How foreign based banks who help defraud the US public purse are going to plunder more funds c/o Hank the bank.

We reported that the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations released a report on July 15th 2008 saying that UBS’s offshore practices helped American citizens hide an estimated $18 billion in 19,000 accounts from the Internal Revenue Service. see Sunday, July 20, 2008
Massive UBS scheme to help US taxpayers to defraud IRS of tax on at least US$18 Bn.

We had also reported Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Deutsche Bank's role in questionable tax shelters - fire destroys bank and records - LMDC and it's interesting people - explaining how Deutsche Bank arranged "taz Shleters" for US citizens...

In August, KPMG reached a $456 million deferred-prosecution agreement with prosecutors and admitted criminal wrongdoing over four types of shelters, some of them ones that Deutsche Bank worked on. A smaller German bank, HVB, has also settled with prosecutors.

The bank has said in the past that the transactions it arranged for tax shelters were regular and ordinary.Prosecutors are examining how Deutsche Bank helped to make and sell a digital option shelter called Cobra (currency options bring reward alternatives Ho.Ho.Ho.),to more than 1,100 wealthy investors around 1999 and 2000, according to the people who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Now this is all grist to the busy bankers day ... but DB and UBS are banks headquartered in a foreign country, and now they can sell off their septic debt to the US taxpayer, via Mr Paulsen's hastily drafted in "experts" on valuing worthless pieces of shit, called SIV's etc.,

Is this a wise/ sensible way to apply the worker's dollar ?

When Butch and Sundance were robbing banks, it was the banks that were robbed ... now we have a socilaised capitalism where the Banks are sanctioned by law to rob the people ... and any act the US Treasury makes is beyond the law.

Euro carbon trading scheme in final stages of collapse

The EU has been running a Common Fisheries Policy for decades, it is a carefully designed policy to centrally allocate quotas and to limit environmental damage. This bureaucratic nonsense has saved neither the fish nor the fish eaters from over fishing in European waters.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme ETS is a carefully designed policy to centrally allocate quotas and to limit environmental damagein which polluters (i.e net emitters of carbon in carbon dioxide over some fanciful self declared target) pay non- polluters (i.e net emitters of carbon in carbon dioxide below some fanciful self declared target) for their mythical non emitted tons of carbon has collapsed.

The accompanying graph (price of 1 Tonne of tradeable carbon) shows that carbon is trading at it's lowest levels ever and drifts lower in the market every week.

This financial juggling has failed in every respect to save the environment but has enriched many lawyers , accountants, consultants, and City traders at the expense of a credulous investing public. It is one of the most successful financial scams of the last decade - eclipsed of course over time by the "pensions industry".

FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY

At the recent 11th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-11) in Montreal, 28/11 - 9/12 06 the the 25 EU ministers (knowing the game was up) stopped short of mentioning greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2020 (let alone 2050) that EU heads of states had agreed to in March.

Greenpeace welcomed "many positive elements" of COP 11 which "underline Europe's commitment to tackling climate change". Ho.Ho.

They added : "the text on the post-2012 process is vague, and ignores the urgency of getting it under way with a clear end date for the completion of negotiations".

They commented on the real politik rather sharply "The UK presidency's claim that climate change was one of its main priorities has been exposed as subordinate to Britain's special relationship with the US and its obsession with tactics over substance."

Here is a wonderful picture of the happy, happy people at the LSE on the morning of February 23rd when Econergy (ECG) "a world leader in Carbon Credit origination and sale" raised £60m through a placing of Ordinary Shares of 1p each with institutional investors.