US government securities worth US 134.5 billion seized from Japanese nationals

RDB

Has the truth come out about this one?

Its a good question why arent the media all over this?

lostinrates

RDB wrote: »

Has the truth come out about this one?

Its a good question why arent the media all over this?

week after next I'm over there, I'll ask friends what the coverage was like there.

Mr_Mumble

M.afia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills

“They are all fraudulent, it’s obvious. We don’t even have paper securities outstanding for that value,’’ said Mckayla Braden, senior adviser for public affairs at the Bureau of Public Debt at the US Treasury department. “This type of scam has been going on for years.’’

dopester wrote: »

Does that include Treasury Bills and Certificates of Deposit, and other securities or bills of exchange? You are really confident that there are no securities which are payable to the bearer?

None that are anywhere near this size, as the FT story says. I don't see why anyone would want Treasury Bills in paper format - the advantage of holding them is their liquidity along with safety.

bubblesmoney

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

M.afia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills

“They are all fraudulent, it’s obvious. We don’t even have paper securities outstanding for that value,’’ said Mckayla Braden, senior adviser for public affairs at the Bureau of Public Debt at the US Treasury department. “This type of scam has been going on for years.’’


None that are anywhere near this size, as the FT story says. I don't see why anyone would want Treasury Bills in paper format - the advantage of holding them is their liquidity along with safety.

then if it was indeed a fraud wonder why the 2 people were let off. no one seems to know where the two people are, japanese reporters have tried to trace them but cant find them! now why would the italians let off people who obviously committed one of the biggest frauds in history???? why would the usa govt let off some one making fakes of their bonds??

these bonds were worth 134billion. thats more than the holdings of all countries except 4 in the world. now why would someone fake something of that magnitude and spend so much money faking them when anyone who buys that sort of thing can easily check their registration numbers and see if they are real or not. even bearer bonds apparently have registration numbers.




Here are the top foreign holders of US treasuries

• China 763 Billion
  Japan 685
  United Kingdom 152 Billion
  Russia 137
  The value of the smuggled bonds 134 Billion. (the figures might vary a bit from these old info.)

see http://market-ticker.org/archives/1131-Bearer-Bonds-Saga-Resolution.html .

btw try and search on cnn website and see how many articles you can find on this huge catch. real or fake this bonds catch was still news worthy due to its implication for the bond market. wonder why it didnt make much presence in usa newspapers.

i thought 500 million bonds were issued between 1955-1969 but looks like 500 million bonds have been issued very recently too!

this might be what happened though....

1) Take a massive short position in Treasuries
2) Counterfeit $134.5 billion of UST bonds
3) Pretend to smuggle them into Switzerland but get caught
4) Ensuing story undermines faith in the current fiat currency and U.S. dollar reserve status quo
5) close your short positions????
6) Profit $$$$$$$

btw govts have been involved in counterfeiting bonds of other countries and even their own country bonds :eek:

During the Second World War several countries at war printed and put in circulation perfectly counterfeit enemy money. It is also historically established that some central banks, like the Bank of Italy 65 years ago, issued the same securities twice (identical registered number and code). This way they could print more money with legal tender than they officially declared. The main difference though is that 65 years ago the world was involved in a bloody war, which is not the case today.

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A
now with the biggest downturn since the great depression countries might be playing old games again because old habits die hard.

ruggedtoast

Update from another (somewhat unreliable looking) source:

http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59:employees-of-japan-finance-ministry-arrested-in-italy-trying-tosmuggle-134-billion-in-us-treasuries-in-suitcases&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

"Despite assurances from Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano about Japan's "absolutely unshakable” confidence in the credibility of the U.S. dollar, it is now confirmed based upon the serial numbers of the Bonds, that the $134 Billion is part of the $686 billion of U.S. debt officially held by Japan...

The implications of this situation are monstrous: An ally of the United States has been caught trying to secretly unload U.S. government debt. This is unmistakable proof that the United States government is headed into economic collapse because nations around the world have now officially lost faith in its ability to repay."

bubblesmoney

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Update from another source:

http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59:employees-of-japan-finance-ministry-arrested-in-italy-trying-tosmuggle-134-billion-in-us-treasuries-in-suitcases&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

good find. thanks.

i find it amazing that none of the major news and finance networks seem keen on a story of this magnitude. gives that much credence for its implications for the bond markets.

mbga9pgf

Will the telegraph do?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/5586543/Is-this-the-death-of-the-dollar.html

Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (£81bn).
How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.

epz_2

If i were smuggling billions from Japan and doing it in a semi official way i would have taken a private jet or at least flown into the right country.

Why if you wanted to go to Switzerland wouldn't you want to go straight there rather than fly to Italy and drive there?

ruggedtoast

epz wrote: »

If i were smuggling billions from Japan and doing it in a semi official way i would have taken a private jet or at least flown into the right country.

Why if you wanted to go to Switzerland wouldn't you want to go straight there rather than fly to Italy and drive there?

We dont know where they collected the bonds from or how they entered Europe. They may have thought that an overland crossing would be less likely to result in detection.

Walking around with $134 billion dollars in a bag virtually defies belief to me though.

If the J-government does want to offload dollars they really must be expecting a collapse to risk this kind of deal.

bubblesmoney

The mystery deepened on Thursday as an Italian blog quoted Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como provincial finance police as saying the two men had been released. The colonel and police headquarters in Rome both declined to respond to questions from the Financial Times.

from the FT