Daily Pivot Points
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Crude Rallies an Eighth Session along with Equities
Crude has extended its impressive rally to fresh yearly highs for an eighth consecutive day. This is run is now one bullish close short of matching the recent record-setting advance between July 15th and 23rd – though the current bull wave is far more intense than its predecessor with a 13.6 percent climb.
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Swiss Offshore Banking Demystified
Swiss offshore banking has a solid reputation due to its long history as a centre for wealth management, asset protection, tax-advantaged investment and of course bank secrecy.
Its bankers are regarded as some of the most trustworthy and experienced in the world.
It also has some of the strictest bank secrecy laws. These state that someone who shares someone’s private financial information without a court order are subject to fines and jail time. Bank secrecy should not be lifted in cases of tax evasion (e.g.non-reporting), only in those of tax fraud (e.g. willfully forged documents). However it is up to a judge to decide on a case by case basis into which category a dispute falls.
Swiss Bank Secrecy Law
Swiss bank secrecy has existed since 1934, when the custom of client confidentiality was written into the legal code by the Swiss Banking Act. Banking secrecy principles include statutorily enforced privacy. The Swiss law strictly prohibts sharing others’ information with third parties, including the tax man, governments, or even the authorities in Switzerland themselves, with the exception of when requested (via subpoena) by a Swiss judge.
But, banking secrecy in Switzerland will not be upheld in bankruptcy or divorce cases where legal requests for information will be honored. In other criminal matters such as money laundering and terrorism bank secrecy may also be breached.
EU Savings Tax Directive
Switzerland is part of the EU Savings Tax Directive, which requires overseas savings interest to be declared among participant countries. Foreign Swiss account holders who are affected by this law (EU nationals) have the choice of declaring their offshore bank account or letting their Swiss bank deduct a 35% withholding tax at source. These taxes are then redistributed by the Swiss government, leaving privacy intact.
Numbered Accounts
Numbered accounts are those which carry a number rather than name to identify the account holder when transactions are made. In early summer of 2004 “AML”, or anti-money laundering laws were enacted that effectively ended these accounts, at least as they had been previously organized. These bank accounts now require complete identification b?? Banks in Switzerland are required to adhere to “know you customer” KYC rules as laid out in Basel II and complete all necessary due diligence on their prospective clients.
Wealth Management and Portfolio Management
It is not easy to get a Swiss bank account with a private Swiss banker. These accounts will start at around 500,000 USD, and you must turn up in Switzerland in person to open one. If you have a substantial amount to invest you may even get a managed portfolio where your own private banker manages your funds according to your instructions or guidelines to balance risk, security and liquidity with maximum returns.
Concerns over the Safety of Swiss Offshore Banking
Swiss bank accounts and Swiss offshore banking have made headlines over the undeclared accounts of US citizens held at global banks UBS and Credit Suisse. The Swiss government has allowed bank secrecy to be pierced in a small number of cases judged to be tax fraud.
These banks made it possible for such problems to occur by opening branches in the US and thus making themselves subject to US law. As a result accounts at large banks such as these with branches in your home country are not viable options if you are looking for confidential offshore banking. Swiss bank secrecy is still completely applicabel to those banks which have been wise enough to limit their exposure to the borders of Swizterland, and in such cases there is no change. People that violate the bank secrecy laws face imprisonment, and banks are liable for damages.
Another concern have been the persistent rumors that the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Treasury have tapped into the SWIFT, or interbank electronic network used for clearing international financial transactions, seriously compromising bank secrecy. Of coure, any information obtained in such a covert manner could not be used in a court of law, however, the fact that this information may be exposed has been very concerning to privacy experts and those concerned with the growth and overreach of governments.
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The RBS Bonus Bonanza
The Royal Bank of Scotland is set to dish out record bonuses of up to £5m
While these numbers sound especially outrageous, taxpayers were heartened to learn that the bonuses of millions of pounds would only be available for the top 20 staff in the bank, the other employees of the struggling, functionally insolvent institution would only receive on average around 1/4 million pounds, brought down by including cleaning staff, the lunch room attendants, and delivery boys.
The pay packages in the investment banking division total £4 billion — easily surpassing those packages awarded at the high of the absurdity of the financial boom in 2007 and about 66% higher than those paid last year.
By a totally unrelated coincidence, RBS had to be rescued from financial collapse by the British taxpayers, and US taxpayers, courtesy of the AIG slight of hand with an injection of more than £20 billion.
The taxpayer now holds a 70% stake in the bank. Large bonuses will put RBS on a collision course with UK Financial Investments, which oversees taxpayers’ investments in banks. In a completely novel concept they’ve decided to let those that actually own an institution decide how much the employees make in compensation.
The RBS bonuses are the latest sign that either we’ve learned absolutely nothing or the piglets are looting in an ever frenzied pace to get all they can before the ultimate collapse of everything. In a miraculous turn of events the geniuses at the banks that have survived the financial crisis are now making huge profits in areas such as debt and currency trading, where free money, loaned with virtually no interest and inside information on rate moves and currency announcements have created trading opportunities.
Some traders in specialised areas are making bigger profits than before because of the chaos created by the collapse. After a series of forced mergers, there are also fewer competitors in a number of areas, allowing the banks to charge clients higher fees.
The bank has already provoked anger over a bonus package of nearly £10m for Stephen Hester, its chief executive, which he will earn if he turns round the bank. Hester has said in recent interviews that even his parents think he is paid too much.
Paul Myners, the City minister, has written to the boards of all the banks operating in Britain and reminded them that they should hold on to their cash to build up reserves, rather than hand it over to their executives and traders.
Lloyds Banking Group, which is 43% owned by taxpayers, has been working on plans for a multi-million-pound incentive programme for its top managers.
Last week Goldman Sachs, the American bank, which employs 5,500 people in London, announced that its staff would share about £13 billion in pay and bonuses.
Even banks that have lost money are believed to be considering enormous payouts to some of their senior investment bankers. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which revealed a quarterly loss of more than £600m last week, is believed to be preparing to make big bonus payouts to staff in its London operations.
(note: you really wouldn’t believe some of the paragraphs that i just took out of this story as they ran a laundry list of banks and their bonus schemes coming up…you also probably wouldn’t believe how much of this story is left exactly as printed.)
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Citi, JPM, Wells: Capital Requirements are ’so Great Depression I’
Oct. 16 (Bloomie) — C(sh)itigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. told U.S. regulators that raising capital requirements next year would be lame, and argued that lending and the economic recovery would be harmed.
Banks need three years to continue the farce of solvency until I can complete my looting operation and parchute out of this mess and retire to someplace with umbrellas in the drinks, Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said yesterday in a letter to regulators. Requiring banks to “assume the risk-based capital effects immediately, or even over one year, is so Great Depression I,” he wrote.
Previousy asleep at the wheel regulators, including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. asked if anyone had a good comeback for the diss in Gerspach’s letter and hether to give him more time to stuff his pockets before the whole system imploded. The rule passed in May by the fasb eliminates off-balance-sheet trusts known as Qualifying Special Purpose Entities, forcing banks to move billions of dollars of assets and liabilities onto their books. Fortunately for the banks, no one bothered to tighten up the rules on what constituted an ‘asset’. However, not satisfied with the unbelievably lax standards and obviously fraudulent asset pricing now going on with unperforming loans, JP Morgan weighed in on behalf of the banks as well.
The capital requirements “will have a significant and negative impact on our ability to leverage up to the hilt again in a purposefully fraudulent ponzi pyramid, and leave the taxpayer holding the bag again,” said the letter from JPMorgan, the New York-based bank that this week reported its biggest quarterly profit since the subprime-mortgage market collapsed in 2007 – a totally coincidental occurance.
“We strongly support a longer phase-in period for the rule changes. The longer we kick the can down the road, the more looting we can do, and the deeper we put the serf class down where he belongs,” according to JPMorgan’s letter, which was signed by Managing Director Adam Gilbert. The change would take effect for annual reports after Nov. 15.
‘We’ll Take Our Ball and Go Home’
The rule “could lead to the result that the banks will have to actually maintain safeguards against blowing up, like actual capital, and loan loss reserves. In fact, every $1 billion of additional capital held from newly consolidated assets ‘crowds out’ more than $15 billion in loans. In other words, if you don’t play by our rules, we’ll take our ball — you know, the one that you gave us when you robbed the treasury and gave us several trillion dollars – and we’ll go home,” Paul Ackerman, Wells Fargo’s treasurer, wrote in a letter yesterday to the Fed, FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision.
“That sort of fear mongering will definately get the attention of politicians,” said Robert Willens, a former managing director at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., who now runs his own tax and accounting advisory firm in New York. “Hell, who in their right mind would politick for living responsibly within your means. It’s been shown time and again that that issue is a loser with the voters.”
Citigroup, the New York-based bank that yesterday reported a third-quarter profit of $101 million, argued that bringing off-balance vehicles onto its books would lead to responsible lending and the probability that the sort of thing that happened the last few years would never happen again, Citigroup said.
“Hey, it took us 80 years to get rid of Glass-Steagal,” Gerspach wrote. “Why on God’s green earth would we want that kind of responsible, boring, banking again when we have 300 million serfs and their progeny who will pay for our mistakes when we blow up. Look if you need something to tell the serfs, tell them that we’ll cut off their credit cards, and jimmy’s school loan programs. That should do it.”
Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen and JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined to comment beyond the content of the letters. Julia Tunis Bernard, a spokeswoman for San Francisco- based, also declined to comment.
Poo’ed Loans
Lenders booked ‘profits’, before reality caught up with the U.S. subprime mortgage market, by selling ‘pooled’ loans (aka poo’ed loans) to off-balance-sheet trusts, which repackaged them into mortgage-backed securities. Despite the haunting similarity to what Enron pulled in the first part of this decade, no one could imagine that these would go wrong. Banks sold those securities to other off-balance-sheet vehicles they sponsored, concealing from investors that the securities were backed by deteriorating home loans. After all, concealment, lies, fraud, hey, isn’t that what accountants are supposed to do for investors?
Luckily, a massive effort by the Federal Reserve and other ‘regulators’ have covered this turd for another couple of months before the mess blows sky high and Americans are forced to live within their means. Despite multiple inquiries we were unable to get any banks to go on the record on the rumor that they are attempting to avoid the pain of coming clean with their loan books until after dec 21, 2012 on the off chance that the Mayans were right.
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Bill Shields All But Largest Banks From Regulation
WASHINGTON — In a sharp reversal from their previous unwritten rule of bending over smaller community banks at every turn in favor of backing irresponsible risk taking and massive bonus schemes by the larger banks, the House Financial Committee bowed to pressure from a group of torch and pitchfork waiving citizens outside the Capitol Building yesterday and approved an exemption for 98% of the nation’s banks from oversight by a new agency created to keep credit card holders, home loaners, and other debt slaves from rioting.
The exemption would prevent the new consumer financial protection agency from conducting annual examinations of the lending practices at more than 8,000 of the nation’s 8,200 banks, leaving only the largest banks in a position where they could be reviewed. In related news, approximately 200 of the nations 8200 banks began readying plans to spin out their credit and loan divisions in order to continue to shirk the dreaded specter of oversight and ethical dealing.
Earlier in the day, the committee finished work on a separate politically motivated legislation for regulating the derivatives market. Not to be outdone, lobbiest ensured that the derivatives laws contained carve-outs for the priviledged few and their client list, so as not to upset the delicate balance of total world domination by a few annoited banking houses.
In another shocking development, the exemption for the banks was endorsed by the chairman, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who receives the majority of his campaign contributions from those receiving the carve out in the new derivatives law.
“After that unprecedented ‘give away’ to the biggest banking houses, we really need to level the playing field by letting the community banks and credit unions run wild with leverage and ill advised bets without the bothersome burden of regulation,” representative Miller said. “They’ve been complaining for years that their smaller size and lower leverage makes it difficult for them to afford the best and the brightest of the crooks coming out of the ivy league schools these days. For them, the burden of regulation is very real because they don’t have the required expertise to get around the government meddling into irrelevancies like ‘liquidity’, ‘capital requirements’, marking assets to ‘market’ and ’sarbanes oxley’. Having to actually prove solvency can make it impossible to compete with the large money center banks.”
Under the Miller-Moore amendment, the new agency would have the authority to write rules for all banks and other lenders, including lenders that have never faced significant regulation. Fortunately, the banks with assets of less than $10 billion and credit unions smaller than $1.5 billion would not face regular exams by the agency.
“My consituencies are telling me it’s gonna be impossible to pass another trillion to the large banks. Fortunately, displaced bankers from the larger banks can simply move to the smaller community banks and credit unions to continue the graft. Of course, it’ll be harder to steal as much with less capital, but when there are absolutely no leverage limitations, and no regulatory oversight, they can just lever these small banks up with several trillion in bets,” said Frank. “Then when the bets go bad, we can bail them out too under the guise of ‘market fairness’ and ‘competition’. It’s pretty brilliant really.”
The amendment was warmly greeted by lobbyists for the smaller banks,
“The Miller-Moore amendment addresses some of our key concerns,” said Camden R. Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents about 5,000 financial institutions.
Party on.
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Obama Declares China Isn’t a Currency Manipulator
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite the fact that a 4 month old corpse has a more active ekg than the usd/cny chart, the Obama administration did not declare China a currency manipulator on Thursday.
Treasury did go so far as to mention that it had “serious concerns” about their ability to keep a straight face if forced to continue to tell people that the usd/cny ‘flatline’ chart had anything to do with free markets.
American manufacturers believe that China is keeping its currency at artificially low levels against the dollar to gain unfair trade advantages. While critics say the weak Chinese currency has resulted in lost U.S. jobs, officials in the whitehouse retorted that without the tacit agreement in place to root the core of American manufacturing in return for them continuing to support US government overspending they’d be unable to continue their profligate ways.
Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, said that China’s currency manipulation and us treasury recycling had contributed significantly to his party’d ability to push their agenda through overspending on their pet projects and friends of the administration. He expressed the hope that an effort by President Obama and the G-20, but also admitted that as soon as China stops supporting their idiotic campaign of overpsending the ‘party will be over’.
The administration’s decision to keep the absurd charade that the currencies are not manipulated came in Treasury’s required semi-annual report to Congress. Based on a 1988 law, the administration must designate countries judged to be manipulating their currencies to boost their exports to the United States or make U.S. products more expensive in overseas markets. Only laws older than 25 years may be completely ignored.
Had China been declared a currency manipulator, it would necessitate negotiations between the two countries and could lead to really boring rounds of talks peppered with lots of disgusting banquets filled with shark fin soup and sea cucumbers. Law makers were obviously very anxious to avoid such a consequence.
Treasury Secretaries John Snow and Henry Paulson, who served under President George W. Bush, also sought to increase pressure on China to allow its currency to rise in value against the dollar. However, once they realized that China could stop buying Treasuries and allow their whole artificial world to implode if its currency was allowed to rise, they immediately backed off their stance.
Obama, desperate to appease the socialist union vote in the rust belt during the election, promised to take a tougher stance against China on trade issues. But in April, with the presidency firmly in hand and being declared the saviour, the administration said China’s actions did not meet the legal requirements to be named a currency manipulator.
Obama in September did decide to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese tire imports, agreeing to demands of U.S. manufacturers and their unions that a flood of cheap Chinese tires were costing U.S. manufacturing jobs. Saving tire manufacturing jobs was an important stance to boost U.S. exports now that the Chinese are making Hummers. “Hey they get to make the cars we used to make here, but we get to supply the low value commodity items, pretty fair trade,” said Herbert Hunsucker, a White House trade representative.
American manufacturers contend that China’s currency is undervalued by 20 to 40 percent against the dollar, giving the country a huge trade advantage. An undervalued Chinese currency means that Chinese products are cheaper for U.S. consumers and American products cost more in the Chinese market.
The U.S. trade deficit with China totals $143.7 billion through August, the largest imbalance with any country. Still, the figure is running 15.1 percent below the same period in 2008, a decline attributed to the fact that Americans can’t jam anymore plastic walmart crap on their credit cards without a default.
In 2005 China modified its currency regime, allowing its currency, the renminbi, to increase in value by about 21 percent against the dollar through last summer. “Currency regime” is the orwellian phrase the chinese use for ‘manipulation’ and ‘control’ of the currency’s rate.
However, ina shock to all observers, since that time the renminbi has not risen further. U.S. manufacturers contend that China has blocked further currency appreciation because of concerns that its trade surpluses were shrinking in the midst of the global economic downturn. Horrified by such a strong statement the Chinese responded, “me chinese, me play joke, me put pee pee inyour coke….”
“Both the rigidity of the renminbi and the reacceleration of reserve accumulation are serious concerns which should be corrected to help ensure a stronger, more balanced global economy consistent with the G-20 framework,” according to the Treasury report.
Obama and the other ptb of the G-20 nations pledged at a meeting in Pittsburgh, glorious Pittsburgh (?), last month to develop a program to go after worrisome global imbalances. These include the monster trade deficits and soaring budget imbalances in the US and China’s large trade surpluses.
The G-20 countries are scheduled to meet in Scotland next month to figure out a way to contine the transfer of wealth in a way that is slighly more stealth and keeps the insurrections to a minimum while accomplishing the goals of one world government and one world currency.
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IRS Steps Up Witch Hunt for Secret Offshore Bank Accounts
Oct. 15 (originally reported by Bloomberg) — The IRS is intensifying its hunt for secret offshore banking, opening offices in Beijing, Sydney and Panama City after more than 7,500 Americans revealed undeclared accounts in 70 countries on six continents.
Internal Revenue Commissioner said yesterday Americans scared into coming forward before today’s deadline, which was manufactured to create a ‘false urgency’ on behalf of the sheep, have revealed accounts ranging in value from $10,000 to more than $100 million. The partial amnesty won’t be extended, he said, however then mumbled something like ‘again’, and winked and nudged this reporter.
Americans with undeclared offshore accounts have been under growing pressure since the US began inundating the media with stories of ‘cracking down’. In addition, in August, Switzerland agreed to hand over as many as 4,450 UBS AG accounts, from people who “didn’t matter” to settle a lawsuit in which the U.S. had sought as many as 52,000 accounts. (It has been revealed by UBS sources close to the matter that the list of 4450 accounts includes primarily widows, dentists, and the deceased — no bankers executives of fortune 500 companies with political contribution funds or politicians themselves have been included in the list.)
IRS Commissioner Shulman continued, “We’re going to be scouring the 7,500 disclosures to identify financial institutions, advisers and others who helped these serfs….uh i mean ‘taxpayers’ act like corporations,” the Commssioner said during a propoganda call with reporters. “This entire effort is not just about UBS and a single country.”
It isn’t yet known how much overlap might exist between the 4,500 names that UBS will eventually provide and the 7,500 people who have come forward to the IRS, Shulman said. However, great care went into properly informing those “in the know” that they were safe.
As part of its efforts to defraud and bully the American public into ‘compliance’, the IRS also intends to hire more than 800 new thugs in the next year and add staff to eight existing overseas offices, including Hong Kong and Barbados. “After all,” the Commissioner continued, “we’ve got to extract money from expats as well as just citizens. You don’t think you escape the long arm of the IRS just by leaving the country’s confines. Oh no. You were born into tax-slavery, you die in tax-slavery.”
After a reporter on the call reminded Shulman that some did ‘earn’ their freeman status by becoming part of the publically traded corporate elite, the Commissioner softened his statement slightly. “Alright, for those 1% of you destined to live on the backs of the other 99%, of course. But I’m talking to the ‘masses’ here.”
Back ‘on message’, he continued, “We have seen a very strong response to the program and I am very pleased with the results,” Shulman said.
Taxpayers disclosed assets that came from inheritances, profits skimmed from U.S. businesses, and international business transactions, he said.
“Clearly, assets cannot move from one generation to the other, profits cannot be strategically placed in tax havens, and profits generated outside the shores of the U.S. cannot be left to accumulate tax-free. It clearly states in tax law that these ‘exceptions’ are only available to corporations, who the supreme court says can take on the characteristics of a living person — for purposes of contract law. You see, corporations could just up and move….people, you see, we have them by the shorthairs.”
U.S. lawmakers praised the IRS program and called for stronger laws to help the agency. “We’ve done such a great job of enforcing the laws we already have on the books to avoid fraud and limit the growth and scope of the Federal Reserve, what we really need are more laws,” said Senator Shumer in a press release in support of the IRS victory.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat whose Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has held two hearings into how UBS solicited Americans to put assets in Swiss banks, said he’ll keep pushing legislation to give the IRS more tools. He said he plans to offer his proposal as an amendment to a health-care measure the Senate will debate later this year.
“Hell, if I can’t get more power to the IRS in a standalone bill, I’ll just sneak it into a 9000 page bill on ‘healthcare reform’. They’ll be so busy arguing over the actual bill, they’ll never even notice this little added ‘treasure’ at the end. And besides, who wouldn’t want to take care of the sick and the elderly? It’s ‘un-American’, ” Levin said.
Levin continued, “Luckily, many Americans are losing confidence in the ability of tax-haven banks to secure what’s rightfully theirs from the grasping claws of the government and frivilous lawsuits in an unjust legal system,” Levin said. “But it is also clear that thousands of other taxpayers are still in the shadows, working to secure what they’ve rightfully earned, and keep their offshore accounts hidden from the politicians and judges who know better how their wealth should be distributed.”
Montana Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees the IRS, is drafting his own legislation to double financial penalties on those who avoid taxes by moving money offshore.
‘A Start’
He called the 7,500 disclosures “a start” that demonstrates the IRS propoganda is working.
“With record deficits and a weakened economy, we owe it to politicians, and government employees (myself included) to set an aggressive agenda that puts an end to offshore tax avoidance once and for all,” Baucus said. “After all, I’m a public employee to, and if you kill of overly generous pay, benefits and pensions to lawmakers and public employees, I’d have to earn an honest living by adding value somewhere.”
Under the IRS program announced in March, the confiscation will take 20 percent of an account’s assets based on its peak value in the previous six years. Luckily, in many cases, these peak years include the heady year of 2006.
“We feel this program enables us to advertise that it’s only 20 percent, lure some suckers in, and then take about half of what’s remaining since the depress—er, i mean recession has halved most of these accounts from peak,” the Commissioner said.
Ordinarily, the IRS can seize the higher of $100,000 or 50 percent of an offshore account’s value when the holder deliberately doesn’t disclose the account to the Treasury Department. The penalty can apply each year that required forms aren’t filed, so after three years of noncompliance an account holder can owe 150 percent of the account’s value.
An IRS representative speaking on condition of anonymity said, “Hey, look, we rely on voluntary disclosure, hence all the propoganda and fear tactics…Regarding the 150 percent: well, clearly, you didn’t think you were allowed to work for your own benefit did you? Your life belongs to the state.”
Avoiding Prosecution
People who come forward voluntarily can avoid criminal prosecution and their identities will remain a secret under federal law requiring tax records to be kept confidential.
George Clarke, a tax lawyer at the Washington-based Miller & Chevalier firm, who is representing about 20 people seeking leniency in the program, said the IRS’s announcement indicates the agency is positioning itself to more efficiently hunt tax cheats.
“Look, in half these cases it’s some poor schmuck who’s worked his entire life for some assets and doesn’t want a cheating wife or frivilous lawsuit to drain him like an above ground pool,” he said. “If they agree to keep it on the hush hush and out of public light, the sheeple are more willing to line up and be sheered — If it’s just the IRS, they are less likely to lose their balls to a divorce settlement or ‘personal injury’ lawsuit. It’s a brilliant approach, really.”
Shulman said the IRS is building on the information it has received, and declined to estimate how much money the IRS will capture.
“You add this huge media and propoganda blitz up and it means equals voluntary disclosure and compliance for the vast majority of sheeple thinking about hiding assets offshore,” Shulman said. “If I had to justify this on captured assets alone, the revenue wouldn’t begin to approach the costs.”
He continued, “It’s like a prison. A few guards have to keep a lot of prisoners at bay through fear and intimidation. In the coming weeks and months, as tax receipts plummet and deficit spending soars into the teeth of a global collapse, the saber rattling by the IRS will become deafening.”
The voluntary disclosure program isn’t available to widows or dentists already under scrutiny by the IRS. Since December 2007, six UBS clients have pleaded guilty and a seventh has agreed to do so. A UBS banker pleaded guilty; two were indicted; and three Europeans were charged with enabling U.S. tax evasion.
The Justice Department has said 150 taxpayers, and no corporations, banks, charities, goldman sachs employees, or ‘religious institutions’ are under criminal investigation.
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Retail Sales Dip without Cash for Clunkers
Economic data out of the U.S.
September retail sales data is in for the United States, and it appears as though there has been an overall decrease. However, it is worth noting that, if auto sales are taken out of the picture, forex trading, euro forex trading, U.S. dollar, economy, economic data, forex, greenback”>retail sales were actually up.
Clearly, Cash for Clunkers had a great deal to do with how well retail sales did overall in August. Without the program, it appears that auto dealers are suffering a bit. However, the news that retail sales without autos are up. It means that other consumer spending may be on the rise.
The news hasn’t done much in the way of helping the U.S. dollar, however. forex trading, euro forex trading, U.S. dollar, economy, economic data, forex, greenback”>Yesterday the euro moved higher, and it appears that today will continue the rally for the euro in forex trading against the greenback.
See Also
- Economic Data and the U.S. Dollar
forex trading news and information
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US Dollar Slips Lower; Euro Resistance Line at 1.5000 TodayUS Dollar Slips Lower; Euro Resistance Line at 1.5000 TodayUS Dollar Grinds Lower with EUR/USD Resistance at 1.5
Pressure remains on the US dollar but the New Zealand Dollar is actually the weakest of the major currencies right today. A EURu.s. dollar resistance line is at…
forex news sourceThe US dollar is hurting however, the NZD is doing the worst among the major currencies today. The EURUSD is setting up a line of resist at 1.5000.
as reported by Jamie Saettele
forex news source
Tthe EURUSD has traded to a new high for 2009 and focus is now on the top of the channel from early July (5th wave channel, more on that below), which is at 1.5002 (on 10/14).
For a topping pattern to be in play the eur/usd would have to dip below 1.4670. The eur/usd has been channeling since July and suggests the current count is correct. So, a push over 1.4847 is likely wave of 5 of v of C. Again, the channel top is 1.5002 today and increases about 11 pips per day.
Jamie wrote yesterday that “an objective remains 1.5300 (just above the 161.8% extension) but a corrective rally may delay a decline to that level. In any case, a bearish bias is warranted against the line extended from the September and October 8th highs.”
This far, the line has held. Weakness in a larger 3rd wave remains possible with price below 1.6125. Your tactic can be to maintain a smallish position in the event that this happens. Potential shorter period supports are in place at price points: 1.5880, 1.5840, and 1.5825.Pressure remains on the US dollar but the New Zealand Dollar is actually the weakest of the major currencies right today. A EURu.s. dollar resistance line is at…
forex news source
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