Obi-Wan Kenobi
/ 178.36.34.* / 2010-05-31 15:11
Maskowanie strat i oszustw....
The swap lines are designed to keep asset prices artificially high, so the contagion doesn’t spread to the US where accounting gimmickry helps to hide bank losses. Bernanke is perpetuating the repo scam, by assisting banks and other financial institutions to amplify crumbs of capital into huge bubbles which can take down the whole economy. The Wall Street Journal exposed a similar repo scam this week in an above-the-fold article on Wednesday. Here’s an excerpt:
“Three big banks–Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Citigroup Inc.—are among the most active at temporarily shedding debt just before reporting their finances to the public, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The practice, known as end-of-quarter “window dressing” on Wall Street, suggests that the banks are carrying more risk most of the time than their investors or customers can easily see….
“Over the past 10 quarters, the three banks have lowered their net borrowings in the “repurchase,” or repo, market by an average of 41 per cent at the ends of the quarters, compared with their average net repo borrowings for the entire quarter, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data. Once a new quarter begins, they boost those levels…
“The data suggest ‘conscious balance-sheet management,’ said Robert Willens, an accounting specialist who heads Robert Willens LLC. If there are big gaps between average quarterly and quarter-end data, he said, the quarter-end numbers “are at best meaningless and at worst misleading and disingenuous.” (“Banks trim Debt, Obscuring Risks”, Michael Rapoport and Tom Mcginty, Wall Street Journal)