Not sure if you fellow monkeys saw this story, but to say it is bizarre is an understatement. Read the whole thing, it's really short. Anyone have any thoughts of what is going on here?
Looks like Bernanke has a competitor.
Record $6 Trillion of Fake U.S. Bonds Seized in Mafia Probe
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Just read this on bloomberg. Not sure what the implications are though. It's not like the US gets to strike 6 trillion off their debt...
I know. It's weird right? Like a James Bond movie.
Lol yeah, can you imagine the reaction of someone who accepts these bonds as payment and then they're discovered to be fake? That would probably be the first 10 figure heist in history...
Woah. Well, I guess you shouldn't be trusting Italian brokers ever again.
Or cruise ship captains...
My favorite part was: "The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources..."
How awesome would it have been if the plutonium they bought ended up being fake? Then they could sell it to Iran, who would make fake nukes, and America would start a war.
Is this an episode from 24?
http://www.shadowzone.com/MBpics/dr-evil.gif
Just passed this on to my whole office, they're loving it. Fake bonds to buy plutonium from Africa? Truth really is stranger than fiction
I'm actually more concerned about the plutonium that's floating around out there. Unless it's going into a DeLorean, no good can come from that portion of the story.
Ok who decided to accept a semi load of bonds printed on paper? That should have been your 1st clue.
Echo concern over nuclear material above....no bueno
Looks like those Nigerian douchebags can't make ends meet by scamming normal people anymore so they have to resort to selling fake neculear materials. Who's the bigger idiot in that case the guy who bought fake material or the guy who got paid in fake bonds? Lol
Go big or go home, I guess?
Thought some of you might find this interesting:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/02/17/italian_prosecutors_seiz…
FTA:
In your amazing crime/business story of the day, anti-mafia officials in Italy say they've seized $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. Treasury bonds.
That is an awful lot of money, considering that the United States' totaly GDP is only $14.5 trillion. You couldn't possibly do anything with that much in fake assets—nobody has enough money to take it off your hands. Interestingly, the release of a huge quantity of counterfeit U.S. Treasuries into the world would have been exactly what the global economy needs right now. We're suffering from a shortage of liquid AAA-rated financial assets at the moment and the U.S. political system is refusing to meet the demand with a surge of new debt. Counterfeit bonds would work just as well as real ones for the sake of repo transactions as long as they were really good counterfeits, and global economic activity would increase accordingly.
It's funny that you said that. In my mind I was brainstorming all the reasons why someone would actually attempt this - and the repo market came to me too.
where they bearer bonds? arents "real bonds" nominative ?
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