned anyway in an earlier comment) is fairly exact, in terms not of the absolute amount of guilt and the kind of guilt it is, but of how you divide up the guilt.
I recall doing a posting here a while back where I said the politicians have taken over the banking system. A commenter responded that this is one way of putting it, but that another way to put it would be to say that the bankers have taken over the political system. I think that’s right, in the sense that the truth is both of these things.
APL, a way of putting it is that the incentive structures facilitated by the rules of the time meant that one had to be almost commercially suicidal not to go along with some of what happened.
Case in point being those banks, such as Citi, Bank of America and the rest, that moved a lot of their credit risk off their balance sheets via securitisation and through the use of credit derivatives and suchlike. Had those banks retained all the risks on their balance sheets, they would have had to put up far more risk capital to please the Basel regulators, and hence their return on equity would have been far lower.
Imagine, say, what would have happened had the former CEO of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, told his shareholders in 2004 that the bank was not going to use all these financial techniques and instead, hold the credit risks in the old fashioned way. He would have been sacked on the spot. That is the problem: the incentives, sometimes perverse, encouraged even smart people to do things that were not, in the main, smart at all.
And that it is why we need to be careful to avoid the kind of indiscriminate “bankers are all wankers” level of comment (or downright abuse) that is common fare these days. Sure, it seems to me that some in the industry should have been more vocal in pointing out the potential disasters; but also, let’s also not forget that the guys who ultimately fed the drinks party, the central bankers, either did not see much amiss or failed to act on their worries, such as by hiking interest rates, raising reserve requirements, etc.
There are some specific technical issues that should have been handled better. For instance, in the OTC market, credit default swaps – a form of insurance policy on debt – should only be triggered and the buyer of a policy get any payment if that buyer actually is exposed to the loss of default. When you have people buying insurance on risks that they are not actually affected by, then you get the kind of mad speculation that we have seen. There are some fairly simple and effective legal changes that could have been made that were also totally consistent with a free market order.
Schlichter describes the relationship between banks and the state at length in his book. He points out that money creation through fractional reserve banking is not the result of some market demand for money, benefits mainly bankers, and causes all the distortions that money creation causes.
However it is a very risky business for the banks who need to keep a close eye on their reserve ratios otherwise there will be a bank run and the bank will fail. So risky that there has been very little fractional reserve banking without the involvement of the state, one way or another.
Enter the central bank as lender of last resort, and suddenly fractional reserve banking is not so risky. In fact you have to do it to keep up with other banks. So here’s the perverse incentive.
Johanathan Pearce: “Had those banks retained all the risks on their balance sheets, they would have had to put up far more risk capital to please the Basel regulators, and hence their return on equity would have been far lower.”
Here is probably one point where we disagree – I think off balance sheet liabilities are a fraud, such machinations disguise the true financial condition of an organization.
A shareholders for one, should be able to look at the balance sheet and determine if a given company is viable, what likely profit it may return and consequently the dividends it may pay – and not least, are there any nasty surprises in store.
Something, for example RBS shareholders were denied. Incidentally, I am not now nor ever have been an RBS shareholder.
I am perfectly well aware that the Politicians have been doing too.
I am also sympathetic to the argument that the inflationary policies made the dash for growth more important than otherwise might have been.
Well that may be the case, APL, in which case the rules need to be changed so that there are no such things as “off-balance sheet” debts. It is not the bankers’ fault that they took advantage of rules that have been around for many years. Indeed, had the bankers not parked such debts off-balance sheet, they would, as I said, have been fired.
JP: “Imagine, say, [snip], Chuck Prince, told his shareholders in 2004 that the bank was not going to use all these financial techniques and instead, hold the credit risks in the old fashioned way.”
You mean … be honest? Poor Chuck.
That seems to be a variant of the case: I was ordered to do a bad thing so I am innocent. Extraordinary.
JP: “hold the credit risks in the old fashioned way.”
You mean the conventional manner that already allowed a banker, if believe the old adage to be on the golf course by 2pm?
And incidentally that gave us fairly stable banking for pretty much a hundred years.
Those old fashioned, tried and tested methods are so tiresome. They do get in the way of the mega-bonus.
JP: “we need to be careful to avoid the kind of indiscriminate”
Pretty sure I haven’t made that assertion, although as largely all big banks have or are almost sure to fail, it is a seductive conclusion to draw.
Coincidently, the inimitable Paul Marks(Link) does his usual bang up job on Mr Keiser over at CCiZ.
I shall just quote the title of his piece to give a flavour of the post:
.
PdH: “To blame ‘Bankster fraud’, as Keiser does, for the current state of affairs is laughable. It is a bit like blaming ‘The Jews’ or ‘The Illuminati’ for something.”
Last post, I’ll let someone else have a say.
The big international banks & and other FIs are the ones that lend to government.
Natch, when they fail it puts the government finances in the spotlight, look at Greece, all the National Greek banks are holding huge amounts of largely worthless National Greek debt.
So you make the case the problem is mostly due to the politicians, how about the alternative case, the Banks lending to governments facilitated the politicians deficit spending?
Yes, I am entirely sympathetic to the idea that politicians have been reckless and spendthrift and open to reserving lamp posts for a lot of them.
“Banksters” is a catchy shorthand popular over at zerohedge, etcetera. But having left the banking industry because of the systematic fraud I experienced in CMBS (and lacking any ability to do anything at all to do about it), I have to say that I find such accusations entirely plausible. The pural of anecdote is, of course, not evidence….but still.
APL, you seem to be arguing against a straw man. I agree with many of your points but I am not defending the system that bred the disasters, I am saying that it is facile to blame some of the individuals; instead, we need to change the rules to reward good behaviours and punish the bad. It is the same sort of argument that I have about the Welfare State. Bashing the poor or feckless for being thick and lazy is pointless: it is the incentives that have to change.
No, it means that the system created incentives to be dishonest, which means we change it. It is not a hard point to grasp, I should have thought. (I disagree that talking about analogies such as Nuremberg is at all sensible, in fact, pace Brian).
No, I meant that without rules allowing off-balance sheet activities, the bank would have to be honest about its debts. Hence the need to ensure that the rules are changed.
Also, as you can see from my earlier post, what I was saying was that for a person to be honest under the daft rules we had at the time would have carried a heavy cost. That is why I am unimpressed by abusing bankers; instead, we need to look at the perverse system of incentives that means that honesty does not pay.
I quite enjoy the Keiser Report without having to agree with everything he spouts, and he does have some good guests, such as Schlichter, as well as some fruit loops. It all adds to the gaiety of the nation. Obviously, the subject of Russia’s descent into fascism does not arise on his show.
“It is not the bankers fault that they took advantage of rules that have been around for many years”.
HMMMM.
That is a bit like saying you can’t blame the politicians for spending too much when voters allowed them to do it. And before you agree with me I think you may have criticised politicians on this site before.
BTW of course Drug Dealers are to blame for choosing to kill, steal, maim and sell drugs diluted with poison to vulnerable people.
Johnathan Pearce: “I agree with many of your points but I am not defending the system that bred the disasters,”
I know I said that was my last post, but …
I am reluctant to follow the path you seem to be on – the poor bankers they are just hapless victims faced with a hopeless choice, be honest or be bankrupt.
Is that a straw man argument?
Johnathan Pierce: “Hence the need to ensure that the rules are changed. ”
But Johnathan wasn’t it the top tier banking executives in the big multinational banks that lobbied the US Congress to the repeal of Glass–Steagall Act?
People like Bernanke, John Reed and Prince.
I believe the Bankers tried twice failed once and succeeded in 1999 to have the restrictions on their activities lifted.
Yes the Politicians obliged, but the Bankers knew what they wanted and went hell for leather to get it.
Alisa: “I’m afraid you misunderestimate the enemy, APL.”
Alisa, your link ended up in some sort of orphaned Facebook page.
“misunderestimate”?
Nor can you make the case that the regulator should be given more power.
Sam Duncan: “Nor can you make the case that the regulator should be given more power.”
Nor am I.
Indeed they did. It is worth pointing out that the 1930s-era GS Act, which split investment and deposit-taking retail banking, would not have prevented the disasters at, say, Northern Rock, or HBOS, or the Bradford and Bingley, or Lehman Brothers, etc. As a piece of legislation, it did not address the fundamental problems with the mixed economy system of banking (such as deposit protection, legal tender laws, central bank funny money, etc).
Sure, bankers lobbied for stuff to make their banks richer. That’s hardly surprising; what is surprising and depressing is that people acceded to their demands, in the same way that politicians have done the same in the face of farmers lobbying for subsidies, industrialists asking for the same, builders demanding eminent domain land-grabs, etc.
A good understanding of public choice economics helps explain the dynamics of all this. Adam Smith also figured out the dangers of businesses getting into bed with rulers centuries ago. There is nothing new under the sun, although the sizes of the financial sums involve have exploded.
Sorry, but shouting about “banksters” might be therapeutic, but it is not very useful otherwise.
Rob, no cigar, I am afraid. The rules that had been around for many years were not, in the eyes of many of the people who took advantage of them, obviously nuts. In fact, some of the people who used all these fancy accounting/derivatives processes thought there was nothing wrong, and therefore did not speak out. We need to remember that for a large part of the past few decades, many bankers have become convinced of a set of ideas called, for short, Modern Finance Theory(Link), which gave them, so they thought, the licence to do what they did.
A drug pusher realises he is immoral; I don’t think most of those who played in the financial markets, except at the margins, did so.
Johnathan Peirce: “would not have prevented the disasters at, say, Northern Rock, or HBOS, or the Bradford and Bingley, or Lehman Brothers, ”
I think that is incorrect.
Glass-Steagall was repealed – by the way there are some who think it was necessary for the bankers to get it repealed because they had already contravened its restrictions on their activities, – then the real credit explosion gets under way.
The old established method of keeping loans on your books gave way to securitization of the mortgage debt which in led to the explosion of credit.
If you follow the US economy, you can’t have missed what appears to be blatantly unlawful behavior by banks repossessing properties, clouding property title. It is so widespread and so pervasive it is impossible to suggest that the top ranks in the banks didn’t know it was happening. Indeed one former Citi executive testified to congress that a sizable proportion of the activities in the department he was responsible for were fraudulent.
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Northern Rock, B&B, Lehmans brothers either purchased or were purveyors of these largely fraudulent securities, and in the case of NR and B&B were lending recklessly (120%) mortgages on the basis of the expectation of ever increasing equity prices which in itself was predicated on unlimited funding from the same mortgage securitization process that had by then become little more than a ponzi.
In short, the snake ate its own tail
APL: oops.
Exactly what law did Corzine break?
What well-meaning people like APL are missing is that bitching about individual corrupt bankers is just as unproductive as bitching about individual corrupt politicians – it is akin to complaining about water being wet or fire being hot. Let’s assume that tomorrow all those proverbial lampposts are suddenly occupied by all those deserving individuals on both sides of that blurry line separating bankers from politicians and bureaucrats in charge of regulating them. Then what? No more banking and no more politics? Or do those vacant positions get filled again with the same kind of people, and its deja vu all over again? It’s the system, stupid.
APL: ‘misunderestimate’ is my frequent homage to GWB, who, as politicians go, was less obnoxious and more fun than the current occupant of the WH.
Alisa: “Exactly what law did Corzine break?”
Which jurisdiction?
Alisa: “is that bitching about individual corrupt bankers is just as unproductive as bitching about individual corrupt politicians”
Believe me I don’t give the pols a break either.
Alisa: “Or do those vacant positions get filled again with the same kind of people, and its deja vu all over again?”
Sounds like the council of dispair.
Alisa: “It’s the system stupid”.
At the risk of sounding like the old Communists who maintained that the USSR was evil but it wasn’t the true implementation of Communism.
‘the system’ In my opinion we don’t have a capitalist system anymore. Politicians and Financiers hand in glove, that sounds awfully like Fascism to me.
APL:
You seem to have missed the ‘unproductive’ bit. Are you proposing anything specific, or just venting? (Not that there’s anything wrong with venting).
Whichever?
…the ‘quote’ thingy misfired…
APL:
“The old established method of keeping loans on your books gave way to securitization of the mortgage debt which in led to the explosion of credit.”
And why do you think that was, pray?
Securitisation happened long before Glass Steagall was abolished in 1999. It started in the early 1970s – it may have increased after Glass-Steagal was repealed, but was already well under way during the late 80s and 90s. Even if GS had remained in force and other countries had kept similar laws, there is no doubt that mortgage lenders would have used this method to reduce their balance sheet risks and hence, reduce their credit costs.
The fundamental reason for this change was that, due to the existence of things I have already mentioned (bailouts, government-backed institutions such as Freddie Mac, capital rules), it made sense for lenders to try and package up loans and bonds and use the cashflows as collateral to get cheaper financing and spread the risk. There is nothing inherently wrong with securitisation per se. The problem is that with many banks, particularly those operating in countries with very low interest rates, there was a natural temptation to go easy on credit standards, and the rest.
I notice how APL sidestepped my point about how many institutions that got into trouble did not have investment banking operations under the same roof, such as Northern Rock.
In the case of NR, that organisation was able to obtain cheap funding in the short-term money markets and able – until interbank rates spiked – to run aggressive pricing policies. Such an institution could still have offloaded its mortgages even under a more segregated system so long as there were investment banks able and willing to package up those loans and sell them off.
As long as we have fiat money and the whole fractional reserve banking system, including statutory limited liability, we are always going to have an issue of how banks try to game the rules in front of them. Again, for the umpteenth time, blaming bankers for this is a waste of time.
Alisa: good points indeed.
Alisa: “Whichever? ”
I believe in the US it is against the law to use client segregated funds.
It seems Corzone permitted these funds to be swept into London where they were gambled on Greek bets that went wrong.
Apparently client segregated funds aren’t segregated in London. So here it was legal to use them to bet the MFG house.
Securitisation happened long before Glass Steagall was abolished in 1999. It started in the early 1970s – it may have increased after Glass-Steagal was repealed, but was already well under way during the late 80s and 90s.
Actually, if you look carefully enough, there is a good chance you will find it started in the Roman Empire. Very little in finance is actually very new.
Johnathan Peirce: “I notice how APL sidestepped my point about how many institutions that got into trouble did not have investment banking operations under the same roof, such as Northern Rock.”
I wasn’t aware I sidestepped any point.
But what was Granite?
I’m a little late to this party, but Johnathan Pearce is precisely correct to say that securitization predated the repeal of GS and that it is inherently a very valuable tool in the financial arsenal. If it was misused by some, that’s not the fault of the tool, any more than if you beat someone to death with a hammer it’s the hammer’s fault or hammers should be banned.
Glass-Steagall was a cure in search of a disease. It was a foolish law when enacted and its repeal was long overdue. The problem arose not because of its repeal, but because the “chinese wall” between proprietary trading and commercial banking, which was always supposed to be the rule, was breached with the complicity of the government, and was then subsidized (by the bailouts) when the inevitable happened.
And while I also agree that Corzine should be hanging from a lamppost somewhere, it seems entirely possible that he did not actually break any laws. I’m still trying to get my arms around the rules regarding rehypothecation of customer securities (perhaps JP can help here), but it appears that it was not only within the UK’s laws but also the US’s (although the UK rules are in fact more liberal). And that the brokerage agreements specifically permitted hypothecation and rehypothecation of customer securities and their transfer to foreign (i.e., UK) affiliates. If Corzine is to be strung up it will be because of his general sleaziness, and the gross immorality of practices which may have been within the letter of the (very bad) law.
As has already been said here, it’s the system which is at fault.
Michael Jennings: “there is a good chance you will find it started in the Roman Empire.”
Well we know how that ended for them …… [smile]
You pick which hill you want to die on; some are more worthy than others. In this appearance, I think Schlichter did a great job of choosing.
I’d point out that doing these kinds of interviews via satellite link is much tougher than face to face (which itself is not a breeze).
APL:
“I wasn’t aware I sidestepped any point.”
Well you are now. I made the point that a Glass-Steagall kind of separation of investment banking and retail banking would not, in the circumstances of the past few years, have prevented a firm such as Northern Rock (which was a mortgage lender that did not have an investment bank) from getting into trouble as a result of reckless use of the short-term money markets to secure a large bulk of its funding. You more or less did not address that direct point of mine.
I am glad Laird got to comment. Agree 100%
Johanthan Pearce: ” prevented a firm such as Northern Rock (which was a mortgage lender that did not have an investment bank) ”
Northern Rock had Granite its securitization operation, set up in the more liberal Channel Islands jurisdiction.
Laird: “If it [securitization] was misused by some, that’s not the fault of the tool .. ]
Agreed
We are back to the integrity the participants.
. That is precisely the point: we are not. There will always be crooks – among bankers, politicians, taxi drivers – you name it. You can keep hanging them from lampposts, but new ones will be born every day. The trick is to set up the system in a way that is the least conducive to this inherent crookedness of some people, and does the least in the way of incentivizing it.
Alisa: “That is precisely the point: we are not.”
Goodness. People that have engaged in fraudulent or dishonest behavior are not to blame for their actions because ‘the system’ made them do it.
That is classic boilerplate for the socialist ‘rage against the machine’ types, but libertarians?
That is a surprise.
What part of ‘lampposts’ did you miss, and who’s going to clean up all that straw?
I never knew that rage against immoral behavior of this or that segment of society was central to libertarianism – I thought that this went without saying to any human who’s not clinically antisocial. And yes, I’m sure that libertarians share the rage against the machine with socialists – the difference being in the alternative machines (or lack thereof) that either camp is suggesting.
APL, Granite was a vehicle set up by NR, true, but a Glass-Steagall rule would have simply led NR to subcontract such work instead via another party, because securitisation has merits if interest rates and other factors are favourable.
Remember also such disasters such as the Savings and Loan meltdown in the 80s? This happened long before the GS law ended and again, that saga was fuelled by low interest rates and the moral hazards of deposit protection as well as some individual crooks, some of whom, I think, were jailed.
This is one of those times that I wish I was not so ignorant of things technological.
If I was not as ignorant as I am am, I could do a “link” over to an article I have written on Dear Max – over at the Counting Cats blog.
Here, Paul.
Many thanks Alisa.
By the way Fox News (or Fox Business anyway) has now picked up the strange coincidence story.
Just over one billion Dollars of client’s money is missing from MF Global.
And LO AND BEHOLD THE COINCIDENCE just over one billion Dollars was paid by MF into J.P. Morgan Chase just days before the collapse.
However, Fox has not attributed the story to Keiser – which is naughty, as he broadcast it a long time ago.
Keiser is one of Putin’s boys – he is utterly vile (in just about every way).
But he can smell corruption (it is part of his very nature), so I am not surprised he smells out Jamie Dimon and co.