The Full Story Behind Bloomberg’s Attempt To “Unmask” Zero Hedge

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The Full Story Behind Bloomberg’s Attempt To “Unmask” Zero Hedge:

Over the years, Zero Hedge has proven to be a magnet for media attention.

It started years ago with a NY Magazine article published in September 2009 which first “unmasked” the people behind Zero Hedge with the “The Dow Zero Insurgency: The nothing-can-be-believed chaos of the financial crisis created a golden opportunity for a blog run by a mysterious ex-hedge-funder with a dodgy past and conspiracy theories to burn” in which we were presented as a bunch of “conspiracy theory” tin foil hat paranoid loons.

We are ok with being typecast as “conspiracy theorists” as these “theories” tend to become “conspiracy fact” months to years later.

Read moreThe Full Story Behind Bloomberg’s Attempt To “Unmask” Zero Hedge

Bloomberg News Editor Resigns Because Of Censorship Of Investigative Report On China’s Elite

Editor Leaves Bloomberg, Citing China Coverage (New York Times, March 24, 2014):

Ben Richardson, an editor at large in Asia at Bloomberg News, announced his resignation on Monday, citing the company’s handling of an investigative report in China late last year.

He is the third reporter or editor to leave the organization since several news organizations reported last November that Bloomberg had declined to publish an investigative article that explored financial ties between one of the wealthiest men in China and the families of top Chinese leaders.

“I left Bloomberg because of the way the story was mishandled, and because of how the company made misleading statements in the global press” afterward, he said in an email to the media news site Romenesko. He also wrote that Bloomberg employees faced legal action if they spoke out publicly.

Read moreBloomberg News Editor Resigns Because Of Censorship Of Investigative Report On China’s Elite

Bloomberg Accidentally Posted More Than 10,000 Private Trader Messages On Terminals Online

Bloomberg accidentally posted private terminal messages online (Yahoo Finance/Quartz, May 13, 2013):

This story has been updated and corrected.

Bloomberg says it accidentally posted on the internet more than 10,000 private messages that traders sent each other on their Bloomberg terminals. The new revelation, reported by the Financial Times, will undoubtedly escalate the furor over Bloomberg’s handling of data that its customers consider to be confidential.

Read moreBloomberg Accidentally Posted More Than 10,000 Private Trader Messages On Terminals Online

Bloomberg FOIA Documents Show How Wall Street Made A Muppet Of The SEC, Mary Schapiro And Dodd Frank

Bloomberg FOIA Documents How Wall Street Made A Muppet Of The SEC, Mary Schapiro And Dodd Frank (ZeroHedge, Sep 5, 2012):

That the SEC is the most incompetent, corrupt, irrelevant and captured organization “serving” the US public is known by everyone. And while the details of the SEC’s glaring lack of capacity to do anything to restore investor confidence in the capital markets, which has become a casino used exclusively by Wall Street to defraud any retail investor still stupid enough to play (which lately a moot point as there have been no material retail inflows into mutual funds in over three years), are scattered, courtesy of Bloomberg we now have the best summary of just how the utterly clueless SEC is a muppet plaything of Wall Street, and together with it, the “grand regulation” that was supposed to keep Wall Street in check, is nothing but what Wall Street demand it to be, and forced the SEC, way over its head on regulation, to accept every change, that the very banks that are supposed to be regulated, demands as part of Dodd-Frank reforms. In short: everything we know about Wall Street ‘regulation’ has been a farce, and a lie, exclusively thanks to corruption rampant at the now documentedly incompetent Securities And Exchange Commission.Bloomberg has the smoking gun.

It had been two days since U.S. lawmakers negotiated all night to finish rules that would reshape the business of Wall Street. The 20-hour session left legislators, aides, lobbyists and regulators exhausted. Almost no one had a grip on all the details.

Then Annette Nazareth stepped in. That Sunday morning, she e-mailed a dozen Securities and Exchange Commission officials about the bill that would become the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Act.

Who is Annette Nazareth?

Read moreBloomberg FOIA Documents Show How Wall Street Made A Muppet Of The SEC, Mary Schapiro And Dodd Frank

The Story That Got Bloomberg News Blocked In China

The Story That Got Bloomberg News Blocked In China (ZeroHedge, June 2,, 2012):

Bloomberg News may be the most read news source in the world, but as of today, it is no longer available in China. Why? According to Bloomberg TV News Editor Denise Pellegrini, all it takes is for some investigative reporting exposing the dirty laundry, or in this case the even dirtier assets of one Xi Jinping – “the man in line to be China’s next president.” In “Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes of Elite” Bloomberg writes: “Xi warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft conference call: “Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.” As Xi climbed the Communist Party ranks, his extended family expanded their business interests to include minerals, real estate and mobile-phone equipment, according to public documents compiled by Bloomberg. Those interests include investments in companies with total assets of $376 million; an 18 percent indirect stake in a rare- earths company with $1.73 billion in assets; and a $20.2 million holding in a publicly traded technology company.” That a country’s will seek to block the internet when the wealth of its humble leaders is exposed is expected. However, what is unexpected is that the hidden assets of China’s president in waiting are rather easily discovered is troubling: it means Goldman has still much work to do in China, and much more advisory work to the country’s elite over how to best hide its assets in various non-extradition locations around the world under assorted HoldCos. Just like in the US. The good news, for GS shareholders, however, is that this indeed provides a huge new potential revenue stream.

More from Bloomberg:

Xi has risen through the party over the past three decades, holding leadership positions in several provinces and joining the ruling Politburo Standing Committee in 2007. Along the way, he built a reputation for clean government.

Read moreThe Story That Got Bloomberg News Blocked In China

Federal Reserve’s Once-Secret Data Released to Public

Related info:

Bloomberg News Eloquent Point-By-Point Response To Bernanke Criticism Of U.S. Bank-Rescue Coverage

The Federal Reserve And The $16 Trillion Bankster Bailout


Fed’s Once-Secret Data Released to Public (Bloomberg, Dec. 23, 2011):

Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form.

To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled “1a Fed Data Roadmap.”

The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history.

“Scholars can now examine the data and continue the analysis of the Fed’s crisis management,” said Allan H. Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the author of three books on the history of the U.S. central bank.

Read moreFederal Reserve’s Once-Secret Data Released to Public

SEC hides AIG bailout documents until 2018; Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect US Bailout Secrets

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Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets (Bloomberg):

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released, responding to a request by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.

“This case is about the identity of the borrower,” said Matthew Collette, a lawyer for the government, in oral arguments today. “This is the equivalent of saying ‘I want all the loan applications that were submitted.’”

Bloomberg argues that the public has the right to know basic information about the “unprecedented and highly controversial use” of public money. Banks and the Fed warn that bailed-out lenders may be hurt if the documents are made public, causing a run or a sell-off by investors. Disclosure may hamstring the Fed’s ability to deal with another crisis, they also argued. The lower court agreed with Bloomberg.


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* SEC granted “confidential treatment” last May

* Secrecy order stays in place until November 2018

NEW YORK, Jan 11 (Reuters) – It could take until November 2018 to get the full story behind the U.S. bailout of insurance giant American International Group because of an action taken last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, in granting AIG’s request for confidential treatment, said the “excluded information” will not be made public until Nov. 25, 2018, according to a copy of the agency’s May 22 order.

The SEC said the insurer had demonstrated the information in the exhibit, called Schedule A, “qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information.”

The expiration date for the SEC order falls on the 10th anniversary of Federal Reserve of New York’s decision to provide emergency financing to an entity set up to specifically acquire some $60 billion in collateralized debt obligations from 16 banks in the United States and Europe.

Read moreSEC hides AIG bailout documents until 2018; Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect US Bailout Secrets

Racketeering 101: Bailed Out Banksters Threaten Systemic Collapse If Fed Discloses Information

Related information:
Geithner: Auditing the Federal Reserve is a ‘line that we don’t want to cross’
Judge: Federal Reserve Must Release Reports on Emergency Bank Loans
Ben Bernanke warns on auditing the Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion

These days the TRUTH ‘could’ cause a systemic collapse!


And so the guns come out blazing. The Clearing House Association, another name for all the banks that were bailed out over the past year with the generous contributions from all of you, dear taxpayers, are now threatening with another instance of complete systemic collapse if Bloomberg’s lawsuit is allowed to proceed unchallenged, let alone if any of the “Audit The Fed” measures are actually implemented.

As a reminder, The Clearing House Association consists of ABN Amro, Bank Of America, The Bank Of New York, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, US Bank and Wells Fargo.

In a declaration filed in the Bloomberg Case (08-CV-9595, Southern District of New York), the banks demonstrate no shame in attempting to perpetuate the status quo with regard to the Federal Reserve and demand that the wool over the eyes of the general population remain firmly planted in perpetuity.

The Clearing House submits this declaration because the Court’s Order threatens to impair the ability of our members to access emergency funds through the New York Fed’s Discount Window without suffering the severe competitive harm that public disclosure of their identity will cause.

Our members have accessed the New York Fed’s Discount Window with the understanding that the Fed will not publicly disclose information about their borrowing, especially their identity. Industry experience, including very recent and searing experience, has shown that negative rumors about a bank’s financial condition – even completely unfounded rumors – have caused competitive harm, including bank runs and failures.

Surely transparency would facilitate rumor-mongering to an unprecedented degree. After all rumors spread much easier when everyone knows the true financial condition of banks.

And here, in plain written Times New Roman, you see what racketeering by a major bank consortium looks like:

If the names of our member banks who borrow emergency funds are publicly disclosed, the likelihood that a borrowing bank’s customers, counterparties and other market participants will draw a negative inference is great. Public speculation that a financial institution is experiencing liquidity shortfalls – which would be a natural inference from having tapped emergency funds – has caused bank customers to withdraw deposits, counterparties to make collateral calls and lenders to accelerate loan repayment or refuse to make new loans. When an institution’s customers flee and its credit dries up the institution may suffer severe capital and liquidity strains leaving it in a weakened competitive position.

Pardon me if I am a broken record here, but would rumors not spread much less if there was more transparency, if investors and other financial intermediaries were fully aware of the conditions of their counterparties, if banks did not have to cover their billions in reserve losses by pretending they are viable and essentially being constant wards of the state?

The Banks’ racketeering has gone on for far too long.

And yet, it does not stop: the conclusion from the banks’ letter:

Read moreRacketeering 101: Bailed Out Banksters Threaten Systemic Collapse If Fed Discloses Information

Judge: Federal Reserve Must Release Reports on Emergency Bank Loans

But that will – most probably – never happen:

Alan Greenspan Admits Federal Reserve Is Above The Law and Answers To No One


If you want to watch more of this interview: Here

– Congressman Dennis Kucinich: Federal Reserve No More “Federal” Than Federal Express!

And now:  Bernanke Is Nominated for Second Term as Fed Chief



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The Federal Reserve building stands in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, 2009. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve must make records about emergency lending to financial institutions public within five days because it failed to convince a judge the documents should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska rejected the central bank’s argument that the records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions. The collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression,” according to the lawsuit that led to yesterday’s ruling.

The Fed has refused to name the borrowers, the amounts of loans or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.

“When an unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars were lent to financial institutions in unprecedented ways and the Federal Reserve refused to make public any of the details of its extraordinary lending, Bloomberg News asked the court why U.S. citizens don’t have the right to know,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. “We’re gratified the court is defending the public’s right to know what is being done in the public interest.”

Read moreJudge: Federal Reserve Must Release Reports on Emergency Bank Loans

U.S. Stocks at 25.8 Times Earnings Means Rally Can’t Continue

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) — The best already may be over for the U.S. stock market this year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which had the worst first half since 2002, added 0.2 percent this quarter, the only gain among the world’s 10 biggest markets in dollar terms. Shares in the benchmark index for American equity climbed to an average 25.8 times reported profits, the highest valuation in five years. The last time that happened, the S&P 500 fell 38 percent.

Read moreU.S. Stocks at 25.8 Times Earnings Means Rally Can’t Continue

Merrill, Wachovia Hit With Record Refinancing Bill

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) — Merrill Lynch & Co., Wachovia Corp., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the rest of the U.S. finance industry are about to find out how expensive credit has become.

Banks, securities firms and lenders have a record $871 billion of bonds maturing through 2009, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., just as yields are at their most punitive compared with Treasuries. The increase in yields may cost them as much as $23 billion more in annual interest versus a year ago based on Merrill Lynch index data.

Read moreMerrill, Wachovia Hit With Record Refinancing Bill

Merrill Lynch: Credit Crisis`Far From Over’

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — The credit crisis is “broad, deep, and global” and “far from over” for financial companies even after they reported $500 billion in writedowns and credit losses, Merrill Lynch & Co.’s chief investment strategist said.

Read moreMerrill Lynch: Credit Crisis`Far From Over’

Fannie Mae Unsold $5 Billion Homes Bring Peril to Shareholders

July 23 (Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company, couldn’t find a buyer who would pay $6,900 for the three-bedroom house at 1916 Prospect St. in Flint, Michigan. So broker Raymond Megie, who is handling the foreclosure sale, advised cutting the price to $5,000.

Megie still couldn’t sell it. “There’s oversupply,” he said. The home sold in 2005 for $110,000.

Read moreFannie Mae Unsold $5 Billion Homes Bring Peril to Shareholders

Merill Lynch posts loss of 4.6 bln dlrs, sheds assets

Wall Street investment giant Merrill Lynch on Thursday announced a quarterly loss of 4.6 billion dollars, driven by hefty writedowns from its bets on the US real estate market.

Merrill, which has been roiled by its exposure to the US subprime mortgage crisis, also said it would shore up its capital with the sale of some assets.

It announced the sale of its 20 percent stake in financial news and data group Bloomberg for 4.425 billion dollars.

Related: Fed: No more bailouts, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Read moreMerill Lynch posts loss of 4.6 bln dlrs, sheds assets

FREDDIE & FANNIE UNCONSTITUTIONAL BAIL OUT USING WHAT?



“As I write this column, Congress has run this country into a $9,498,511,404,143.63 debt. That’s just under $9.5 TRILLION “dollars.””

I really hope that you will find time to read this article. 🙂
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Arthur Henning of the Chicago Tribune said back in 1935, “The New Deal will bring the Communist Party within striking distance of overthrow of the American form of government…” Mark Sullivan of the Buffalo Evening News also expressed alarm in 1935: “The New Deal is to America what the early phase of Nazism was to Germany…”

The nation is awash in fear because they are coming to realize that while they’ve been buying all the hype from the cabal of gangsters in Washington for decades, reality is now setting in as poverty is slamming millions who used to belong to the middle class. From dangerous lending practices to the derivatives time bomb waiting to go off and inflation getting ready to launch into hyper inflation, the situation is more grim by the week. A financial catastrophe so many have been warning about for decades, it’s all coming home to roost. The “perfect storm” as it’s being called. The beast is now devouring itself and we the people are caught in their cross fire.

Unfortunately, most Americans haven’t been listening. They’re either addicted to sports, shopping, porn, drugs or yaking on their cell phones while the world has been heading for financial Armageddon.

Read moreFREDDIE & FANNIE UNCONSTITUTIONAL BAIL OUT USING WHAT?

Bloomberg’s End-run Around the Second Amendment

“In other words, New York is a Constitution free zone. But then so is much of the rest of the country, thanks to Bush, who considers the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper.”

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In New York, the notorious gun-grabber Michael Bloomberg wants to censor the Second Amendment. “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has moved from outrage to atrocity, said the Second Amendment Foundation, by asking anti-gun activist federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein to ban any reference to the Second Amendment during a civil lawsuit trial beginning May 27 against Georgia gun dealer Jay Wallace, proprietor at Adventure Outdoors,” reports PR Newswire.

But the “billionaire demagogue who considers himself so far above the law,” as Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, characterizes Bloomberg, wants to go after the First Amendment, too. Bloomberg wants a gag order slapped on the case. In “Mikey’s world… a fair trial is one in which a defense attorney is muzzled, and the defendant is already guilty until proven innocent. Bloomberg missed his calling. Instead of being mayor of an American city, he should have been the administrator of a gulag.”

Reports the New York Sun:

City lawyers, in a motion filed Tuesday, asked the judge, Jack Weinstein of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, to preclude the store’s lawyers from arguing that the suit infringed on any Second Amendment rights belonging to the gun store or its customers. In the motion, the lawyer for the city, Eric Proshansky, is also seeking a ban on “any references” to the amendment.

“Any references by counsel to the Second Amendment or analogous state constitutional provisions are likewise irrelevant,” the brief states

In other words, New York is a Constitution free zone. But then so is much of the rest of the country, thanks to Bush, who considers the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper.” Bush and his coterie of Straussian neocons need to get rid of the Second Amendment in particular because militarized police states don’t go far if people have guns. Come marital law, Bush and crew may want to begin with New York, Chicago, and D.C., where restrictive gun laws rule. Short of some draconian law, it will be hard going out here in the hinterlands.

Read moreBloomberg’s End-run Around the Second Amendment