This happened during FATF week in Paris: an orgy of international asset-forfeiture plunder planning! (Source: S&P 500)
The market began wobbling February 16, then crashed violently on February 20, the day the Communist News Network began screeching and wailing about a not-really communist virus outbreak near a germ lab. So what else was happening on those days in places like… Paris? Here’s a taste:
“FATF Week, 16-21 February 2020. On Sunday 16 February, more than 800 representatives from 205 countries and jurisdictions around the world, the IMF, UN, World Bank and other organisations, will arrive for FATF Week in Paris, France…”(link)
So what is FATF? It is the Harry Anslinger-Herbert Hoover-Richard Nixon-Bush-Bush asset-forfeiture Crash and Great Depression machine. Remember Milton Friedman in Free to Choose? In a fractional-reserve banking system, the money you deposit exists in several places as the clearing-houses compensate the instruments of money transfer. Finally it is loaned out at interest, so a lot of it is no longer at the bank.
So when federal agents with guns and blanket John Doe or Unnamed Asset warrants shove their way inside to grab cash and securities, other depositors can see the liquidity crunch coming and withdraw their assets. This reverses the leveraging of assets which–absent tax and prohibition raids–increases the money supply. The reversing result is mass bankruptcies and devaluation of assets.
Here’s what went on in Paris just before the crash: (link) Sound farfetched? Read their glossary:
The term confiscation, which includes forfeiture where applicable, means the permanent deprivation of funds or other assets by order of a competent authority or a court. Confiscation or forfeiture takes place through a judicial or administrative procedure that transfers the ownership of specified funds or other assets to be transferred to the State. In this case, the person(s) or entity(ies) that held an interest in the specified funds or other assets at the time of the confiscation or forfeiture loses all rights, in principle, to the confiscated or forfeited funds or other assets.
FATF was formed as soon as the Reagan-Bush-Biden prohibitionist asset-forfeiture crash deepened into a really bad recession with stock losses and unemployment. They admit this:
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 by the Ministers of its Member jurisdictions. The mandate of the FATF is to set standards and to promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation, and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. In collaboration with other international stakeholders, the FATF also works to identify national-level vulnerabilities with the aim of protecting the international financial system from misuse.
Pretty shadowy and swampy, huh? And if this thing does wreck economies, who can be held accountable? Who would admit the obvious facts? How would you claim damages?
This sort of thing also happened in 1907, mainly due to new federal regulation of food & drugs and State bans on Beelzebubba’s Beer and The Demon Rum. It happened again in 1921, but was covered up by nullification, then returned with a vengeance in 1929, after Mabel Willebrandt explained, that August, what was going on on “The Inside of Prohibition,” in 20 national papers. Accelerating stock depreciation set in and investors dumped assets…
The banking panics of the Great Depression kept pace with federal indictments of yeast and glucose companies and confiscation of assets plus heavy fines measured in pounds of gold bullion–while the Coast Guard and Customs seized huge shipments of heroin that was steadily replacing beer. The federal government feigns bovine incomprehension of all this causality.
Government spin-doctors also disavow any knowledge that the Reagan-Bush-Biden asset-forfeiture craze of 1987 had anything to do with that recession, and play dumb in sworn testimony and thick reports on the Flash Crashes. Here’s the latest one, with “market crash”, “financial collapse”, and “economic recession” nowhere to be seen.(link) Here’s a foretaste of Knife-Your-Customer snitching:
A. CUSTOMER DUE DILIGENCE AND TIPPING-OFF.
1. If, during the establishment or course of the customer relationship, or when conducting occasional transactions, a financial institution suspects that transactions relate to money laundering or terrorist financing, then the institution should:
(a) normally seek to identify and verify the identity of the customer and the beneficial owner, whether permanent or occasional, and irrespective of any exemption or any designated threshold that might otherwise apply; and
(b) make a suspicious transaction report (STR) to the financial intelligence unit (FIU), in accordance with Recommendation 20.
2. Recommendation 21 prohibits financial institutions, their directors, officers and employees from disclosing the fact that an STR or related information is being reported to the FIU. A risk exists that customers could be unintentionally tipped off when the financial institution is seeking to perform its customer due diligence (CDD) obligations in these circumstances. The customer’s awareness of a possible STR or investigation could compromise future efforts to investigate the suspected money laundering or terrorist financing operation.
3. Therefore, if financial institutions form a suspicion that transactions relate to money laundering or terrorist financing, they should take into account the risk of tipping-off when performing the CDD process. If the institution reasonably believes that performing the CDD process will tip-off the customer or potential customer, it may choose not to pursue that process, and should file an STR. Institutions should ensure that their employees are aware of, and sensitive to, these issues when conducting CDD.
Nice friendly stuff, eh? But hey, what’s another global economic crash compared with a convenient flu outbreak generating fewer fatalities than U.S. auto accidents for the same timeframe? This coming recession could easily eliminate the memory loss that sets in after each new crash and depression is explained away. Libertarian candidates could explain to voters what happens time after time, and I’ll lay odds someone will listen.
FATF Bush Crash, Obama Dems win 8 years. FATF Trump-Biden Crash?? (link)
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
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