The following disturbing tale was sent over by MrMR…
“It’s a plot better suited for a John Le Carre novel. Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear. Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea’s cash in a Swiss vault? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit? The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realize. At a minimum, it would suggest that the U.S. risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale.
Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia. These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest U.S. creditors.” (Click here for more.)
The secret word is Slush
Fear not, seems everybody's doing it.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of June Catalan police intercepted a fine selection of suitcases in Barcelona and Marbella containing false US bonds, coins, notes and microfilms (??) to the value of $16.5 billion and one, allegedly with $1.5 trillion, which, sadly, turned out to be stuffed with bits of blue cardboard.
"The bonds were supposedly issued by the US Federal Reserve in 1934 and recuperated somewhere near Japan after World War Two"
They were offered to and acquired by greedy if somewhat gullible business men (One an English man living in Ibiza.)
Police are still seeking the perpetrators of the scam.
News articles do not specify if they were Japanese.
And the LA Times says these particulare ones are fakes, too:
ReplyDeletehttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/06/speculation-about-the-italian-smuggling-case-involving-134-billion-in-purported-us-treasury-bonds-may-have-been-fun-while.html