She Might Be A Hooker Enabler, But She's Not Wrong..

If my 16-year-old daughter wants to be a prostitute, then that’s fine... it’s more honest than banking.  Shocking mum gives her teenage girl the green light to enter vice trade.  You gotta love The Sun; now with 100 percent less Rupert!  Excerpts:

A FORMER brothel madam has given her 16-year-old daughter the all-clear to go out to work — as a PROSTITUTE.

Becky Adams, 45, has guided scores of call girls during 20 years in the world’s oldest profession.



The mum of two has now quit, but insists she would be happy if Emilia chose to be a “high class escort” — and says she would even help to get the teenager started.


Becky told The Sun: “Society may judge her but I wouldn’t. At least prostitution is an honest profession.


“I’d much rather she work as an escort than a banker.


“I couldn’t understand her wanting to do something morally wrong, something that could jeopardise someone else.”

What does it say about your occupation if hookers and madams think you're a scumbag, and everyone agrees? 

The Hedge Fund Trail In Liborgate Gets Hotter: Mega Fund Brevan Howard Next?

Oh my..  Lieborgate's turning out to be a real super inclusive club/scandal.  Zero Hedge.


Two days ago we made the "missing link" connection between traders in Libor manipulating banks (all of which curiously had a hub in Singapore: something else for the media that has been about 4 years too late on this topic to focus on) and hedge funds (most of which curiously centering on the otherwise sleepy bastion of banking: Geneva, Switzerland). The immediate aftermath was the loss of trading privileges of one Michael Zrihen. We are fairly certain this is just the beginning of the hedge fund bust: when all is said and done, many more funds will have terminated traders they hired for reasons (and kickbacks) unknown over the past 2 years as Lie-bor manipulators sought to put a clean firewalled break between their old employer and current one. Because apparently sometimes the regulators are that stupid and can be confused by a simple job change. And while many have assumed (and even calculated based on completely groundless assumptions) that only BBA member banks have benefited from Libor manipulation, the reality is that hedge funds were just as complicit and benefited just as much if not more. What is worse, they took advantage of their whale client status with manipulating banks, and courtesy of Total Return Swap and other leveraged gimmicks, made far more money when they co-opted two or more banks to do their bidding. Impossible you say: hedge funds would never be so stupid. Oh very possible: we present exhibit A - Brevan Howard, a "fund, with assets of $20.8 billion as of Dec. 31, has never had a losing year and returned 14.4 percent annualized from its April 2003 inception through the end of 2008" as Bloomberg said in a made to order profile of the funds recently. Perhaps there is a very simple reason for this trading perfection: "Brevan Howard telephoned on 20 Aug 2007 to ask the defendant to change the Libor rate," according to a paper filed with the Singapore High Court cited by Bloomberg."



Here is The Telegraph with a smoking gun that was promptly buried in the avalanche of sudden media coverage in the aftermath of the Barclays Liborgate settlement.

Tan Chi Min, a former RBS trader who claims he was wrongfully dismissed by the bank after it fired him for allegedly trying to manipulate Libor - the average rate at which banks lend to each other - said he had received the request in 2007 from Brevan Howard.
"Brevan Howard telephoned on 20 Aug 2007 to ask the defendant to change the Libor rate," according to a paper filed with the Singapore High Court cited by Bloomberg.

Oops.
That one statement should be enough to send shivers into the heart of whoever may be General Counsel of Brevan Howard (and many other mega funds right now whose names will make front page appearances in the coming weeks), as it provides the banks with something that so far has been missing. Motive. Because while it may be difficult to prove that Barclays or RBS benefited from Libor manipulation, pandering to a mega client is very, very easy to prove - there is always a trace. It also makes it very easy for the prosecution to include hedge funds, which are just as hated by the general populace as big banks if not more, into what is shaping up as one perfect litigation storm (and distraction from the real culprit here: the global central bank cartel).


Telegraph goes on:

The court filing alleges RBS "received this request without objection". Brevan Howard is not a party to the lawsuit and is not being investigated or sued for any alleged wrongdoing. RBS and Brevan Howard both declined to comment.


Mr Tan claimed in his filing that Scott Nygaard, head of short-term markets finance at RBS, knew about the call from Brevan Howard. However, the filing contained no further details to support his allegations. However, he is reported to have said he would provide further evidence at a later stage.
The legal case follows Mr Tan's firing in December over allegations he had attempted to improperly influence RBS's Libor-setting staff between 2007 and 2011. Mr Tan, who worked for RBS in Singapore as head of delta trading, claims he was wrongfully dismissed by the bank.

Ah yes our old friends: the ubiquitous Delta Traders who somehow have a finger in everything from ETF trading, to gamma, to convexity trades, and now- serving as the nexus between Libor manipulation demanding clients and in house Libor fixers.



The plot just gets thicker and thicker.

Mr Tan is claiming $1.5m (£943,000) in bonuses and 3.3m RBS shares that he says the bank owes him in pay. He claims in his lawsuit that asking for changes in Libor was "common practice" among RBS traders and that the bank "took requests from clients" to alter the rate.

And there it is: "Took requests from clients" not just manipulated rates for its own interest. And this is where the universe of guilty parties explodes exponentially, and reaches not only Geneva Switzerland, but virtually every single hedge fund that had even a modest fixed income trading link over the past decade.



Watch this space closely: it will get very hot soon.

Yes.  Yes it will get hot, very hot, very soon!

This Week In Financial Shenanigans..

Peregrine chief arrested for lying to regulators.  Raw Story.  Excerpts:

The head of collapsed US futures broker Peregrine Financial Group was arrested Friday on criminal charges, days after he apparently attempted suicide and confessed to fraud in a signed statement.



Russell Wasendorf, the sole owner and chief executive of Iowa-based PFG, admitted in the suicide note that he had embezzled millions of dollars from clients over 20 years.


The company’s accounts have a shortfall of about $200 million, according to a US regulator who sued the company Tuesday.

A US federal court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa said Friday that Wasendorf, 64, was charged with making false statements about customer funds.



He was due to appear in court later Friday.


“The complaint alleges that, from 2010 through July of 2012, Wasendorf made false statements to the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regarding the value of customer segregated funds held by Wasendorf’s company, Peregrine Financial Group, Inc.,” the court said in a statement.


According to the complaint, filed by the FBI, emergency personnel responding Monday to a 911 emergency call found Wasendorf “unresponsive” in his automobile, along with an apparent suicide note to his wife.

In addition, a signed statement was found inside the vehicle detailing fraud committed by Wasendorf through PFG over the past 20 years.

“I have committed fraud. For this I feel constant and intense guilt,” Wasendorf wrote.

“Through a scheme of using false bank statements I have been able to embezzle millions of dollars from customer accounts.”



The forgeries went undetected for nearly 20 years, he said, because he had sole access to the company’s accounts at US Bank.


Wasendorf said he used a combination of Photo Shop, Excel, scanners and printers to make “very convincing forgeries.”


“With careful concealment and blunt authority I was able to hide my fraud from others at PFG.”


When online banking became prevalent, he said he learned how to falsify online bank statements.


“The regulators accepted them without question.”


The Iowa court said that Wasendorf was interviewed by law enforcement personnel at the University of Iowa Hospital on Monday, and Wasendorf acknowledged he had written the statement and that the information it contained was true.


PFG, also known as PFG Best, filed Tuesday for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which involves the sale of assets to pay off creditors.


The action came hours after the CFTC sued PFG and Wasendorf, alleging they had falsified information in filings and overstated the company’s bank deposits.


The CFTC said the firm had a shortfall that currently exceeds $200 million.


“The whereabouts of the funds is currently unknown,” the CFTC said.


On Monday the National Futures Association, responsible for monitoring PFG for compliance with reporting requirements, took an emergency enforcement action against PFG and Peregrine Asset Management.


The NFA blocked new or additional customer accounts or funds, alleging PFG had failed to prove it had met capital and segregated funds requirements.


On Friday, other regulators indicated they were looking into the situation.


The US Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing records to determine where there are securities customer funds missing, SEC spokesman John Nester said.

A spokeswoman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, told AFP that “FINRA reps have been on-site at Peregrine’s Cedar Falls offices to look into the firm.”

Suicide note and FBI affidavit here:

The Real Libor Scandal   Paul Craig Roberts. From Activist Post.  Excerpts:


The question is, why do investors purchase long term bonds, which pay less than the rate of inflation, from governments whose debt is rising as a share of GDP? One might think that investors would understand that they are losing money and sell the bonds, thus lowering their price and raising the interest rate.



Why isn’t this happening?


PCR’s June 5 column, “Collapse at Hand,” explained that despite the negative interest rate, investors were making capital gains from their Treasury bond holdings, because the prices were rising as interest rates were pushed lower.


What was pushing the interest rates lower?


The answer is even clearer now. First, as PCR noted, Wall Street has been selling huge amounts of interest rate swaps, essentially a way of shorting interest rates and driving them down. Thus, causing bond prices to rise.


Secondly, fixing Libor at lower rates has the same effect. Lower UK interest rates on government bonds drive up their prices.


In other words, we would argue that the bailed-out banks in the US and UK are returning the favor that they received from the bailouts and from the Fed and Bank of England’s low rate policy by rigging government bond prices, thus propping up a government bond market that would otherwise, one would think, be driven down by the abundance of new debt and monetization of this debt, or some part of it.

Libor: They all knew – and no one acted

"Trade-Off": A Study In Global Systemic Collapse  Zero Hedge.  Excerpts:




The argument that a large-scale and globalised financial-banking-monetary crisis is likely arises from two sources. Firstly, from the outcome and management of credit over-expansion and global imbalances and the growing stresses in the Eurozone and global banking system. Secondly, from the manifest risk that we are at a peak in global oil production, and that affordable, real-time production will begin to decline in the next few years. In the latter case, the credit backing of fractional reserve banks, monetary systems and financial assets are fundamentally incompatible with energy constraints. It is argued that in the coming years there are multiple routes to a largescale breakdown in the global financial system, comprising systemic banking collapses, monetary system failure, credit and financial asset vaporization. This breakdown, however and whenever it comes, is likely to be fast and disorderly and could overwhelm society’s ability to respond.


Why Don’t the Corrupt Players On Wall Street and In D.C. Show Remorse for Their Destructive Actions…And Why Don’t We Stop Them?  Washington's Blog, via Zero Hedge.  Excerpts:

(From Bloomberg)

The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame [for the financial crisis].


Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”


As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”


How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders.”
***
They “largely caused the crisis” because their “single- minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.”
***
He says the unnamed “they” seem “to be unaffected” by the corporate collapses they cause. These psychopaths “present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk awayeconomic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.”

They continue to lie.  We continue to let them.