Posted on 06/10/2009 10:45:08 PM PDT by Xenophon450
ROME —
Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities.
According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that was searched by the Italian authorities June 3 when they were in Chiasso, at the border with Switzerland, about 50 kilometers north of Milan. The daily did not say on what charges they have been detained, but the two may have been detained on suspicion of attempting to take a large amount of securities out of Italy without declaring it because the paper said they had not declared the bonds.
Interesting.
Wow! Better load up on food and ammo tomorrow!
Now you have piqued my interest, care to link? I am not doubting the veracity of their claims, I merely wish to see their reasoning as to such.
The AJPM site is paying .50 cents below spot today. That is weird.
I have to agree. Probably China wants to dump US treasuries without causing a world wide currency crises. ........
My guess too or it could be Japan dumping some. Many ways to orderly liquidate and they wanted to try this one
Heck, I don’t remember the exact details, I must read 20-30 blogs a day.
Try Market Skeptic
http://www.marketskeptics.com/
The link you posted in #98 has some interesting additional information.
post 110 was meant for you.
i also agree...Read today where the Chinese want to dump Treasuries for IMF funds...That is a very worrisome sign that the Chinese may be concerned about a possible economic collapse in the USA but they do not want to provoke a financial panic...The Chinese would have vastly more to lose than Japan if the US economy were to seize up, so they are trying to sell US and diversify into International funds...They had many of their eggs in a US basket but the bottom may be ready to fall out...
I’m all messed up. Best link so far is at post 102.
Thanks.
TokyoGas at 11:59 AM JST - 11th June
Does the US Government issue Treasury Bonds with a denomination $500 million? I have been googling but everything seems to point to $1M as the max. Any financial whiz kids out there?
#
Mark_McCracken at 12:17 PM JST - 11th June
moonbeams at 12:31 PM JST - 11th June
the above isn't the full article. this was missing:
“It also said the Italian authorities were investigating whether the securities were genuine since their values are huge.
If the bonds are found to be genuine, the two could be fined around 40 percent of the total value of the bonds, it said.”
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stirfry at 12:40 PM JST - 11th June
@ tokyo gas...nope you are correct...US Treasury bonds come in $1 million increments...just for example, the Treasury this week issued securities in 3 maturities and the total was $65 billion, so this $134b would be almost equal to the US’s funding needs for 2-3 months
When I first heard this news, I paused, as is my habit, and thought, that’s a ton of scrabble points.
That is lots of loot folks. Lots of loot.
Well, lets face it, this is gona be one hell-of-a-caper-figure-outer. This is a job for Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
Sorry. ‘Chief’ Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
That's very possible. Corrupt heads of state have also been known to loot their treasuries and move the money to a safe haven. Vladamir Putin has done this and Yassar Arafat on a lesser scale.
Sort of a three stooges way of going about it! Why dump from Switzerland? They can just push the sell button from home. I think someone is trying to hide the money is Switzerland. If trades of that size came out of Zurich, people would notice...
The way to get out of the bonds would be to launder them through third parties and beyond that try not to leave any directly incriminating fingerprints.
No doubt a lot of mainland Chinese mattresses are overstuffed with increasingly worthless U.S. notes. The Chinese have to be worried about the effects of inflation (i.e., the printing of new paper money by the Fed) on the notes. Thus the pressure to launder the equity into something of more real value.
Two possible targets for purchase by the bonds are U.S. real estate and U.S. politicians.
If I were the Chinese, I would get third parties comprised of some kind of convenient non-Chinese nationality with experience in business and travel, but usually beyond suspicion (e.g. Japanese) to help launder the bonds.
I am still a bit puzzled in that using Switzerland does not seem to me to be as obvious a choice as the Caymans or Bahama for this type of stuff. Perhaps the target purchases for this particular operation are not so much in the U.S. as in places such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc.
One way or another I anticipate that Chinese influence and power is expanding rapidly and quietly via this type of operation.
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