Tag Archives: banksters

Vatican Laundered Bribe To Convict Reformist Cardinal?

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Adding to the dense murky fog swirling around the Holy See’s finances, Australian financial authorities have finally identified a gap of $2 million between actual money transfers from the Vatican to Australia and what can be accounted for.

A credible rumor suggests that the secret funds were used for bribes to secure a conviction of Cardinal Pell, who was appointed to the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014 and wished to reform Vatican finances.

It has been alleged that Cardinal Becciu, dismissed late in 2020 by Pope Francis for financial irregularities that included embezzlement charges against his assistant, might be behind the payment. Becciu opposed Pell’s reforms.

This is how many Italian papers have portrayed the affair. But, since Francis is a corrupt, worldly politician who promotes the Green agenda more than he preaches the Gospel of Jesus, this is unlikely to be the whole story.

Francis’ decision in December 2020 to take over Vatican finances sounds less like cleaning up the place than it does putting whatever was going on into his direct control to keep the dirt out of the public eye, says Gizadeathstar’s Joseph Farrell:

“In other words, Francis has moved the Vatican Bank from the Secretariat of State, normally headed by an archbishop or a cardinal archbishop, to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, in other words, placing the bank directly, for the first time in its chequered history, under the Pope. To draw a somewhat clumsy analogy, this is akin to President Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum, that removed the CIA from oversight of covert operations, and placed those operations directly under the military, i.e., directly under the chain of command ending in the Presidency. In effect, what Francis has done is to move the whole “hidden system of finance” that is the Vatican Bank, a participant in that global “hidden system” that I’ve speculated about for so long, and placed it directly under papal control.

It might be argued that this was the only way to deal with the bank, to gain any measure of real oversight or transparency in the institution.

But I suspect it augurs something entirely different, and far more ominous, namely, the final capture of the papacy by ‘the high financial cabal’. “

 

 

Paradise Of Gangsters

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Will this be the future of the US?

David Guyatt at DeepBlackLies.co.uk on Russia immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union:

GANGSTERS PARADISE

Organized crime in Russia is out of control. Criminal “brigades” own everything of value and can “acquire” any commodity in any quantity if the price is right. Ferocious criminal gangs ship out nuclear warheads with the same aplomb that they plunder train-loads of stolen bank-notes. Fearless and ingenious they even ripped-off Russia’s entire gold reserves. Continue reading →

Barrick Gold Threatens Vancouver Publisher

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CBC News in Canada reports that bankster-associated gold miner Barrick Gold is shutting down critical writing on the Canadian mining industry.  (Thanks to Chris Cook).

An excerpt:

“The threat of legal action from mining giant Barrick Gold has forced Vancouver-based Talonbooks to postpone publication of a book about the Canadian mining industry.

Publisher Karl Siegler calls it a clear case of “libel chill” by one of Canada’s largest mining companies.

The book, Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World’s Mining Industries, was to be published in spring 2010, but in February, the publisher and everyone else involved with the book got a threatening letter from Barrick lawyers. Continue reading →

Celente: Report Shows JPMorgan, Citi Helped Push Lehman Under

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Gerald Celente: JP Morgan and Citi acted like mobs bosses in torpedoing Lehman.

Note: the bankruptcy examiner’s report shows Lehman cooking its books to look less levered than it was, but the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) (Mr. Geithner, that would be you) abetted it. So did the SEC, and JP Morgan and Citi acted like cannibals (or street gangs…or mob bosses), as they tried to wipe out their rival.

Well, we said so at the time, in a post called“Statistics Don’t Back Panic Mongers” (October 2008).

And even before that.

Except for the fact that the Wall Street gang uses money, ratings, and other “adult” world paraphernalia, they’re not much more than hooligans who didn’t get toilet-trained right.

Let’s see:

Finger-pointing: He did, teacher, I didn’t (Politicians to voters, voters to politicians)

Avoiding responsibility: But you told us we could (Wall Street to Main Street, home-owners to lenders, managers to accountants, lawyers)

Succumbing to peer pressure: Everyone does it ( Book-cooking managers, lazy reporters, colluding speculators)

Blaming the victim: He deserved it (Corporate raiders, naked short-sellers, media shills)

Europe Thumbs Its Nose At G-Sax, Banksters

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The Guardian:

“For the first time in five years, no big US investment bank appears among the top nine sovereign bond bookrunners in Europe, according to Dealogic data compiled for the Guardian. Only Morgan Stanley ranks at number 10.

Goldman Sachs doesn’t make the table. Goldman made it to number five last year and in 2006, and number eight in 2007, the data shows. JP Morgan was in the top ten last year and in 2007 and 2006 but doesn’t appear this year.

“Governments do not have the confidence that the excessive risk-taking culture of the big Wall Street banks has changed and they still cannot be trusted to put the stability of the financial system before profit,” said Arlene McCarthy, vice chair of the European parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee. “It is no surprise therefore that governments are reluctant to do business with banks that have failed to learn the lesson of the crisis. The banks need to acknowledge the mistakes that were made and behave in an ethical way to regain the trust and confidence of governments.”

Bank Chief Admits He Didn’t Know…

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John Thain now admits no one at Merrill had any idea what their CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) were worth. They created them on computer programs. Not only was the global economy rear-ended by a bunch of greedy corporate hacks, it turns out they were too dumb to know what they were doing and too reckless and arrogant to ask. It’s bad enough being scammed by psychopaths. It really hurts to be scammed by morons.

“We think it’s good news that Thain is now emphasizing the knowledge problem when it came to banking–highly paid, well-educated people at the top of their field just didn’t understand the credit derivative products they were buying and selling. This is important as much of our financial reform seems to ignore this problem, focusing instead on fixing incentives in compensation.

It also undermines the idea that the Fed–or any other regulator–will be able to properly assess the risk of these kinds of derivatives.”

My Comment:

I’ve always suspected this, because in graduate school one of my close friends was working on a PhD in finance (where he’d ended up after starting out in mathematics). He was very smart and believed that you could quantify decision- making at all levels. He wanted to turn the social sciences into the hard sciences. We had passionate arguments about this, since I thought the hard sciences were a very faulty (if useful) model for the arts and humanities.  I was flabbergasted to find out one day that he didn’t understand what a mortgage was – he lived in such a rarefied world of theory and had been a student for so long. It wasn’t that he lacked empathy or emotions. He didn’t. What he lacked was any experience of the practical world. [He ended up becoming a trader for JP Morgan and had an office at the World Trade Center. Fortunately he wasn’t in on 9-11].