Posts Tagged ‘UBS’

Something About Credit Suisse

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

I meant to mention something about the Credit Suisse situation in Friday’s LinkSwarm but ran out of time. I’m not an expert on European banking in general or Swiss banking in specific. (As opposed to being a squinty, one-eyed, myopic man in the land of the blind sort of expert on American banking, which is not very.) But it’s a big story, so I suppose I should post something about Credit Suisse.

So here’s something.

  • First, as of this writing, it appears that fellow Swiss bank UBS is about to take over Credit Suisse, probably with the financial backing of the Swiss National Bank (SNB)

    Late on Thursday, just hours after the SNB had launched the first (of many) bailout attempts of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse, Bloomberg blasted the following headline:

    *UBS, CREDIT SUISSE SAID TO OPPOSE IDEA OF A FORCED COMBINATION

    This lack of enthusiasm by UBS to acquire its struggling rival of course forced the Swiss National Bank to front CS a CHF50 billion credit line to hold it over for the next four days amid a furious bank run, one which we said would be woefully insufficient to restore confidence in the collapsing lender, and which we probably used up in just a few hours.

    Then, late on Friday, both banks “unexpectedly” changed their minds and we got the following 180 degree U-Turn report from the FT:

    *UBS IN TALKS TO ACQUIRE ALL OR PART OF CREDIT SUISSE: FT

    So a deal is inevitable after all… but as always, there is a footnote one which we predicted yesterday when we said that a deal would only happen if the acquiring bank – in this case UBS – got a full central bank backstop.

    That now appears to be the case with Bloomberg, Reuters and the WSJ all reporting that UBS is asking the Swiss government for a backstop to cover future risks if it were to buy Credit Suisse Group AG, after the Swiss National Bank and regulator Finma have told international counterparts that they regard a deal with UBS as the only option to arrest a collapse in confidence in Credit Suisse. The FT reported that deposit outflows from the bank topped CHF10bn ($10.8bn) a day late last week as fears for its health mounted.

  • Here’s Patrick Boyle on how Credit Suisse brought itself low:

    One big take-away: It wasn’t bad investments per se that wrecked confidence in the bank, it was involvement in a series of scandals, as they have “a strong, liquid balance sheet.” “Credit Suisse has instead been plagued by repeated scandals. From spying on a former employee, a criminal conviction for allowing drug dealers to launder money, a massive leak of client data to the media, Archegos, Greensill, Mozambique ‘tuna bonds,’ the list is too long.”

    Wait, Mozambique Tuna Bonds? Yeah, it’s a real scandal.

    UK courts are at the heart of a spate of litigation arising out of the Mozambique “Tuna bond” or “hidden debt” scandal. The scandal involved $2 billion of bank loans and bond issues from Swiss bank Credit Suisse and Russian bank VTB. The bank loans were taken out in secret by Mozambican state-owned companies, without the legally required approval of the Mozambique Parliament and backed with hidden government guarantees.

    The loans were intended to finance contracts between the state companies and a Lebanese-UAE based ship builder, Privinvest, between 2013-2016 for three maritime projects. These projects were intended to boost maritime security and develop the country’s fishing industry. However, a 2017 audit by Kroll found that $500 million of loans could not be accounted for and that Privinvest may have over-inflated prices by $713 million. The audit also found that $200 million of the loans were spent on bank fees and commissions.

    So it turns out that Mozambique’s political and business elites are at least as corrupt as our own political and business elites.

    Good to know.

    Ironically, according to Boyle, the reason European banks may be in better shape than our own is because they had to deal with the fallout of the Euro crisis. “This is not because European banks are very good — it is precisely because they have historically been quite bad.”

    Practically every banking regulation in existence commemorates a time when things went badly wrong, and Europe spent a decade toughening up banking regulation because it went through a rolling multiyear euro crisis. The European regulators have a detailed set of standards for testing interest rate risk, with the idea that they will be applied to every significant bank in Europe. Unrealized losses are not ignored under this regime and the global Basel standards on stable funding are applied across the entire banking sector. This is quite different to the regulations applied to community banks in the United States who lobbied the government for regulatory exemptions over the years.

    “The economist Matthew Klein argued in a blog post that banks today can be seen as speculative investment funds grafted on top of critical infrastructure, and that this structure is designed to extract subsidies from the rest of society by threatening civilians with crises if the banks’ bets are ever allowed to fail.”

  • Was Credit Suisse infected with the radical transexual social justice warrior madness as the rest of our elites? Of course they were:

    

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    • Finally, it’s a chance to embed the Swiss Banker Song from Making Fiends.

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    Posted in Crime, unions, video | 4 Comments »

    This Week in Clinton Corruption for October 28, 2016

    Friday, October 28th, 2016

    A huge Clinton Corruption update this week! And who knows how much bigger next week’s will be?

  • Newly leaked memo maps cash flows between the Clinton Foundation and Bill’s for-profit activities:

    We have written frequently in recent weeks about a feud that erupted between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band back in 2011 after Chelsea raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest between Band’s firm, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department (see here, here, here and here). The feud ultimately resulted in Band being forced to draft a memo spelling out, in vivid detail, the many entangled relationships between himself, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Fortunately, today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.

    The memo starts with a brief background on Teneo, which was created in June 2011, shortly after Declan Kelly resigned from his position as “United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland,” a position to which he was appointed by Secretary Clinton.

    In June 2009, DK Consulting was founded by Declan Kelley. Mr. Kelly served as COO of FTI Consulting until June 2009, when he stepped down and established DK Consulting. At that time, he also became the United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. Pursuant to the terms of his exit agreement with FTI and consistent with the ethics agreement of his uncompensated special government employee appointment at the State Department, Mr. Kelly retained and continued to provide services to three paying clients (Coke, Dow, and UBS) and one pro bono client (Allstate). In late 2009, Declan retained me as a consultant to DK Consulting to help support the needs of these clients.

    Stop right there. Who takes Allstate, a Fortune 100 company, as a pro bono client?

    Here’s a copy of the document Zero Hedge is relying on (though alas, whoever put that up through some encoding bullshit to keep you from copying from it). Band goes into detail about just how much scratch is involved in scratching the Clintons’ backs:

    “Cognizant of the Foundation’s significant fundraising needs as well as my role as the primary fundraiser for the Foundation for the past 11 years, as a partner in Teneo, Mr. Kelley [sic] and I have asked and encouraged our clients to contribute to the Foundation,” Band wrote. “Through our efforts, we have brought new donors to the Foundation and garnered increased giving from existing donors.”

    And let’s look at the donors (all amounts for the period 2004-2011 except where noted):

    • The Coca-Cola Company: Total giving: $4,330,000
    • The Dow Chemical Company: Total giving: $780,000
    • UBS: Total giving: $540,000
    • The American Ireland Fund: Total giving: $350,000 (all 2010-2011)
    • The All-State [sic] Corporation: Total giving: $265,000 (with an additional $500,000 pledge)
    • Barclays Capital: Total giving: $1,100,000 (2008-2011)
    • Indo Gold: Total giving: $100,000
    • BHP Billiton Limited: Total giving: $20,000
    • Teneo: Total giving: $100,000

    There’s a further list of Teneo clients (GEMS Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Laureate International Universities) who were already donating to the Clinton Foundation.

  • Even the Washington Post was forced to notice:

    The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

    That’s called “quid pro quo.” Also this: “Emails show that Cheryl Mills, who at the time was serving as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, was deeply involved in the foundation’s proceedings.” Yeah, I think that’s been pretty well established at this point. (Hat tip: Powerline.)

  • And remember: Huma Abedin was working for Teneo while she was working for the State Department. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • The Wall Street Journal wonders: Why isn’t the IRS investigating the Clinton Foundation?
  • More Clinton pay to play: “The head of a for-profit university that donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation was rewarded with an invite to a high-profile State Department dinner at the request of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The five most disturbing donations to the Clinton Foundation. Including the Saudis, the Russian uranium deal money, and Indonesian tobacco magnate Putera Sampoerna who “donated and worked with the foundation before he got the U.S. government to underwrite millions in loans offered by the foundation and secured high-profile support for its activities from Sec. Clinton and other senior federal officials.”
  • “Five mega-donors and their wives are responsible for one in every $17 dollars that have been spent on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Funny how right when Hillary Clinton came under FBI scrutiny:

    The political backers of a longtime Clinton crony and fixer, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, made $675,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to the election campaign of the wife of the FBI official who later ran the investigation of Mrs. Clinton.”

    As the Wall Street Journal reports, the contributions went to the 2015 Virginia state senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of then-associate-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. McAuliffe had recruited Dr. McCabe to run. After her campaign ended unsuccessfully (Dr. McCabe lost to incumbent Republican Dick Black), Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director, a role in which he assumed oversight of the Clinton e-mail investigation.

  • And Hillary headlined a fundraiser for her. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The fact that Hillary Clinton’s inner circle was raising substantial funds for Gov. McAuliffe’s PAC and this same PAC gave close to a half-million dollars to the campaign of the wife of the senior FBI official involved in the Clinton investigation sure looks like a payoff – a major payoff.”
  • It’s not just the FBI. Department of Justice employees as a whole are hevaily backing Clinton:

    Employees of the Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton 97 percent of their donations. Trump received $8,756 from DOJ employees compared with $286,797 for Clinton. From IRS employees, Clinton received 94 percent of donations.

    Which brings up the question: Why are federal government employees even allowed to make campaign donations?

  • Speaking of the FBI, a retired agent slams James Comey’s non-indictment of Hillary. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Watch Clinton campaign staff take an illegal $20,000 donation on camera.
  • The Clinton Foundation was set up to be corrupt. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Clinton State Department IT official John Bentel takes the Fifth Amendment 90 times. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Was EmailGate buried to protect Obama rather than Clinton?
  • Maybe that’s why the Clinton campaign coordinated with both the White House and the media on how to conduct the coverup.
  • More emails emerge of how Hillary’s secret private server was causing problems at the State Department. More emails that, yet again, Clinton failed to turn over to the FBI.
  • Despite all this, could all 33,000 emails from Hillary’s private serve still exist someplace? (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
  • Yes, Donna Brazile did feed debate questions to the Clinton campaign while working for CNN. Of course, CNN is an extension of the Clinton campaign, so I don’t see how anyone can be surprised.
  • The Clinton campaign is coordinating with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
  • Maybe that’s why some Facebook employees tried to remove a Trump post on Muslims as “hate speech.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The Clinton Clan’s hunger for foreign campaign contributions goes back to at least the 1990s. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Scott Adams endorses Trump for all the bullying Democrats carried out against him and other Americans:

    I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.

    If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.

    If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.

    if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.

    On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.

    We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.

    We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.

    Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)

    Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.

    Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?

  • More from Adams: The Crook vs. the Monster.
  • Clinton campaign staffer: So, how are we going to handle all this Bill Clinton/Bill Cosby comparisons? Response: [Silence] (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Erica Garner rips Hillary for trying to make political hay out of her father’s death.
  • “Hillary Clinton campaign aides had a frantic email exchange in August 2015 over who should call the candidate to ‘sober her up some’ at around 4:30 in the afternoon.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Another story on Hillary’s health:

    Sources close to Hillary tell me that her doctors have discovered she suffers from arrhythmia (an abnormal heart beat) and a leaking heart valve. They have recommended that she consider having valve replacement surgery, but Hillary has refused because she does not want to risk the negative political fallout from stories about such a serious operation.

    In addition to the arrhythmia and leaking heart valve, Hillary suffers from chronic low blood pressure, insufficient blood flow, a tendency to form life-threatening blood clots, and troubling side effects from her medications.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine attracts all of 30 people to a rally in Florida. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    • And just before I clicked the Publish button, Wikileaks dropped another 1,400 Podesta emails. With the Clintons, corruption never takes a holiday…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Obama Scandals | 3 Comments »