Financial fuckery thread

[LMNO]

"Money is just a way of keeping score."

This is also a very important quote.  If it means nothing to them, then via the Mind Projection Fallacy, it means nothing to anyone else, either.

[Junkenstein]

Nail, head, hitting.

I've worked for more than a few employers who refused to give pay rises as policy. More than a few staff were on the poverty line and costs of living were still increasing. The apathy from above was amazing. "Working harder" was not the way out of that hole. Few staff took the leap into the unknown rather than get by on his pittance.

It also helps explain the hatred of things like minimum wage, unions, workers rights etc.... If you don't care about a pittance, reasonable hours and various benefits, why should they? Get back down the mine.

[Junkenstein]

Spin the wheel and speculate on how much they will actually pay!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22552109

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has won its case in the High Court, where it had been accused of illegally letting investment bank Goldman Sachs off part of its tax bill.

The campaign group UK Uncut Legal Action had claimed that the taxpayer had been cheated of up to £20m.

It said HMRC had let Goldman Sachs off the hook through a "sweetheart deal".

The judge ruled the deal was "not a glorious episode in the history of the Revenue", but said it was not unlawful.

HMRC said it had changed its practices since it made the agreement with Goldman Sachs in 2010.

It also said that the maximum that had been lost to taxpayers was £8m.

HA HA HA

HMRC welcomed today's judgement.

NO SHIT

"The High Court's comprehensive dismissal of UK Uncut's claim puts to rest the fallacy that HMRC is soft on large businesses," said Jim Harra, HMRC's director general for business tax.

It does?

But the group behind the legal action said it was important that the country knew more about so-called "bespoke settlements", where the tax authorities make private deals with big companies.

"We are disappointed we've lost the case," said Anna Walker of UK Uncut Legal Action.

"But it has exposed the truth behind these backroom deals," she told the BBC.

"The government talks tough on tax, but does not do much," she added.

The deal between Goldman Sachs and HMRC, in which the bank was excused interest payments on National Insurance contributions, was declared "reasonable" in a report by the National Audit Office.

Oh. Everything's actually OK then. Business as usual. Don't mention Vodaphone. Or Topshop. Or pretty much any national chain store to at least a degree.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22615146

The technology giant Apple has been defending itself against accusations that it's avoided paying tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits.

Chief executive Tim Cook told a US Senate committee Apple paid all the taxes it owed, complying with both the law, and the spirit of the law.

He said last year it paid $6bn to the US Treasury, a tax rate of about 30%.

Earlier, the head of a Senate committee panel accused Apple of "exploiting an absurdity" in its tax payments.

My Bullshit alarm is tingling.

[hirley0]

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[Junkenstein]

UK Finanical system shown to be a joke, again,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22689416

Consumers' lack of trust in financial firms led to a 92% increase in cases taken up by the financial ombudsman service last year.

Individuals were also more aware of their rights and more willing to complain, the chief ombudsman said.

Claims for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) dominated, accounting for 74% of complaints, but most sectors saw a rise in gripes.

Banks said they had hired more staff to deal with complaints efficiently.

It's pretty safe to say that any bank product currently being sold, or ever been sold is/was being mis-sold. I've actually lost track of the number of products/services that were dodgy.

Edit - Statistics are Fun!

New cases in numbers

PPI: 378,699 new cases, an annual rise of 140%
Current accounts: 19,560, annual rise of 34%
Mortgages: 11,920, annual rise of 25%
Unsecured loans: 7,809, annual rise of 25%
Investment-linked products: 4,697, annual rise of 42%
Mortgage endowments: 4,657, annual rise of 43%
Pensions: 4,401, annual rise of 27%
Other banking services: 3,838, annual rise of 30%

[Junkenstein]

Yet more totally unexpected and shocking revelations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22698387

A former senior partner at accountancy giant KPMG has agreed to plead guilty to insider trading.

US authorities had charged Scott London in April for allegedly passing information to a golfing friend, who then traded on the share trips.

His plea agreement was announced on Tuesday at the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

It came a week after the friend, Buddy Shaw, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

In his plea agreement, Mr London admitted giving Mr Shaw insider information about KPMG's clients on at least 14 different occasions.

[Bruno]

Related article on the mindset of the ultra-rich:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/06/politics-envy-keenest-rich

'I never did anything for money. I never set money as a goal. It was a result." So says Bob Diamond, formerly the chief executive of Barclays. In doing so Diamond lays waste to the justification that his bank and others (and their innumerable apologists in government and the media) have advanced for surreal levels of remuneration – to incentivise hard work and talent. Prestige, power, a sense of purpose: for them, these are incentives enough.

Others of his class – Bernie Ecclestone and Jeroen van der Veer (the former chief executive of Shell), for example – say the same. The capture by the executive class of so much wealth performs no useful function. What the very rich appear to value is relative income. If executives were all paid 5% of current levels, the competition between them (a questionable virtue anyway) would be no less fierce. As the immensely rich HL Hunt commented several decades ago: "Money is just a way of keeping score."

The desire for advancement along this scale appears to be insatiable. In March Forbes magazine published an article about Prince Alwaleed, who, like other Saudi princes, doubtless owes his fortune to nothing more than hard work and enterprise. According to one of the prince's former employees, the Forbes magazine global rich list "is how he wants the world to judge his success or his stature".

The result is "a quarter-century of intermittent lobbying, cajoling and threatening when it comes to his net worth listing". In 2006, the researcher responsible for calculating his wealth writes, "when Forbes estimated that the prince was actually worth $7 billion less than he said he was, he called me at home the day after the list was released, sounding nearly in tears. 'What do you want?' he pleaded, offering up his private banker in Switzerland. 'Tell me what you need.'"

Never mind that he has his own 747, in which he sits on a throne during flights. Never mind that his "main palace" has 420 rooms. Never mind that he possesses his own private amusement park and zoo – and, he claims, $700m worth of jewels. Never mind that he's the richest man in the Arab world, valued by Forbes at $20bn, and has watched his wealth increase by $2bn in the past year. None of this is enough. There is no place of arrival, no happy landing, even in a private jumbo jet. The politics of envy are never keener than among the very rich.

Pretty much covers how people seem to think once they've reached a certain level of wealth. It's the great mix of privilege and entitlement writ large.

But if we tax them too much, they won't work as hard, and we'll all starve! 

[Cain]

This is hilarious:

http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/northern-ireland-town-fakes-prosperity-for-g8-summit/

What they've done is they have filled the shop front window with a picture of what was the business before it went bankrupt or closed. In other words, grocery shops, butcher shops, pharmacies, you name it, they have placed large photographs in the windows that if you were driving past and glanced out the window, it would look as if this was a thriving business. It's an attempt really by the local authority to make the place look as positive as possible for the visiting G8 leaders and their entourages, and it's really tried to put a mask on a recession that has really hit this part of Ireland really very badly indeed.

Werman: So it's kind of like a trompe l'oeil, and I saw a picture in one newspaper. I'm a little confused because the door looked open.

Keenan: Yeah, it looks as if the door is open and inside you can see a well-stocked shop. It's nothing of the sort. That door has been locked shut for well over a year because that particular business went bust this time last year, and that is an image to make it look as if everything is normal in the town and in the county, but unfortunately it's not. The County of Fermanagh has suffered terribly as a result of the credit crisis and the resulting recession.

IOW, the G8's own Illuminati are just as deceived and misled and propagandized at as the rest of us.

[Junkenstein]

Probably more appropriate in the Buttcoin thread:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/feds-smash-liberty-reserve-alleging-billions-in-money-laundering-charges/

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors unsealed the indictment of seven men alleged to be involved with Liberty Reserve, one of the world's most notorious digital currencies. (Liberty Reserve was the preferred payment choice of a booter site used to attack Ars in March of 2013.)

Federal authorities seized LibertyReserve.com and four other related domain names, effectively shutting down the site. The site's founder, Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk (who apparently renounced his US citizenship in 2011 to become a Costa Rican citizen), was arrested last Friday.

In a 27-page indictment (PDF), the defendants are charged with money laundering and conspiracy to operate unlicensed money transmitting business. They are ordered to surrender "all property, real and personal" including: "at least $6 billion" and tens of millions of dollars more allegedly contained within bank accounts across Costa Rica, Cyprus, Russia, Hong Kong, Morocco, China, Spain, Latvia, and Australia.

Attempts to reach Liberty Reserve via phone and e-mail were not immediately successful.

Prosecutors labeled Liberty Reserve as a "criminal business venture, one designed to help criminals conduct illegal transactions and launder the proceeds of their crimes." The indictment also noted that the site was "a financial hub of the cyber-crime world, facilitating a broad range of online criminal activity, including credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computing hacking, child pornography, and narcotics trafficking."

Liberty Reserve is believed to have more than a million users worldwide, including more than 200,000 in the United States alone. According to the indictment, the company processed more than 12 million transactions annually "and is believed to have laundered more than $6 billion in criminal proceeds" between 2006 and May 2013.

I can't help but think how much of that $6 Billion was from well known financial institutions. I'd bet limbs that HSBC or the like has shoved some cash through this thing at least once.

[Faust]

This is hilarious:

http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/northern-ireland-town-fakes-prosperity-for-g8-summit/

What they've done is they have filled the shop front window with a picture of what was the business before it went bankrupt or closed. In other words, grocery shops, butcher shops, pharmacies, you name it, they have placed large photographs in the windows that if you were driving past and glanced out the window, it would look as if this was a thriving business. It's an attempt really by the local authority to make the place look as positive as possible for the visiting G8 leaders and their entourages, and it's really tried to put a mask on a recession that has really hit this part of Ireland really very badly indeed.

Werman: So it's kind of like a trompe l'oeil, and I saw a picture in one newspaper. I'm a little confused because the door looked open.

Keenan: Yeah, it looks as if the door is open and inside you can see a well-stocked shop. It's nothing of the sort. That door has been locked shut for well over a year because that particular business went bust this time last year, and that is an image to make it look as if everything is normal in the town and in the county, but unfortunately it's not. The County of Fermanagh has suffered terribly as a result of the credit crisis and the resulting recession.

IOW, the G8's own Illuminati are just as deceived and misled and propagandized at as the rest of us.

When the queen came over, they actually started up new businesses in the derelict shops which are still doing good business today. Shallow fake facsimiles sounds more appropriate for the g8.

[Cain]

Well, I don't know about that, but I can say that $6 billion is small change compared to the extent of money laundering that HSBC and Standard Chartered admitted to in the last couple of years.  As Bill Black points out, "just one facet of Standard Chartered's money laundering and one facet of HSBC's money laundering operation were, respectively, over 40 and 100 times larger than Liberty Reserve's "staggering" total money laundering for all purposes."

Not to say that Liberty Reserve are not shitheels.  They clearly are.  But big thieves hang little thieves, and, well, the state takes its marching orders from the large investment banks. 

I'm speaking literally, by the way.

"Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves."

Citigroup essentially wrote the bill which sailed through House Financial Services Committee this month, over the objections of the Treasury.  Essentially, it deregulates the derivatives market for the banking industry, a $700 trillion dollar market that is dominated (93%) by just four American banks: Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.  Edit to add: naturally, large amount of money WHICH ARE TOTALLY NOT BRIBES were spent on convincing Congressmen to vote in favour of HR 992.  More than $1.3 million was donated to the members of the House Financial Services committee in the first quarter of 2013 alone.

Incidentally, getting back to the Liberty Reserve thing, Citigroup bought out Banamex in 2001.  Banamex was the preferred institution for drug money laundering by Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.  Banamex CEO Roberto Hernández has been accused of trafficking cocaine via properties in the Carribbean.

The funds transferred by Raúl Salinas are said to be between $90 million to $100 million...so perhaps not as large as Liberty Reserve, but Salinas is not the only gangster in Mexico with an offshore account. 

[Cain]

When the queen came over, they actually started up new businesses in the derelict shops which are still doing good business today. Shallow fake facsimiles sounds more appropriate for the g8.

True, it is rather apt.  Though IMO, shallow fake fascimiles also sum up the Royal Family quite well...

[Junkenstein]

From the Ireland piece:

Werman: Where is the money coming from for all these very accurate-looking photographs of meat and other things for sale?

Keenan: This is one big initiative really stemming from the Foreign Office in London. This is David Cameron's gig. It's his invitation, it's his decision to host the G8 in County Fermanagh, which is, don't forget, part of the United Kingdom. It's also on the island of Ireland, it's in Northern Ireland, but he will be the hosting head of government and it's his say so. Much of the money that has been spent in and around the host town of Enniskillen, about more than £300,000 worth, that's getting on from half a million dollars, the bulk of the cash and certainly the driving force behind the plans to tidy up the place, that's all coming from London.

Demonstrates that the UK is no longer really a country, it's London with bits attached. This partly makes me question why it was not just held in London anyway. Riot/protest risk? Probable but surely expected.

Surely it would have been easier, quicker and cheaper to get various high street brands to open shops and commit to staff them for say 3 months. I'm sure any reasonably sized company could find a way to write off any expense involved.

On the Liberty Reserve side, it will be interesting to see who ends up swinging in the breeze here. Seems to have much wider implications than I first saw. As always, info appreciated and now I need to read more.

[Faust]

When the queen came over, they actually started up new businesses in the derelict shops which are still doing good business today. Shallow fake facsimiles sounds more appropriate for the g8.

True, it is rather apt.  Though IMO, shallow fake fascimiles also sum up the Royal Family quite well...

Cant speak for the rest of then but she was a nice old lady and very smiley.