Posted on 12/21/2011 7:04:01 AM PST by sayuncledave
I have received a few emails asking if I was still content with my decision to shut down my brokerage. Not only am I content, but after seeing the news that broke over the weekend, I am of the considered opinion that the entire financial blogging community should formally call for a general financial market strike. And I’m not kidding. A couple of things have happened regarding the MF Global mess that I don’t think got the attention they should have because they broke over the weekend. So let me fill you all in. First, all notions of personal property rights were essentially destroyed when the MF Global “trustee” began seizing customers’ gold and silver bullion held in storage if that bullion was purchased through contracts brokered by MF Global. In case you’re not following, let me restate. MF Global customers who traded in precious metals and actually took delivery and OWNED bullion, as in outright, free and clear OWNERSHIP, complete with a warehouse receipt (aka title) with SERIAL NUMBERS designating exactly which physical bars they OWNED, and were PAYING RENT to STORE their own property in a “secure” VAULT, complete with statements indicating that these storage fees were paid in full, are having THEIR PROPERTY THAT THEY OWN AND ARE PAYING RENT TO STORE CONFISCATED by the MF Global trustee in order to feed the gaping maw that is the MF Global “estate”.
(Excerpt) Read more at barnhardt.biz ...
I haven’t read this piece yet...but I’ll bet it’s a doozy.
I also heard that MF clients couldn’t get their gold and silver out. That’s how much good holding hard assets will do for you...not that I personally have any gold...but if I did, I sure wouldn’t let it be held in some ‘trust’.
well, now that I’ve read the artciel, this is exactly what she was talking about...but in much more detail regardign the structure of the bankruptcy filing to put the banks at the front of the line. Rat bastids.
Have tar, need feathers.
A friend of mine said “If you can’t hold it in your own hands, you don’t really own it”.
Ping!
Question regarding this point: “. . . the bankruptcy filing to put the banks at the front of the line.”
Since few bank customers have more than the max FDIC insured amount in banks & assuming are covered for the first 250k. . .are there obscure limits to FDIC . . .how secure is the FDIC? Beyond the question of hyper-inflation should a SHTF scenario occur, what are the limitations of FDIC?
Ping!
Is this a type of claw-back?
Save to read later
I don’t know the answer...but I’m going to keep a larger sum in the bank of Stearns and Foster.
I am serious when I say I’ve more than once contemplated quitting my job to withdraw my 401K at the corporate’s banker (currently ING) I don’t rust any of them. I’m not retirement age and would be penalized...but the way this MF disaster is playing out, the ‘entitled cronies’ can pretty much do whatever they want. So, should I pull out my chips and go home? That’s why I keep readign everything I can...I’m not smart enough to do everything right. And I struggle with what my gut is telling me.
Finally, something that explains all this. I couldn't understand why these customers were getting stiffed when they had outright and unequivocal claims of ownership.
Even so, it raises more questions than answers.
I check her site before FR nowadays...she’s that good.
>>are there obscure limits to FDIC . . .how secure is the FDIC? Beyond the question of hyper-inflation should a SHTF scenario occur, what are the limitations of FDIC?
In a SHTF scenario, the S will HTF. The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund only carries 1.35 percent of estimated insured deposits and cannot hold more than 1.5 percent. That’s the limit of its bailout capabilities at any given time.
From what I hear FDIC cannot cover all depositis it insures.
In a word, yes. The BK trustee is pursuing claw-back. As she has recently said, we’ve gone from a nation of Rule of Law to an oligarchy. Heaven help us all.
But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
The plunder will not stop until you stop the plunderers. You can take physically possession of your time-of-life assets, but the plunderers will still be out there roaming your property taxing your assets.
HOORAY Ann for calling for the 1st step! Thanks for posting, 'dave and thanks to the great posters at zerohedge.
above quotes from Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850
Mr. de Montalembert [politician and writer] adopting the thought contained in a famous proclamation by Mr. Carlier, has said: “We must make war against socialism.” According to the definition of socialism advanced by Mr. Charles Dupin, he meant: “We must make war against plunder.”
But of what plunder was he speaking? For there are two kinds of plunder: legal and illegal.
I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes — can be called socialism. It is not this kind of plunder that systematically threatens the foundations of society. Anyway, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the command of these gentlemen. The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. Long before the Revolution of February 1848 — long before the appearance even of socialism itself — France had provided police, judges, gendarmes, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds for the purpose of fighting illegal plunder. The law itself conducts this war, and it is my wish and opinion that the law should always maintain this attitude toward plunder.
The Law Defends Plunder
But it does not always do this. Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks.
This legal plunder may be only an isolated stain among the legislative measures of the people. If so, it is best to wipe it out with a minimum of speeches and denunciations — and in spite of the uproar of the vested interests.
How to Identify Legal Plunder
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
Legal Plunder Has Many Names
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.
Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.
Bastiat
DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.
DISMANTLE them when necessary.
DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic.
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