From Zero
Hedge:
As first reported here, two weeks ago,
European banks saw the amount of USD-loans
from the Fed, via the ECB's revised swap
line, surge to over $50 billion – a total
first hit in the aftermath of the Bear
Stearns failure prompting us to ask, "When
is Lehman coming?"
However, according to little-noted prepared
remarks by Anthony Sanders in his Friday
testimony to the Congress Oversight
Committee,
"What the Euro Crisis Means for
Taxpayers and the U.S. Economy, Pt. 1,"
we may have been optimistic, because the
end result will be not when is Lehman
coming, but when are the next two Lehmans
coming... as according to Sanders, the
relaunch of the Fed's swaps program may
"get to the $1 trillion level, or perhaps
even higher."
As a reference, FX swap line usage peaked
at $583 billion in the Lehman aftermath.
Needless to say, this estimate is rather
ironic because as Bloomberg's Bradely
Keoun reports,
"Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
yesterday told a closed-door gathering of
Republican senators that the Fed won’t
provide more aid to European banks beyond
the swap lines and the discount window –
another Fed program that provides
emergency funds to U.S. banks, including
U.S. branches of foreign banks."
Well, between $1 trillion-plus in FX swap
lines, and a...
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From Zero
Hedge:
Two headlines. Similar stories. The first
from Switzerland:
The United States authorities have
offered to lift the threat of legal action
against 11 Swiss banks in exchange for
information, a Swiss paper reported on
Sunday.
This is part of a very long story. The U.S.
Justice Department (DOJ) has been doing
everything it can to get the names of U.S.
citizens who have Swiss bank
accounts.
The DOJ damn-near busted UBS over
this a few years back. Now they are going
after the other Swiss banks. The lawyers
at the DOJ don't kid around:
"Give us the names or we'll sue the s**
out of you."
Given what happened to UBS ($780 million
in fines), the other banks have no choice
but to fold and hand over the info.
This second story ratchets things up a
bit and brings it home:
A federal district court judge has
given the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
permission to serve a "John Doe" summons
on the California State Board of
Equalization, demanding the names of
residents who transferred property to
their children or grandchildren for
little or no money from 2005 to
2010.
... These pushy techniques have worked
well in Switzerland...
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From Washington's Blog:
I've
previously noted that Obama says he can
assassinate American citizens living on
U.S. soil.
This may sound over-the-top.
But nationally-recognized constitutional
law expert Jonathan Turley (the second most
cited law professor in the country, one of
the top 10 lawyers handling military cases,
who has served as a consultant on homeland
security and constitutional issues and is a
frequent witness before the House and
Senate on constitutional and statutory
issues, who ranked 38th in the top 100 most
cited ‘public intellectuals’ in a recent
study by a well-known judge) said yesterday
on C-Span (starting at 15:50):
It's even worse than coming into your
house. President Obama has just stated a
policy that he can have any American
citizen killed without any charge, without
any review, except his own. If he's
satisfied that you are a terrorist, he
says he can kill you anywhere in the
world, including in the United
States.
Two of his aides were just at a panel two
weeks ago and they reaffirmed they believe
that American citizens can be killed on the
order of the President anywhere, including
the United States.
You've now got a president who says that
he can kill you...
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