Possible Links to a Coming Bank Holiday in the Ongoing $134.5 Billion Bearer Bond Mystery

July 16th, 2009

Since the time I wrote the first article about this event, “The Strange Inconsistencies of the $134.5 Billion Bearer Bond Mystery”, there has been virtual silence in the media regarding any follow-up to this story. However, a little Italian-based website called Asianews.it reported the below story a couple of weeks ago that contained even more strange inconsistencies than the ones I originally reported. I’ve outlined the most prominent portions of this article below.

“Four weeks have passed since American bonds were confiscated from two Japanese men who were traveling on a direct train to Chiasso, Switzerland, and while there has been clarification of some – very few -points, Italian authorities have remained silent on the rest of the episode…The major English-speaking newspapers ignored the story for a couple of weeks. They only started to report on it after the Bloomberg agency carried a story on June 18th, in which a spokesman for the Treasury, Meyerhardt, declared that the bonds, based on photos available on the Internet, were ‘clearly false’. The same day, the Financial Times (FT) published an article whose title laid the blame for the (alleged) infringement at the feet of the Italian Mafia, despite the fact that the article failed to make even one possible connection with the episode in Chiasso.”

Furthermore, “the Financial Times (FT) published an article whose title laid the blame for the (alleged) infringement at the feet of the Italian Mafia, despite the fact that the article failed to make even one possible connection with the episode in Chiasso. Nevertheless, the version of events as reported in FT was taken up by others as being ‘appropriate’.”

When this story first broke, the Italian financial police stressed the remarkable authenticity of the 249 bearer bonds, each of $500 million denomination, and that they were indistinguishable from the real ones. If so, how would it be possible for US Treasury spokesman Meyerhardt to declare the bonds fake based upon looking at internet photos? If he declared them fake because of their alleged 1934 date, note that although this detail was provided by a Bloomberg report, apparently the alleged 1934 date of the bearer bonds was not included in any official statement issued by Italian police. Bloomberg reported that the purported 1934 date came from Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Italian financial police. If this is true, then why would Colonel Mecarelli omit this critical piece of information from his official report? And indeed, it is strange of the Financial Times to lay the blame for this bearer bond mystery at the feet of the Italian Mafia without any explanation or evidence that points to the mafia’s involvement. Very strange indeed.

On June 25th, “the New York Times reported on the story in particular, the allegations of CIA spokesman, Darrin Blackford: the U.S. Secret Service carried out inspections, as required by the Italian judiciary, and found that they were fictitious financial instruments, never issued by the U.S. government. It is not clear, however, how the checks mentioned by Blackford were carried out and whether they were also are carried out via internet. In fact according to official Italian sources the Commission of American experts, expected in Italy, have yet to arrive. Furthermore, the bonds were accompanied by a recent and original bank record. It is therefore unclear how the U.S. authorities can declare fake documentation that does not originate from the Fed or the U.S. Department of Treasury.”

Again, is any of the above believable? Are we really to believe that no US official made the trip to Italy to inspect these bearer bonds for authenticity and that US officials conducted their inspections via photos passed through the internet? Again, this makes no sense at all. Given the enormous implications regarding the indistinguishable authenticity of these bearer bonds from real bearer bonds, I would believe that a modicum of common sense would dictate that the US Treasury and US Federal Reserve immediately send agents to Italy to inspect the bonds as a matter of procedure. Even if the bearer bonds could be confirmed as fake through their serial numbers, I still find it very difficult to believe that no US official would want to personally inspect the bearer bonds in an attempt to track down the counterfeiters. The official stance that no US officials had yet arrived in Italy a couple of weeks after the discovery of the bearer bonds is very difficult to believe.

“Claims in support of the bond’s authenticity were made June 26th on the Turner Radio Network (TRN), an independent radio station broadcast via Internet. On that date in a massive exposure, TRN stated that the two Japanese men arrested by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) and then released in Ponte Chiasso were employees of the Japanese Ministry for Treasury. AsiaNews had also received similar reports: one of the two Japanese arrested in Chiasso and then released is Tuneo Yamauchi, the brother (in-law) of Toshiro Muto, until recently vice governor of the Bank of Japan. On its website, the creator and presenter of the Radio, Hal Turner, had also claimed that his sources had revealed that the Italian authorities believe the evidence to be authentic and that the two Japanese officials are from the Japanese Ministry for Finance. They were supposed to bring the bonds to Switzerland because the Japanese government had apparently lost confidence in U.S. ability to repay its debt. Japanese financial authorities therefore were trying to sell a part of the securities in their possession through parallel channels ahead of an imminent financial disaster, thanks to the anonymity which, Turner said, is guaranteed by the laws of Switzerland.”

Certainly if the identity of one of the two Japanese men could be confirmed as the brother-in-law of the recent vice governor of the Bank of Japan, then this would seem to indicate that there is much more to this story than the “official” story that is being reported. However, all I could discover about this detail was that the identity of Tuneo Yamauchi was leaked by “confidential sources” whose reliability is unknown. So the alleged identities of the two Japanese nationals caught in possession of the bearer bonds still remain a big question mark.

“AsiaNews does not know to what extent Turner’s revelations can be held as credible, given that in this case too, it is difficult to believe that $ 134.5 billion would pass unnoticed anywhere in the world. It seems far more logical to assume that the bonds, if authentic, were directed to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, BIS, the central bank of central banks ahead of the issuance of securities in a new supranational currency.”

The only thing interesting about the above is that there have been lots of underground rumblings about the imposition of a US Bank Holiday, similar to the one imposed during the Great Depression, sometime before the end of this year for the purpose of dollar devaluation. These rumblings have allegedly originated from employees that work at US embassies all over the world, but at this point, these rumors are all anecdotal. If another Bank Holiday was in the works, then it would lend more credibility to the “authentic bearer bonds” angle, but this is a very big “if”.

“One more element in favour of the bond’s authenticity is found in the securities, which in the June 4 statement, the GdF termed “Kennedy Bonds” with photos provided. These photos reveal that the securities under discussion are not bonds but Treasury Notes, because they are securities that can be immediately exchanged for their worth in goods or services and because they are devoid of interest coupons. One side carries a reproduction of the image of the American president, the reverse side that of a spaceship. From confidential, usually well-informed sources, AsiaNews has learned that this type of paper money was issued less than ten years ago (in 1998), although it is difficult to know whether those seized in Chiasso are authentic. But the fact that the release of this particular State Treasury was not completely in the public domain tends to exclude the possibility of counterfeiting. It is highly unreasonable to suppose that a forger would reproduce a State Treasury not commonly in circulation and of which there is no public knowledge.”

In the end, there truly is no possible way to separate fact from fiction in this still under-reported and largely uncovered story; however, if a Bank Holiday happens before year end, it certainly will lend significant support to the still incredulous possibility that these bearer bonds were indeed real.

Entry Filed under: Financial Crisis, Dollar Crisis, & Recession Proof