Below you will find three recent significant events that are acting as catalysts to accelerate the inevitable restructuring of the way we do business:
1) Sending a Message for Backpedaling on Settlements: “Earlier this year, John Peace, the chairman of Standard Chartered’s board, spoke at a news conference announcing the bank’s quarterly earnings. He was asked whether any employees would be held responsible for violations of United States laws restricting financial dealings with Iran and other countries that led to settlements with federal and state authorities costing the bank about $667 million. He responded, ‘We had no willful act to avoid sanctions; you know, mistakes are made — clerical errors — and we talked about last year a number of transactions which clearly were clerical errors or mistakes that were made.’
“There is just one big problem with attributing violations to mere ‘clerical errors.’ The deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department specifically provides that no one at Standard Chartered can make ‘any public statement contradicting the acceptance of responsibility’ in the settlement. And the statement of facts accompanying the agreement says that the bank ‘knowingly and willfully engaged in this criminal conduct,’ something far beyond mere mistakes.”
From London to New York to Cyprus, Fraud and Financial "Insanity"
2) Cyprus: It’s not over yet : “This was not a good weekend for Russian billionaires. First, Boris Berezovsky was found dead at his English country estate. Now, all the uninsured depositors (read: Russian plutocrats) at Cyprus’s two largest banks are going to be hit much, much harder than they feared they might be when the Cyprus crisis first erupted last week.
“Back then — a long, long week ago — Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades stood firm: there was no way he would allow uninsured depositors to lose more than 10% of their money. What a difference a week makes: now, if your uninsured deposits are at the Bank of Cyprus, you’re probably going to lose about 40% And if they’re at Laiki, you’re going to lose everything.
“The agreement between the Cypriot government and the Troika of the EU, IMF, and ECB is a bold and brutal geopolitical power-play. There might be language in the official communiqué about how ‘The Eurogroup looks forward to an agreement between Cyprus and the Russian Federation on a financial contribution’, but given the billions of euros that Russians are being forced to contribute unwillingly, the chances that they’ll happily throw a bit more money into the pot have to be tiny.
“In the Europe vs Russia poker game, the Europeans have played the most aggressive move they can, essentially forcing Russian depositors to contribute maximally to the bailout against their will. If this is how the game ends, it’s an unambiguous loss for Russia, and a win for the EU.”
Bernanke Fails to Answer Concerns about a Cyprus-Style Seizure of American Bank Deposits
3) BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Bypass World Bank, IMF: “The biggest emerging markets are uniting to tackle under-development and currency volatility with plans to set up institutions that encroach on the roles of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
“The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that began today in the eastern South African city of Durban, officials from all five nations say. They will also discuss pooling foreign-currency reserves to ward off balance of payments or currency crises.
“’The deepest rationale for the BRICS is almost certainly the creation of new Bretton Woods-type institutions that are inclined toward the developing world,’ Martyn Davies, chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based Frontier Advisory, which provides research on emerging markets, said in a phone interview. ‘There’s a shift in power from the traditional to the emerging world. There is a lot of geo-political concern about this shift in the western world.’
“The BRICS nations, which have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion and account for 43 percent of the world’s population, are seeking greater sway in global finance to match their rising economic power. They have called for an overhaul of management of the World Bank and IMF, which were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, and oppose the practice of their respective presidents being drawn from the U.S. and Europe.”
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