Category: MK

The “Too Big Too Jail” nonsense that surrounds large U.S. banks and their above the law employees has been glaringly obvious and thoroughly documented for quite some time now. Yet what represents an even larger slap in the face to millions of hard-working, law-abiding citizens, is how relentlessly the “justice” system goes after small time criminals, while merely fining oligarch thieves for far worse crimes. I first covered this theme earlier this year in my piece Some Money Launderers are “More Equal” than Others, which discussed how HSBC was caught laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels.

Well HSBC is back in the news. This time it relates to their transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah. If transactions such as these had even the slightest link to Bitcoin, there would be endless uproar, calls for countless Congressional hearings and demands to stop the currency at all costs. But when HSBC is caught doing it, what happens? A $32,400 settlement.

More from The Huffington Post:

A major U.S. bank has agreed to a settlement for transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday.

Concluding that HSBC’s actions “were not the result of willful or reckless conduct,” Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control accepted a $32,400 settlement from the bank. Treasury noted, as did HSBC in a statement to HuffPost, that the violations were voluntarily reported.

Everett Stern, a former HSBC compliance officer who complained to his supervisors about the Hezbollah-linked transactions, told HuffPost he was “ecstatic and depressed at the same time.”

“Those are my transactions, I reported them,” he said, satisfied that the government was taking action. But, he added, “Where I am upset was those were a handful of transactions, and I saw hundreds of millions of dollars” being transferred.

Stern said he hopes the government’s enforcement actions against HSBC have not come to an end with the latest settlement. “They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life,” he said.

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from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/19/hsbc-receives-slap-on-the-wrist-for-helping-to-finance-terrorists/
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I haven’t seen action in Bitcoin like we saw last night since earlier this year in the spring when the price went from $10 in January to $260 in April, and then crashed down to $50 before stabilizing in the $80-$120 range for months before beginning the latest parabolic move. I was so taken by the action in BTC China last night that I wasn’t able to sleep until 5am Rocky Mountain time, trying to buy what I could at the best prices possible. It was a crazy evening.

Yesterday I posted that while I thought BTC was at the lower end of the range at $650, there was the potential for some near-term headline risk. I thought that it might come from the U.S. banking system, but instead it came from China when they banned new renminbi deposits into the leading global exchange BTC China. While I am not saying that the price will now quickly launch to new highs, there was complete and total panic in the air last night. No question about that. In addition I tweeted that:

Remember at the peak, BTC China had a huge premium. Reasonable assumption near a low, BTC China would have a big discount. We see that now.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) December 18, 2013

Now I think we have a much more positive setup going forward, although a similar period of consolidation such as we saw earlier in this year is likely. The news out of China cannot get any worse, and BTC China as far as an exchange and price discovery mechanism is basically dead. The big risk now is that other nations take similar actions, but the sentiment is now sufficiently bad and people expect bad news. Last night represented the most BTC I have bought since the spring crash.

In light of all this a read posted going by the handle Anon Wibble provided an excellent comment and I have decided to republish it here. Would love to get reader feedback as well. Enjoy!

Bitcoin will prevail. This isn’t just another e-currency, this is an entire framework for communicating information and money unlike no other ever before. This is the biggest revolution since linux and the more you use bitcoin the better and more complex you realise it is.

Look at the following things:

1) bitcoin can do everything a bank can do

2) while it’s true that unlike credit cards, btc has no way to chargeback claims, also consider that in the past chargeback scams have defrauded business through payers likes paypal etc. Chargeback doesn’t prevent fraud at all, it moves the person being defrauded from one person to another. Also consider that escrow services do chargeback for far cheaper than credit cards do.

3) bitcoin isn’t just a currency it’s a protocol that can be used to exchange information, nowhere in the headlines is this even mentioned files and information can be exchanged through bitcoin nobody has even looked at this yet

4) JPMorgan wouldn’t have tried to patent their own version of bitcoin 170 times, if they didn’t think crypto currency wasn’t the future

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from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/18/my-thoughts-on-last-nights-btc-crash-and-a-guest-post-on-why-bitcoin-will-succeed/
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Here’s an article by Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy. He recently spent a day at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. As you might expect, some interesting tidbits came from the mouths of some of these control-freak statists. One truly unenlightened official seemed to hold the press in particular disregard and stated: “I have some reforms for the First Amendment.”  I’m quite certain he has some reforms in mind for the 4th Amendment as well…

Once again I ask, if they hold the U.S. Constitution and civil rights in such disdain; what exactly are they protecting us from?

From Foreign Policy:

For an organization that is so efficient at amassing data intended to be kept secret, the National Security Agency seemed surprisingly clumsy in accepting data that was volunteered to them. I’d emailed the bits and pieces of my personal data necessary to be cleared for access to the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade a week before the scheduled visit, with zero response. As it turns out, an NSA server has crashed, they told me, creating havoc with some email accounts. This sort of hiccup humanizes the agency, though it also raises questions about their vulnerability.

The NSA’s biggest strategic communications problem, however, is that they’ve been so walled off from the American body politic that they have no idea when they’re saying things that sound tone-deaf. Like expats returning from a long overseas tour, NSA staffers don’t quite comprehend how much perceptions of the agency have changed. The NSA stresses in its mission statement and corporate culture that it “protects privacy rights.” Indeed, there were faded banners proclaiming that goal in our briefing room. Of course, NSAers see this as protecting Americans from foreign cyber-intrusions. In a post-Snowden era, however, it’s impossible to read that statement without suppressing a laugh.

The NSA’s attitude toward the press is, well, disturbing. There were repeated complaints about the ways in which recent reportage of the NSA was warped or lacking context. To be fair, this kind of griping is a staple of officials across the entire federal government. Some of the NSA folks went further, however. One official accused some media outlets of “intentionally misleading the American people,” which is a pretty serious accusation. This official also hoped that the Obama administration would crack down on these reporters, saying, “I have some reforms for the First Amendment.” I honestly do not know whether that last statement was a joke or not. Either way, it’s not funny.

If that’s what they are willing to say when a professor is around, just imagine what they say behind closed doors…

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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Official at the NSA States: “I Have Some Reforms for the First Amendment” originally appeared on A Lightning War for Liberty on December 18, 2013.

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from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/18/official-at-the-nsa-states-i-have-some-reforms-for-the-first-amendment/
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The past several days have seen considerable weakness in the price of bitcoin. The selling was sparked by the revelation that the Chinese government had essentially instructed its financial system to avoid it. Then yesterday it was revealed that China had banned third-party payment companies from doing business with bitcoin exchanges. As far as price is concerned, I have stated repeatedly via Twitter that I think the China news caps the upside in the near-term (baring other material news of course) and that we are in a new range of $650-$1050 per BTC. At roughly $700 where we are now, I think at least 75% of the “China premium” is now out of the price. This sets up a solid risk/reward profile. However, there is one thing in the U.S. that people should be aware of and represents some headline risk if true.

Recently, a friend of mine noted that Chase has threatened to shutdown his business account due to his use of Coinbase (remember Coinbase recently received the largest VC investment in Bitcoin to-date). Apparently, the problem hasn’t been when money moves out of U.S. banking deposits and into the Bitcoin ecosystem, but rather when the currency is converted back to dollars and then deposited back into the Chase accounts. With this already being in my mind, I read the following Reddit post this morning:

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago, I posted that Chase decided to terminate my account, and they never notified me as to why they would do this. However, I believed it to be Bitcoin-related.

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from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/17/has-chase-begun-a-covert-war-on-bitcoin/
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