Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.
“Those of you around the world who are holding U.S. Treasury notes would do well to consult with a qualified financial planner to see how quickly you can dump any U.S. Treasury Bonds and any U.S. Dollars you may be holding before the U.S. suffers the economic collapse which is now unavoidable. If you are left holding Bonds or Dollars, you will likely be financially wiped out when the US Government repudiates its debt because it simply cannot pay anymore.”
This is an irresponsible and poorly thought out blog post if I’ve ever seen one. It is all unfounded claims and vague assertions. Motives are implied, wildly, and official sources are cherrypicked to suit the crazy claims. I reflex-posted the first article about this story before the facts were out, but this is looks like a clear-cut case of amateur forgery.
I’ll quickly outline the ways that the conspiracy theory listed in the linked article doesn’t hold up.
1) They got caught. If the Japanese wanted to get away with something they could easily send the bonds with a diplomat, who can refuse search and return home, as opposed to risking seizure sending them with a movie-plot smuggling plan via train, in an unnecessary third country.
2) The bond denominations that every source reporting on the story says were printed do not exist, and certainly not in the quantity described. Bearer bonds were never used for inter-governmental debt either.
3) Somehow selling these bonds on the “black market” to another government would require the owner to take a significant discount on them…and they would have to find a foreign government (or massive financial entity) who has the stones to buy them and one day redeem them for cash without stating where they came from.
4) The people that the Japanese government allegedly trusted with 3% of their GDP broke and confessed under a month of Italian police custody.
5) Seriously, there just were never that many bearer bonds issued. There are only 100 Million Dollars of US Treasury Bearer Bonds outstanding right now. Period. End of story.
There’s no conspiracy here. Move along folks.
If you read more of Bill Totten’s blog you’ll find more poorly researched selective readings of economic theory and history. It’s the same kind of stories you see in YouTube documentaries: about how the entire banking system is a sham, yada yada yada. This guy isn’t Noam Chomsky, or even Mencius Moldbug. What he lacks in knowledge he more than makes up for in unsolicited financial advice and outright fabrications, though.
I wanted to attack that blog, then checked this post’s reblog history. Financegeek nailed it, esp with the last sentence.
‘Another big bank is the subject of a depositor run amid charges its chairman has run off with customers’ money. Thankfully, this scandal is taking place in Eve Online, a space-age virtual reality created by CCP, a games developer and Iceland’s coolest company. But these troubles in the ether may offer some valuable lessons for earthly banking and regulation.’
(Via The Morning News.)
"The government stands to earn even more when it sells the stock warrants it holds in conjunction with its preferred shares in the 10 bank-holding companies that are paying their bailout."
Over at Clusterstock, we give a lot of thought to the future of banking. So many banks have gone bust this year that there seems to be an opportunity for starting a bank that would run very differently.
One obvious strategy would be to radically change the online banking experience. Most bank websites are clunky and unfriendly. The user experience could be vastly improved. Having, for instance, something like a Microsoft Money application would be nice. Between credit cards and ATMs, my bank knows where almost all my money goes. So why isn’t it tracking this for me, displaying it graphcially, and allowing me to consider what would happen if I shifted money from one activity to another?
Over at Continuations, Albert has been trying to conceive of a disruptive bank. There are some good ideas being discussed, particularly about how to make customers happier with the fees. But the main idea seems to be to separate the functions of a deposit bank and a lending bank. What he seems to have in mind is a 100% reserve bank that wouldn’t lend out the money of its customers. This would mostly mean eliminating interest, which is a substantial cost for customers. It’s not clear at all to me why this would benefit customers, especially since deposits are covered by FDIC insurance.
Albert suggests allowing customers who want to earn interest be allowed to select various lending schemes with part of their money. This would make participating in fractional reserve banking more transparent. But, again, its a lot more work for bank customers without much upside. I could see a certain type of libertarian being philosophically attracted to this kind of bank but its clearly not for the general customer.
Still, it’s good to see smart people trying to rethink banking.
Three words: Zappos of banking. Put everything into customer service.
