Posted on 02/15/2026 9:06:59 PM PST by Libloather
Recessions and stock market crashes are inevitable in a market-based economy, but few Americans realize that their investments face risks far greater than falling stock prices.
Because of largely unknown legal changes, millions of Americans could temporarily or even permanently lose their retirement and other investment savings in the next major financial crash, all while too-big-to-fail Wall Street firms and banks are protected.
That might sound like a wild conspiracy theory, but the danger is real and well documented.
How Wall Street centralized ownership of your investments
Beginning in the 1970s, at the request of powerful Wall Street and banking institutions, state lawmakers quietly adopted a series of changes to the Uniform Commercial Code, a body of law enacted in all 50 states. These changes effectively allowed financial institutions to reassign direct ownership of most securities away from individual investors, including those holding retirement accounts and traditional brokerage accounts.
Under the revised legal framework, direct ownership of securities such as stocks and bonds was centralized within a single financial institution controlled by Wall Street’s largest firms and banks: the Depository Trust Company, or DTC.
Today, DTC "provides custody and asset servicing for 1.44 million security issues from more than 170 countries and territories valued at more than US $100 trillion as of 2025." To put that figure in perspective, the entire federal budget is roughly $7 trillion.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yep. We barely keep enough cash in the bank to pay the monthly bills. Everything else is in hard assets since 2020.
you aren’t looking close enough, here in the greater Los Angeles area I know a guy that buys gold anytime for 5% under spot price, regardless of the amount.
Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America are three banks to avoid.
The Great Taking - Documentary | Nov 29, 2023 | David Webb exposes the system Central Bankers have in place to take everything from everyone.
21:10 “…So in 2008 I noticed the first failure of a broker dealer, so I was expecting there to be a lot of insolvencies. I was paying attention, and the thing that shocked me was that the client accounts in this broker dealer were encumbered in the bankruptcy estate of the broker. That never could have happened before…in all of the history of securities, they were personal property, and if the broker failed you would say, ‘I’m sorry you're out of business, here's where you can transfer my assets’ - that did not happen in this case. So I started digging into what could possibly have changed, and this was as serious as as a heart attack, given that we were going into this meltdown at that time. That's when I discovered it had been done through changes to the uniform commercial code in the United States. This had been done in all 50 states so it was something that could be done very quietly over a long period of time and did not have to be done at the federal level…didn't draw attention.
What they did was to create a new legal construct of a security entitlement. Now prior to this as I said securities for 400 years were personal property. This concept of a security entitlement severed that - that's its purpose, so what people then have in institutions and pension funds, even sophisticated investors - all they have is an entitlement - it's a claim, it's a contractual claim which is very weak in the event of insolvency, so it's an appearance of ownership, it's sometimes referred to as beneficial ownership which sounds nice, but what it means is that you receive dividends, you receive a proxy, you are the owner of title...of course you can buy it and sell it,but you can see in documents that I've found that the legal owner is actually the entity that controls the security with a secured interest, they are the legal owners of the property. So now you have a contractual claim…
Next, all of the securities are held in pooled form so you have no specific identification. It used to be that with paper certificates they were numbered you had a specific numbered bond or stock share certificate, so now they're fungible…fungible bulk, book entry form, pooled. Further we know, and it is absolutely irrefutable from the fed's own response to a questionnaire from the EU, that even segregated accounts, even people or institutions that have been told that their securities are segregated, are in the same pool and entitled to only a pro rata share in the event of an insolvency of the custodian.
So again segregation is just an appearance. People are told that. It's an absolute subterfuge, and the shocking thing is that even sophisticated institutional investors do not understand this or they don't want to know it further. Even if fraud - outright fraud - is committed by the custodian, that does not obviate the ability of the secured creditors to take the Securities from these pools ahead of the people who thought they owned them.
Then there was in 2005 a change to the bankruptcy law in the United States creating something called Safe Harbor, again that sounds nice, but what Safe Harbor means is ‘Safe Harbor for the secured creditors to take the client assets’ - and to make that absolutely certain that even in the event of fraud they will take client assets. So prior to this change in bankruptcy law there is something called fraudulent transfer, fraudulent conveyance and the trustee the bankruptcy trustee had a duty to claw back any assets that had been fraudulently transferred. So this change was made in 2005, and then with the failure of Leman Brothers this was cemented in case law and we can see the judgment by the bankruptcy court Court related to this.
What happened there was that JP Morgan was both the custodian for the client assets and the secured creditor that took the client assets, which prior to 2005 everything that happened there would have been constructively fraudulent but the bankruptcy judge - this is the southern district of New York which is Manhattan - found in favor of JP Morgan, that JP Morgan absolutely was entitled to take the client assets. The only question was whether JP Morgan was an entitled person basically to take the client assets. This is an important point because it's not all secured creditors that have this power to take the client assets, it is only the very biggest banks that are entitled to take the client assets, so they don't want anyone else elbowing in there to take anything. Only they will take them, and in this judgment the judge asks the question: ‘is JP Morgan a member of the protected class?’ - used explicitly those words, and said quite obviously as one of the biggest banks in the world, the biggest financial institutions, JP Morgan is quite obviously a member of the protected class. To see this in a bankruptcy case law from the court I think that's pretty strong stuff.
It's like that document directly from the Fed provided to the legal certainty group, this is hard to refute. A custodian has the records of who owns what, it's in their books and records, but that's all it is, it is the records. The system has been changed so that the property itself is then transferred up to a higher level and held in pooled form, so you deal with your broker to execute a trade to buy or sell something and you get a representation of an account that shows you what you have in it, but the assets are not held even at what you think is your custodian, it's transferred to a higher level. In the US that is the Depository Trust Corp - which holds all securities in the United States in pooled form, so the brokers themselves are low down in the food chain.
In Europe there are central security depositories at the national level that give an appearance of a registry of ownership at the national level, but by law under something called the Central Security Depository Regulation, CSDR, which was imposed in 2014. By law these Securities are transferred by a mandatory link to an international Central Securities Depository, so they want cross-border mobility of the collateral to occur. So in Sweden for example, you have a local registry but then the securities go up to Euroclear Belgium, so they are subject to Belgian law not Swedish law at that level, and then the collateral is transported to underpin the derivatives complex, which is housed at the central clearing counter-parties, the acronym is the CCPs so this is the purpose to take the collateral up to this…Central Clearing Counterparty level, and we know from a BIS document that is now over 10 years old that the systems are in place for the movement of this collateral on a global basis nearly instantaneously especially in a crisis to be swept to to meet the collateral demands of the system, the secured creditors.. (excerpt ends at around 30:04)
The terms ‘property’ and ‘asset’ - have specific meanings and are related to ownership.
If you don’t, technically speaking, actually own your stock portfolio, how can you be taxed on its value?
If a ‘new legal construct’ was created, then a corresponding new legal definition - for tax purposes, should also have been created for the terms ‘property’ and ‘assets.’
How does the govt levy taxes on property that isn’t property, as traditionally defined, and on assets that aren’t assets, as traditionally defined?
The Dodd Frank act that passed after the 2008 allowed “Bank Bail Ins”....and most don’t realize unless you are direct registered with the company you invested in, you are NOT the owner, the brokerage firm is, you are third in line as “ Beneficiary”. If stock is bought in “ Street Name”, ( most are) you lose.
IF the brokerage firm, Fidelity, T Row, Blackrock, etc go bankrupt, as a “ Beneficiary”, you may recoup some of your “ investment” after the courts divvy up what is left.
“IF the brokerage firm, Fidelity, T Row, Blackrock, etc go bankrupt, as a “ Beneficiary”, you may recoup some of your “ investment” after the courts divvy up what is left.”
Ever heard of SPIC?
Thank you.
He’s half a continent away from LA.
Ever heard of SPIC?
That should keep you busy until tomorrow, I will not spoon feed you.
“Ever check to see the ridiculous small amount they are structurally able to “ insure”?”
Twice that of your FDIC insured bank account.
“.then get busy pulling up “ bail ins” which Dodd Frank codified into law.”
That reminds me of your forecast that silver shorting would ruin JPM when, in fact, JPM had ZERO short positions!
“Would having actual certificates of ownership, held in one’s own hands, avoid dealing with his Depository Trust Company?”
Most companies don’t issue certificates.
You really should warn readers about the dangers of storing gold in their mothers’ basements.
“IF the brokerage firm, Fidelity, T Row, Blackrock, etc go bankrupt, as a “ Beneficiary”, you may recoup some of your “ investment” after the courts divvy up what is left.”
Why do you promote lies? Just to find suckers?
Accounts are kept separate from the firms assets.
“IF the brokerage firm, Fidelity, T Row, Blackrock, etc go bankrupt, as a “ Beneficiary”, you may recoup some of your “ investment” after the courts divvy up what is left.”
Investor assets are held in accounts separate from the firms accounts.
Scoundrels that form their own investment firms may say that is what they will do but we all know of a legendary forecaster that didn’t and spent eleven years in jail.
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