Tag Archives: max keiser

Keiser Report 195 – 111011 – Harry Markopolos, Charles Hugh Smith & Pension Funds

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After a little break, The Keiser Report returns to the ExRat blog. I watch both of Max’s half-hour shows each week but I haven’t been inspired to embed them here recently, but this one was excelllent and made the cut.

In the first half, the part which caught my eye was about Harry Markopolos who apparently tipped off the SEC about Bernard Madoff and his activities some time before he was finally exposed –

The Keiser Report refers to this MP3 recording which is an interview with KingWorldNews, summarised on that page as such –

Markopolos stated, “The Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric.  Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts.  It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”

Markopolos also told KWN, “The New York Attorney General filed suit on Tuesday (against Bank of New York Mellon) for stealing money from pension funds on currency transactions.  This theft has been from tens of millions of Americans, policemen, firemen, librarians, municipal workers, judges and the list goes on and on and they’ve been doing it for decades.”

If you listen to Max’s commentary on this and hear part of Markopolos’s recording, he explains how pension funds are used and abused by traders as a dumping ground for any trades which go wrong and how transactions by pension funds are manipulated by those who administer them in order for those traders to skim percentages off of each transaction.

One of the reasons why I feel that this is interesting is because as an ExRat, it’s important to understand why we are self-employed and why it’s important to reject ‘the system’ which society tries to funnel us into, starting in school for most of us.

Max even confesses that he himself has done similar things while working on Wall Street (7.20 in the video.)  He calls this a ‘look-back trade’. Max explains –

“You put on a big option trade, a volatility trade, at the end of the day. You don’t give an account number to the options dealer on the desk because they’re you know, in line for a big Christmas bonus. Then at the end of the day, if it’s a loser, you dump it into a pension account or you give it to a corporation for a tax loss. If it’s a winner, you go into an account that you’ve already got a pre-arranged relationship with where there’s a massive kick-back. And most of the trading on Wall Street is like this.”

In the second half, Max talks with Charles Hugh Smith, the author of An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times. I found this interview quite interesting, not least at 17.20 in the video where he suggests and discusses with Max an alternative direct action plan for the ‘occupy’ movement which could have even more impact and involve the population at large.

Also at around 18.20 he explains how vastly increasing the number of banks would stop the current monopoly of a handful of banks from creating ‘a mass concentration of wealth to buy the political process.’

I present these pieces of information here in order to assist the budding entrepreneur to  re-educate themselves about current affairs by absorbing alternative viewpoints in order that they can remove the blinkers which are conveniently placed upon us and reinforced by the mainstream media and to counteract that disinformation which is all around us.

Keiser Report 162 – 060711 – European Firesales & Michael Hudson

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In the first half of this episode (15 mins) Max and Stacy talk about the firesale of income producing national assets by governments within the EU (you know, those things that are bought, paid for and owned by the taxpayer). They reference this article in the Guardian newspaper, in which you may notice this in the section about Britain –

‘the Treasury indicated that plans for a new Public Data Corporation would involve selling public data to the private sector.’

Nice. I wonder what public data this will be? Census information by any chance? Don’t forget to add yourself to the ‘do not call register’.

As Stacy points out, via these firesales the countries are going to be giving up their income-producing assets which will of course reduce their revenue, thus further destabilising their economies as well as sending the income from these assets abroad to private interests.

According to Stacy, this is ‘neofeudalism.’ According to the IMF, the EU and various governments, this is being done to ‘help’ Greece and the other countries to solve their financial woes and stabilise their economies. Can you spot the disconnect? All answers on a postcard to Herman Van Rompuy who is (allegedly) offering a nice Greek island to the lucky winner pulled out of the hat.

Max provides the example of the Greek state lottery, which produces revenue of 900 million Euros per year and can be snapped up for a bargain 450 million Euros. Huh?

In the second half of the program Max talks to economist Michael Hudson about Greece, the IMF and the ‘class war of the banks against the rest of society.’

Keiser Report 161 – 040711 – Greece & Yanis Varoufakis

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In the first half (15 mins) of this episode Stacy Herbert explains that the firesale of Greece in London this week drew no buyers. Max Keiser talks about how Greek feta cheese is ‘raised on a plantation’ as well as how the IMF are starting to aim their sights at America and how ‘Pop Idol’ and ‘suicide banker’ Lloyd Blankfein (and his ‘merry band of derivatives’) is going to blow himself up there, as Egypt won’t let him do it round at their place. 😆

Stacy talks about how the IMF has urged the USA to raise it’s debt ceiling, while in the same breath telling the USA that it’s debt is unsustainable in the long term. Huh?!!

Shortly after telling them this, Standard and Poors tell the USA that if it misses a payment its credit rating goes to ‘D’ (IE worse than Greeces rating.)

In the second half Max talks to Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist, who gives his take on the current situation with Greece and the IMF. According to him, this is not some cunning plan with a specific outcome, but rather an act of desperation in order to kick the can down the road a bit further due to many of the banks being effectively insolvent since 2008 along with the EU desperately trying to save it’s skin by delaying a ‘Lehman moment’ across Europe.