USA Financial Extortion

Individuals (famous economists), and organizations that are profiting from the present oligarchic system cannot be too critical against what feeds them. One has to read beyond the mellifluous lines.

Here is The Economist, June 28, 2014:

“Share and share alike… America should also embrace the OECD’s efforts, already backed by more than 50 countries, to create a truly multilateral system in which tax information on residents’ accounts and certain investments is shared annually. For that to work, America would need to hand over data similar to those which it demands from others—something it has hitherto appeared reluctant to do. The financial superpower looks ever more a regulatory bully, setting rules it ignores itself.”

Bullies Kill, Vultures Feed, Justice The Old Fashion Way

Setting rules for others one ignores for oneself is the essence of viciousness.

“The financial superpower looks ever more a regulatory bully?”

The USA is a financial bully, and it started in 1944, when the USA tried to bully Lord Keynes himself (head of the currency commission at Bretton-Woods), into accepting the Dollar of the USA as the world’s reserve currency.

The fact that it started so long ago means that the bully’s institutions have evolved accordingly. A particular case if American justice, which finds American violence to be just: the case of the vulture funds is exemplary. Whoever stands in the way of American vultures is unjust.

Keynes wanted to use the International Monetary Fund to create “Drawing Rights” as needed, a solution Dominique Strauss-Kahn implemented to the tune of 450 billion dollars until his fateful encounter with the maid from hell, taken super seriously by New York “Justice” (until she proposed so many tricks to the officers in charge of “protecting” her, that, well, it was embarrassing, even for New York “Justice”).

Keynes resisted totally, so the government of the USA forged the documents that made the USA into the one and only financial superpower. When Saddam Hussein begged to differ, and started to use Euros, he was hanged. So the BNP executives, who have not been executed yet, ought not to complain too much, as The Economist astutely points out, somewhere else.

What is The Economist alluding to above? “… hand over data similar to those which it demands from others.” To the fact that the USA is the world’s largest tax haven for global plutocrats, while busy destroying all other tax havens. The destruction of Swiss banks and bankers is exemplary that way.

In other words, the USA sucks up capital from all over the world, by stealing other countries’ taxes (as it provides plutocrats, worldwide, to escape taxation, thanks to… Delaware).

Says The Economist in: “Tax havens, The missing $20 trillion How to stop companies and people dodging tax, in Delaware as well as Grand Cayman”: a lower rate on a broader base, combined with vigilance by the tax authorities, would be more efficient and would probably raise more revenue: America, whose companies face one of the rich world’s highest corporate-tax rates on their worldwide income, also has some of the most energetic tax-avoiders.

These reforms would not be easy. Governments that try to lower corporate tax rates will be accused of caving in to blackmailing capitalists. Financial centres and incorporation hubs, from the City of London to Delaware, will fight any attempt to tighten their rules. BUT IF POLITICIANS REALLY WANT TO TAX THE MISSING $20 TRILLION, THAT’S WHERE THEY SHOULD START.”

From the horse’s mouth: to tax the missing $20 trillion, start from London to Delaware… Exactly what I have been saying for years. The global financial exploitative mess is part of an Anglo-American imperial situation.

I have condemned the way “judicial” authorities in New York siding with the financial vultures therein. The Economist now agrees with me, and goes somewhat further, as it alleges state corruption. Here is an extensive extract from:

BNP Paribas in the dock: No way to treat a criminal. The French bank deserved a clobbering, but America’s legal system looks like an extortion racket.

BNP argues that it broke no European laws… That is true enough, to Europe’s shame… It is also true that the underlying transactions had nothing to do with America, but because they were denominated in dollars they had to be cleared in New York, which provided America’s lawmen with a toehold.

But the guilt of a suspect and the justice of a cause do not make a tribunal fair. And America’s system for pursuing errant banks, especially foreign ones, is anything but fair… BNP had little choice but to settle. Defeat in court might have led to the loss of its American banking licence—a death sentence for a big international bank. America’s prosecutors can also wield the threat of criminal charges against individual bankers.

Bank against the wall

Not only were BNP’s tormentors, such as Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s politically ambitious banking regulator, able more or less to dictate their terms, they also had an incentive to make the fine as big as possible because the agencies involved divvied up much of it among themselves. Mr Lawsky’s outfit gets $2 billion, four times its annual budget, which it will triumphantly deposit in New York state’s depleted coffers.

There are no meaningful checks on this process, let alone a plausible procedure for BNP to appeal. Bank bosses cannot even publicly criticise deals they agree to under extreme duress. No precedent is set and no guidance provided as to the limits of the law and the proportionality of the punishment.

So even if BNP fully deserves its punishment, the legal system that meted it out is closer to an extortion racket than justice. France’s economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, has compared America’s pursuit of BNP to “economic warfare”. In other words, a bank that catered to mass murderers has had some success in portraying itself as a victim. Any process that can make BNP’s dealings with Sudan look anything less than shameful must be very flawed indeed.”

“Catered to mass murderers”? Is that not the story of the invasion of Iraq by the USA? Did BNP invade Sudan? Is the USA pursuing the invaders of Iraq?

No, the USA is using imperial might in ways very similar to Putin. (Putin also has laws and judges and Congress on his side, nota bene.)

Two months ago Argentina reached a settlement with the Paris Club, a group of government creditors.

On June 16th the Supreme Court of the United States decided twice in favor of NML Capital, a “vulture” fund (and subsidiary of hedge fund Elliott Management) that snatched dirt cheap bonds after Argentina’s 2001 default. The fund and its plutocratic owners have since pursued the country for the payment of all principal plus outstanding interest in US courts. For at least 1.6 billion dollars.

The ability of struggling countries to restructure their debts has been dented. Hold-outs everywhere have greater incentive to litigate; creditors who might accept exchange offers could see them gulped down by vultures, catered to by USA judges.

Those who play with fire to burn others may find where the concept of “backfiring” comes from.

Patrice Ayme’

France Versus Dollar Justice

WALL STREET JUSTICE: USA BANKS RULE, LET’S KILL OTHERS

In Brief: The attack of Manhattan “Justice” against French bank BNP is reminiscent of the sanctions of the USA against France in 1939… because France had declared war to Hitler. With “Justice” like that, no wonder Putin does “Justice” himself. Morality: If there is no Justice, but Wall Street Justice, it’s time to strike back at the empire.

***

The world is complex, so is human society, history, and explanations thereof. The Wall Street Journal condemned, once again, stridently, the sale of French Mistral ships to Russia. It forgot to mention that the USA has several times greater business with the Russian military-industrial complex. That’s propaganda, for you.

I sent a comment tying the sale of the Mistral up with the extravagant attack of Manhattan “justice” against the French bank BNP. It was censored immediately. As the sheep say, there are no conspiracies, just, stuff happens.

If Around The USA Beware About Who Is Lurking In Your Hotel Room

Thomas Piketty, a young French economy professor, made a devastating attack against the Wall Street plutocratic system in his book, “Capital in the 21 C”. The goons in Manhattan reply with calling for an 11 billion dollar fine to bankrupt BNP, just because they can (BNP violated no European or French laws, just the hatred the government of  the USA has for Iran and Cuba).

It’s time to arrest the respect those goons get. They are not any better than the clowns around Putin. I will actually that they are worse, since, as Putin himself would point out, they are more subtle. (Meanwhile Piketty ought to be careful when visiting the USA)

The presidency of Barack Obama has been characterized by a lack of punishment of the bankers that had organized the heist of 2008. How could Obama do anything? Supposed liberals such as Krugman have just been clamoring for more money for the banks: that’s how the left is defined in the USA. The rest of the USA, or at least, the USA’s Main Stream Media, is on the right of that. Giving money, ever more money, trillions of dollars in monetary base or bond buying (= Quantitative Easing, Twist), in the USA, defines the “left”.

Obama has been cracking on bankers, but only Swiss bankers. Switzerland’s banks destruction became a golden opportunity for the banks of the USA, which can now manage thousands, not to say hundreds of thousands, of new clients.

The USA is against tax havens: that’s the law. Overseas tax havens, that is. Slight problem: the USA is, by far, the world’s largest tax haven.  Delaware is, by itself, the world’s largest tax haven state, as USA Den Of Thieves pointed out. The USA legislative system is an enormous tax haven for the hyper rich.

So why so upset that BNP conducted some transaction overseas between overseas clients, using the world’s reserve currency? That’s just a pretext. BNP is one of the two largest European banks. It’s also one of the two largest banks in Europe, and one of the top five dollar clearing banks, worldwide. As the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, gigantic reserves of dollars are overseas, never to transact through regions directly controlled by the USA.

BNP had business in Iran for generations. But that’s the point. When the USA applied sanctions on Iran, it forced the rest of NATO to do the same. That devastated French industry. In particular the car maker Peugeot, the second car maker in Europe at the time. It devastated no American industry.

However, what is the difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia. Yet, they can in Iran. Clearly a crime, in Washington’s eyes, if it’s done in a Peugeot. So Washington struck Iran, and thus Peugeot, with sanctions.

American economists such as Paul Krugman, hopefully lying through their teeth (the alternative, that they are really believing what they are saying, being worse), have claimed that the fact that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency presented no economic advantage to the USA.

Why this will to destroy France? Because, if France is on her knees, so is Europe: the European Union, re-instatement of the Imperium Francorum, is mostly a French multiplier, and is built around the principle of 1789, the FRENCH Republican Constitution of 1789 (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité), not the Constitution of the USA of 1789 (We The People of the USA, whatever that is, friendly to all sorts of discrimination, extermination, exploitation and slavery).

OK, I am exaggerating a bit. The master does not want to destroy the slave. The Master just want the slave to abide by His law. The law of the strongest. Cyrus Vance, a francophobe in Manahattan, is the strongest. His Law is the best. Vance knows well that, this French spirit of 1789 is counter-attacking. He needs to fight back.

So he caged DSK, head of the IMF, who had the impertinence of raising hundreds of BILLIONs dollars of SDR. A word on this here, as it goes to the ugly heart of the USA centered global plutocracy.

Under Strauss-Kahn, a senior, famous economy professor, the IMF’s pursuit of financial stability called for a new world currency to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. An IMF report from January 2011 called for a stronger role for special drawing rights (SDR), to stabilize the international monetary system. For most countries, there would be many serious advantages in switching the pricing of certain assets, such as oil and gold, from dollars to SDRs. The BNP affair is a case in point.

For Manhattan “Justice” gangsters, the call for SDRs was a call for the end of Manhattan, New York, Wall Street.

DSK had followed Keynes’ idea (Krugman is anti-Keynes about this, unsurprisingly). To foil Keynes, the head of the financial commission at Bretton Woods, the American goons substituted false documents at the last minute. This forgery is how the dollar became the world’s reserve currency.

And how Wall Street has now a weapon to destroy European banking.

Symbolically, only one man was criminally prosecuted for the 2008 financial heist. A lower employee of Goldman Sachs. A French citizen, of course. Tragedy is emphasized by comedy, to make it more blatant, that, whatever it is, it’s the fault of the French.

My advice? It was important to go all-out to blunt Putin’s Pluto grab. But one should remember one ought to crush infamy (“Écrasez l’Infâme”; Voltaire signed it: Ecr. L’Inf.)

This, this BNP affair, is even worse than Putin. In a way, it is the sort of mood and chronic conspiracy, that caused Putin to act the way he did.

The old Putin, say of 20 years ago, just as the old Yeltsin, was naïve: he really believed the free market propaganda oozing from Harvard, and other austere American institutions. Then Vlad found out how the sausage was made. He decided to make his own. (Hitler went down that road too, sort of.)

The Russian plutocracy, around Putin, is just a subset of the global plutocracy that individuals gravitating around Wall Street feel, and think that they direct and control.

Thus, it is even more important to smash the power grab of the USA’s plutocracy. Putin made an error, a grave error. He has to reverse it. However the system of exponentiating greed around Wall Street has been messing with the world, big time, for EXACTLY a century. (As I have explained, the White House excited the Kaiser to go to war against France in 1914, and then proceeded to make a fortune, feeding and arming the Kaiser.)

When I wrote “Mistral Blows Hard”, I argued that it was smarter to give Putin his amphibious, French made, aircraft carriers. Now, I would argue, it’s a necessity.

Be it only so that Putin can land his “little green men” in Manhattan, and go arrest the criminals there who call themselves proponents of “Justice”. When extirpating cancer, one has to exterminate its stem cells. This important, recent discovery in oncology has a morality of its own, that carries far, and wide.

Truth ought to look better than any of us. And that’s:

Ecr. L’Inf.

Patrice Aymé