The Mysterious Case of the Seized Bearer Bonds, Worth $134 Billion
Sat Jun 13, 2009 at 03:50:09 PM PDT
The US media has been generally silent about $134 billion in bearer bonds seized by Italian police at the Swiss border. On June 8, AsiaNews reported:
Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.
Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.
Karl Denninger has been following the story, and it appears to be true that this vast sum was, in fact, seized.
It is a mystery why the story is receiving coverage in Europe and Asia, but not in the US. Rumors have been swirling about possible involvement of the Japanese, Chinese, and/or Korean governments, with the last being more likely if the bonds are counterfeit. Whether real or fake, the apparent fact of the smuggling raises all kinds of questions, with no easy answers. Mr Denninger applies his considerable intelligence to the matter, in Sherlock Holmes fashion:
