The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 05:26 PM

^ those bonds are not like fake notes, it might be a bit more complex than just looking at the serial

Panda · 18-06-2009, 06:17 PM

Surely the US government would have some idea of what bonds have been cashed over the years. If they cant figure that out in 10 days, perhaps they need some new accountants.

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 06:23 PM

well if they have suspended the bearer system over 20 years ago, I am not sure that they have a database to keep track of those bonds in their current system,

since the whole system was retired, and all the bearer bonds probably returned since, they might not even have kept the database running, so it might be gone for good

like any big organization, they probably don't even know where they keep the data for those. If you work in IT, the level of data fuckup and disorganization is constant in large companies. The US Treasury is probably not different,

Panda · 18-06-2009, 07:37 PM

I dont work in IT.
But if I owed $trillions, I would sure like to keep track of where it all was.
That is, unless I didn't give a f#ck and could just keep printing the stuff to pay off the suckers who bought my debts.

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 08:38 PM

you want to know more scary ? many mutual funds and international banks with your hard earned cash manage all their assets through Excel Spreadsheets

ok not that many anymore, but it used to be quite common

a lot of traders still use XLS to manage millions a day, oops I just deleted that field with millions of transactions, why should I do

Panda · 18-06-2009, 09:09 PM

No back up? A bit hard to believe.

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 09:13 PM

^ for intraday trades ? probably not

wants something more scary ? back in the old days of Excel everywhere, Corporate America would run most of their journal accounting system on Excel. This is how numerous bugs have been uncovered, overflow errors, addition that didn't work etc...

even today with modern accounting software, the number of entries for a large corporations are so huge, that Audits are only performed on samples, not the full accounts, so an auditor can only give an opinion, not the facts

we are facing such a major data issue with finance and accounting, that technically it could all be an illusion and we would have no clue how far off we are from all the real numbers

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 09:21 PM

back in the days of the Junk Bonds in the late 90s, investors couldn't even track down their holdings from brokers statements, it was a complete fuckup

even today, it happens regularly, brokers fuckup the allocation of your holdings to the wrong account etc... if you don't pay attention, your holdings are being moved to another account and you still need to pay for them

that's why everyone was so afraid of Y2K, the whole system could have bombed and we didn't know how far it would have gone. Resolving accounts with client statements would have been an impossible task and would have taken maybe 20 years to resolve the millions and millions of accounts.

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 09:32 PM

so actually, I wouldn't be surprised that the US Treasury back then would keep track of those bonds through a nice XLS file,

technology change, backup system are renewed, employees change

25 years later, "where is that fucking file ?"

Oops !!!

Butterfly · 18-06-2009, 09:37 PM

even more scary, after 911, there was a number of companies that had to shutdown because all their records were gone, including client files

one company I knew lost all the financial database they were selling, that is all their products. They had no external backup, were begging for clients to send their copy, but eventually realized it was an impossible task to recoup everything. They simply shutdown, and it was a Fortune 500 company

Butterfly · 19-06-2009, 10:00 AM

back to the topic, bkka will be crushed, apparently they solved the case, or did they

Quote:

Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills

By FT reporters

Published: June 18 2009 19:52 | Last updated: June 18 2009 19:52

One summer afternoon, two “Japanese” men in their 50s on a slow train from Italy to Switzerland said they had nothing to declare at the frontier point of Chiasso.

But in a false bottom of one of their suitcases, Italian customs officers and ministry of finance police discovered a staggering $134bn (€97bn, £82bn) in US Treasury bills.

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia.

Few details have been revealed beyond a June 4 statement by the Italian finance police announcing the seizure of 249 US Treasury bills, each of $500m, and 10 “Kennedy” bonds, used as intergovernment payments, of $1bn each. The men were apparently tailed by the Italian authorities.

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.

“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.’’

The Treasury has not issued physical Treasury bonds since the 1980s – they are handled electronically – though they still issue savings bonds in paper format.

In Washington a US Secret Service official said the agency, which is working with the Italian authorities, believed the bonds were fake.

Officials in Tokyo were nonplussed. Takeshi Akamatsu, a Japanese foreign ministry press secretary, said Italian authorities had confirmed that two men carrying Japanese passports had been questioned in the bond case but Tokyo had not been informed of their names or whereabouts.

“We don’t know where they are now,” Mr Akamatsu said.

Italian officials, while pointing out that hauls of counterfeit money and Treasury bills were not unusual, were stunned by the amount involved. Investigators are looking into the origin and destination of the fakes.

Italian prosecutors revealed last month that they had cracked a $1bn bond scam run by the Sicilian Mafia, with the alleged aid of corrupt officials in Venezuela’s central bank. Twenty people were arrested in four countries.

The fake bonds were to have been used as collateral to open credit lines with banks, Reuters news agency reported. The Venezuelan central bank denied the accusations.

By FT staff in Rome, Tokyo, New York and Washington

larvidchr · 19-06-2009, 12:03 PM

They have been released? but the bonds where fake? hmmmmmm Thanks for that report Butterfly but something is surely not right, I can go with the fake bit, but then releasing the guys, no way in a blue moon would that happen, they are either kept well under wraps for obvious security reasons, or some very odd (and for the two Japanese very very dangerous) intelligence operation is going down.

It is truly a strange story, as other posters have noted, what Bank in the world would part with Billions without checking very very carefully those papers first, sure there are some dumb Mafiosi but that stupid??

Jet Gorgon · 19-06-2009, 04:17 PM

The men were released? 55555555555

Panda · 19-06-2009, 04:43 PM

All the governments involved seem pretty casual about it.
The Italians just sent them on their way.
The Japs didn't bother to find out the identities of the blokes.
The Yanks took 10 days to confirm the bonds were fake.

Its all like... Ho Hum, its only $135 billion in counterfeit $US bonds being smuggled across international borders. So whats the big deal? Happens all the time.
Move along. Nothing to see here.

One does have to wonder if there wasn't some very high level talks between governments with an agreement to play this down so as to avoid an international financial panic.

Butterfly · 19-06-2009, 05:22 PM

it does seem very strange indeed, I agree.

But again, going around with fake bonds might not be illegal, it's not like they got caught trading them, there might NOT be international laws against holding fake bonds, amazingly as it sounds. So technically, they weren't doing anything illegal. I am sure they left the bonds with the Italian officials. Or maybe they were victims themselves of a scam, and were released pending further investigations.

passengers · 21-06-2009, 03:06 PM

^I note that Butterfly failed to identify any of his 15000+ posts that were actually true. I see why:

Quote:

Under Italian law anyone in possession of counterfeit cash or bonds worth more than a few tens of thousands of euros must be arrested.

From:

ASIA â€“ ITALY Seizure of US government bonds from two Japanese men in Italy raises questions - Asia News

The idea that handling of counterfeit bonds in Italy is not illegal and you wouldn't get arrested for it is so absurd that it demonstrates the sheer lunacy of the world that Butterfly inhabits.

passengers · 21-06-2009, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panda

One does have to wonder if there wasn't some very high level talks between governments with an agreement to play this down so as to avoid an international financial panic.

Which is exactly what is happening as we speak. Correct again Panda.

passengers · 21-06-2009, 03:27 PM

The current situation summed up in a paragraph:

Quote:

Neil Mellor, of Bank of New York Mellon, said: "We've got a situation where Geithner is smiling and has no choice but to stress the credibility and stability of the US financial and economic system, while the creditors [such as the Chinese] smile back and say they believe him, while at the same time giving hand signals to their reserve managers to get rid of these things."

Is this the death of the dollar? - Telegraph

Panda · 21-06-2009, 06:07 PM

^ Interesting article. Although I dont agree with everything the author says, I do think he put the quoted part below very well.

"And China and all other major central banks which have trillions of dollars in their vaults, face something of a dilemma. Any fall in the greenback will cause the value of their investments to slide. Even if they wanted to exit, there seems no easy way of doing so without provoking some serious self-harm. Indeed, according to Olivier Accominotti, a PhD economist at Paris's Sciences Po university, the situation is not unlike that faced by France in the 1920s, as it sought to reduce its massive sterling reserves. The Bank of France found itself in a "sterling trap" in which it "could not continue selling pounds without precipitating a sterling collapse and a huge exchange loss for itself".

Spin · 21-06-2009, 06:48 PM

If the bonds were real then, at those denominations, one would have to assume they would belong to a nation and not individuals.
If they belong to a nation state then they could be transported in a suitcase that would have diplomatic immunity and therefore not liable to border searches.

Probably fakes, but a great story, nevertheless.

19-06-2009, 12:03 PM	#1192 (permalink)
larvidchr In transit to Valhalla Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Chonburi Posts: 1,813	They have been released? but the bonds where fake? hmmmmmm Thanks for that report Butterfly but something is surely not right, I can go with the fake bit, but then releasing the guys, no way in a blue moon would that happen, they are either kept well under wraps for obvious security reasons, or some very odd (and for the two Japanese very very dangerous) intelligence operation is going down. It is truly a strange story, as other posters have noted, what Bank in the world would part with Billions without checking very very carefully those papers first, sure there are some dumb Mafiosi but that stupid?? __________________ I still pillage........................................... .................my fridge at night.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

18-06-2009, 05:26 PM	#1181 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	^ those bonds are not like fake notes, it might be a bit more complex than just looking at the serial

18-06-2009, 06:17 PM	#1182 (permalink)
Panda Thailand Forum Last Online: Today 02:20 PM Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,997	Surely the US government would have some idea of what bonds have been cashed over the years. If they cant figure that out in 10 days, perhaps they need some new accountants.

18-06-2009, 06:23 PM	#1183 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	well if they have suspended the bearer system over 20 years ago, I am not sure that they have a database to keep track of those bonds in their current system, since the whole system was retired, and all the bearer bonds probably returned since, they might not even have kept the database running, so it might be gone for good like any big organization, they probably don't even know where they keep the data for those. If you work in IT, the level of data fuckup and disorganization is constant in large companies. The US Treasury is probably not different,

18-06-2009, 07:37 PM	#1184 (permalink)
Panda Thailand Forum Last Online: Today 02:20 PM Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,997	I dont work in IT. But if I owed $trillions, I would sure like to keep track of where it all was. That is, unless I didn't give a f#ck and could just keep printing the stuff to pay off the suckers who bought my debts.

18-06-2009, 08:38 PM	#1185 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	you want to know more scary ? many mutual funds and international banks with your hard earned cash manage all their assets through Excel Spreadsheets ok not that many anymore, but it used to be quite common a lot of traders still use XLS to manage millions a day, oops I just deleted that field with millions of transactions, why should I do

18-06-2009, 09:09 PM	#1186 (permalink)
Panda Thailand Forum Last Online: Today 02:20 PM Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,997	No back up? A bit hard to believe.

18-06-2009, 09:13 PM	#1187 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	^ for intraday trades ? probably not wants something more scary ? back in the old days of Excel everywhere, Corporate America would run most of their journal accounting system on Excel. This is how numerous bugs have been uncovered, overflow errors, addition that didn't work etc... even today with modern accounting software, the number of entries for a large corporations are so huge, that Audits are only performed on samples, not the full accounts, so an auditor can only give an opinion, not the facts we are facing such a major data issue with finance and accounting, that technically it could all be an illusion and we would have no clue how far off we are from all the real numbers

18-06-2009, 09:21 PM	#1188 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	back in the days of the Junk Bonds in the late 90s, investors couldn't even track down their holdings from brokers statements, it was a complete fuckup even today, it happens regularly, brokers fuckup the allocation of your holdings to the wrong account etc... if you don't pay attention, your holdings are being moved to another account and you still need to pay for them that's why everyone was so afraid of Y2K, the whole system could have bombed and we didn't know how far it would have gone. Resolving accounts with client statements would have been an impossible task and would have taken maybe 20 years to resolve the millions and millions of accounts.

18-06-2009, 09:32 PM	#1189 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	so actually, I wouldn't be surprised that the US Treasury back then would keep track of those bonds through a nice XLS file, technology change, backup system are renewed, employees change 25 years later, "where is that fucking file ?" Oops !!!

18-06-2009, 09:37 PM	#1190 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	even more scary, after 911, there was a number of companies that had to shutdown because all their records were gone, including client files one company I knew lost all the financial database they were selling, that is all their products. They had no external backup, were begging for clients to send their copy, but eventually realized it was an impossible task to recoup everything. They simply shutdown, and it was a Fortune 500 company

19-06-2009, 04:17 PM	#1193 (permalink)
Jet Gorgon Jihad Barbie Last Online: Today 04:50 AM Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Near Libbies Posts: 12,470	The men were released? 55555555555

19-06-2009, 04:43 PM	#1194 (permalink)
Panda Thailand Forum Last Online: Today 02:20 PM Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,997	All the governments involved seem pretty casual about it. The Italians just sent them on their way. The Japs didn't bother to find out the identities of the blokes. The Yanks took 10 days to confirm the bonds were fake. Its all like... Ho Hum, its only $135 billion in counterfeit $US bonds being smuggled across international borders. So whats the big deal? Happens all the time. Move along. Nothing to see here. One does have to wonder if there wasn't some very high level talks between governments with an agreement to play this down so as to avoid an international financial panic.

19-06-2009, 05:22 PM	#1195 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 16,897	it does seem very strange indeed, I agree. But again, going around with fake bonds might not be illegal, it's not like they got caught trading them, there might NOT be international laws against holding fake bonds, amazingly as it sounds. So technically, they weren't doing anything illegal. I am sure they left the bonds with the Italian officials. Or maybe they were victims themselves of a scam, and were released pending further investigations.

21-06-2009, 06:07 PM	#1199 (permalink)
Panda Thailand Forum Last Online: Today 02:20 PM Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,997	^ Interesting article. Although I dont agree with everything the author says, I do think he put the quoted part below very well. "And China and all other major central banks which have trillions of dollars in their vaults, face something of a dilemma. Any fall in the greenback will cause the value of their investments to slide. Even if they wanted to exit, there seems no easy way of doing so without provoking some serious self-harm. Indeed, according to Olivier Accominotti, a PhD economist at Paris's Sciences Po university, the situation is not unlike that faced by France in the 1920s, as it sought to reduce its massive sterling reserves. The Bank of France found itself in a "sterling trap" in which it "could not continue selling pounds without precipitating a sterling collapse and a huge exchange loss for itself".

21-06-2009, 06:48 PM	#1200 (permalink)
Spin Would ya? Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 10,333	If the bonds were real then, at those denominations, one would have to assume they would belong to a nation and not individuals. If they belong to a nation state then they could be transported in a suitcase that would have diplomatic immunity and therefore not liable to border searches. Probably fakes, but a great story, nevertheless.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)