Deutsche Bank Admits It Also Rigged Gold Prices, Agrees To Expose Other Manipulators

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 12:48 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-14/first-silver-now-gold-deutsche-bank-admits-it-also-rigged-gold-prices-legal-settleme
Well, that didn't take long.
Earlier today when we reported the stunning news that DB has decided to "turn" against the precious metals manipulation cartel by first settling a long-running silver price fixing lawsuit which in addition to "valuable monetary consideration" said it would expose the other banks' rigging having also "agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement" we said "since this is just one of many lawsuits filed over the past two years in Manhattan federal court in which investors accused banks of conspiring to rig rates or prices in financial and commodities markets, we expect that now that DB has "turned" that much more curious information about precious metals rigging will emerge, and will confirm what the "bugs" had said all along: that the precious metals market has been rigged all along."
This was confirmed moments ago when Reuters reported that Deutsche Bank has also reached a settlement in US litigation alleging the bank conspired to fix gold prices. In other words, hours after admitting it was rigging the silver market, it did the same for gold.
Some more headlines from Reuters:

• Reaches settlement in U.S. litigation alleging it conspired to fix gold prices.
• Plaintiffs' lawyers, in filing, say Deutsche Bank has signed a settlement term sheet
• Plaintiffs' lawyers say are negotiating formal settlement agreement that would be presented for judge's approval later
• Plaintiffs' lawyers say settlement contemplates a monetary payment by Deutsche Bank
• Gold settlement follows similar accord involving alleged silver price-fixing that was disclosed on Wednesday

Most importantly, as the actual settlement reveals, Deutsche has agreed that in addition to once again providing "valuable monetary consideration" which will be paid into a settlement fund, that like in the silver settlement it will provide "cooperation in pursuing claims against the remaining Defendants."
And with that the floodgates open.
Here is the full settlement letter:

Deutsche Bank Confirms Silver Market Manipulation In Legal Settlement, Agrees To Expose Other Banks

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 09:50 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-14/case-closed-deutsche-bank-confirms-silver-market-manipulation-legal-settlement-agree
Back in July of 2014, we reported that in an attempt to obtain if not compensation, then at least confirmation of bank manipulation in the precious metals industry, a group of silver bullion banks including Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC (later UBS was also added to the defendants) were accused of manipulating prices in the multi-billion dollar market.
The lawsuit, which was originally filed in a New York district court by veteran litigator J. Scott Nicholson, a resident of Washington DC, alleged that the banks, which oversee the century-old silver fix manipulated the physical and COMEX futures market since January 2007. The lawsuit subsequently received class-action status. It was the first case to target the silver fix.
Many expected that this case would never go anywhere and that the defendant banks would stonewall indefinitely: after all their legal budgets were far greater than the plaintiffs.
Which is why we were surprised to read overnight that not only has this lawsuit against precious metals manipulation not been swept away, but that the lead defendant, troulbed German bank Deutsche Bank agreed to settle the litigation over allegations it illegally conspired with Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC Holdings Plc to fix silver prices at the expense of investors, Reuters reported citing a court filing by law firm Lowey.
Terms were not disclosed, but the accord will include a monetary payment by the German bank.
It goes without saying, that there would have been neither a settlement nor a payment if the banks had done nothing wrong.
According to Reuters, Deutsche Bank has signed a binding settlement term sheet, and is negotiating a formal settlement agreement to be submitted for approval by U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, who oversees the litigation. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman declined to comment. Lawyers for the investors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
As noted above, investors had accused Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ScotiaBank of abusing their power as three of the world's largest silver bullion banks to dictate the price of silver through a secret, once-a-day meeting known as the Silver Fix.
None of this will come as a big surprise to readers, most of whom have been aware that this took place for years.
But wait there's more.
In a curious twist, the settlement letter reveals a stunning development, namely that the former members of the manipulation cartel have turned on each other. To wit:

“In addition to valuable monetary consideration, Deutsche Bank has also agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement. In Plaintiff’s estimation, the cooperation to be provided by Deutsche Bank will substantially assist Plaintiffs in the prosecution of their claims against the non-settling defendants.”

The full shocking letter can be read here:

Since this is just one of many lawsuits filed over the past two years in Manhattan federal court in which investors accused banks of conspiring to rig rates or prices in financial and commodities markets, we expect that now that DB has "turned" that much more curious information about precious metals rigging will emerge, and will confirm what the "bugs" had said all along: that the precious metals market has been rigged all along.
Finally, we'll just remind readers that the US commodity "regulator", the CFTC in 2013 closed its five year investigation concerning allegations that the biggest bullion banks manipulate silver markets and prices.  It proudly reported in September 2013 that it found no evidence of wrongdoing and dropped the probe. This is what it said:

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) Division of Enforcement has closed the investigation that was publicly confirmed in September 2008 concerning silver markets. The Division of Enforcement is not recommending charges to the Commission in that investigation. For law enforcement and confidentiality reasons, the CFTC only rarely comments publicly on whether it has opened or closed any particular investigation. Nonetheless, given that this particular investigation was confirmed in September 2008, the CFTC deemed it appropriate to inform the public that the investigation is no longer ongoing. Based upon the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring an enforcement action with respect to any firm or its employees related to our investigation of silver markets.

In light of this confirmation that the CFTC's probe was "lacking" perhaps it is perhaps time for the so-called regulator who at the time was headed by ex-Goldmanite Gary Gensler, to reopen its investigation?

Deutsche Bank Says World "Past The Point Of No Return" In The Default Cycle

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/11/2016 07:57 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-11/deutsche-bank-says-world-past-point-no-return-default-cycle
Over the past year, the credit cycle finally turned, and has unleashed the latest default cycle. In fact, as BofA's Michael Contopoulos warned last week, it may be the worst default cycle in history with "cumulative losses over the length of the entire cycle could be worse than we’ve ever seen before."
Over the weekend, the FT got the memo with a report that "global company bond defaults at highest level since 2009" in which it said that "the global bond default rate by companies is running at its highest since 2009 with the US accounting for the vast majority, according to rating agency Standard & Poor’s. A further four defaults this week, with three coming from the troubled oil and gas sector, pushed the overall tally to 40 with a little over a quarter of 2016 done."
To be sure, the US default cycle is bad and getting worse. But how much worse?
The latest to attempt that answer is DB's Jim Reid who in his just released 18th annual default study explains why his "late cycle fears continue to build." These are some of the highlights:

There are clear signs the cycle is turning, especially in the US. Our US strategists have previously suggested that we need the combination of three conditions for us to be confident the next default cycle is imminent. We need the accumulation of excessive debt and preferably of deteriorating quality, some kind of external shock/trigger and tighter monetary policy/a flattening of the yield curve. The pieces of the jigsaw are building. US corporate debt accumulation now compares with that seen prior to previous default cycles. Equity volatility has seen two spikes in the last 12 months (August and early 2016), bank equity is falling (a lead indicator of lending?) and global yield curves continue to flatten.

* * *

The buildup of excess is often a pre-requisite for bubbles to burst or for economic cycles to be vulnerable to shocks. One argument for why this US economic cycle might still be able to run for a few years is that many economists feel that excess hasn’t been as prevalent as in prior cycles. However one can argue there has been a sizeable increase in US corporate debt since the GFC comparable to increases prior to previous default cycles. As Figure 15 shows, in the modern era of leveraged finance the debt cycle waves have been well correlated to defaults. We’ve used single-Bs to keep credit quality constant throughout and used Fed data to determine non-financial corporate debt/GDP.



Our US credit strategists measure the total growth of debt stock as well as its aggressiveness to determine whether there has been sufficient “material” created to feed the next wave of defaults. Figure 16 looks at the growth of the stock of US HY debt as well as the aggressiveness of new issuance. The former is measured by the combined size of the HY bond market (USD developed markets) and loans on U.S. bank balance sheets. The graph shows distinct periods of debt growth in the past, going back to the late 1980s, with each of the past three complete credit cycles preceded by waves of new debt creation, lasting from four to five and a half years, and resulting in cumulative debt stock growth of 53-68% (shaded areas). The current episode, measured since early 2011, has lasted 5.2 years and resulted in 64% growth in the combined value of the high yield bond market and loans on bank balance sheets, putting it comfortably inside the range of previous cycles. It shows a similar result to our own US corporate debt/GDP chart.



For a measure of aggressiveness in recent issuance trends, our US strategists look at CCC-rated issuance in HY and leveraged loans, as a percentage of total  market size, as shown in the right-hand graph of Figure 16. Volume is presented as a percentage of total market size (HY + loans), on a trailing-12- month basis. Shaded areas again highlight previous debt growth cycles, as well as the most recent one, with figures printed inside representing cumulative CCC issuance volume for the full duration of each episode, divided by the market size at its start. The previous two credit cycles, in the late 1990s and mid- to late 2000s, saw this indicator expand by 20% and 18%, respectively, compared to its present value of 17%. Unfortunately, there is a lack of detailed issuance data to extend this to the first cycle in the late 1980s.

The analysis is somewhat conservative in estimating the starting point of the current credit cycle to be January 2011. Arguably, the market was healing and perhaps even expanding in 2010, which would make these measurements of pre-requisite debt growth and aggressiveness look even more stretched here. We will nonetheless use the numbers shown above, as we aim to build our case for the timing of the next default cycle based on the more conservative assumptions.

We can therefore conclude that pre-requisites for the next default cycle are now in place.

From the conclusion:

The artificial ingredients keeping defaults below their 1983-2003 levels are still broadly in place so although we expect the next default cycle to be round the corner it could still be mild relative to the early 90s and early 00s cycle and even the already subdued 2009 cycle which was very short, especially given the economic wreckage seen.

As we’ve suggested in previous editions of this report, this is likely due to the increasing artificial demand for fixed income seen over the last 15-20 years which effectively allows more financing opportunities for levered companies at lower yields than they might be asked to pay if global fixed income markets were a perfectly free market where the only consideration was relative value. Over the last two decades, SWFs, pension funds, insurance companies, banks and more recently central banks in great size have distorted the demand for and yield of global fixed income. This is unlikely to change and although the Oil and Gas sector demonstrates that bad fundamentals can still win out, for more marginal companies, the artificial conditions in fixed income could still help prevent a more savage cycle.

Obviously the Oil and Gas sector will play a big part in determining the overall level of defaults and in a separate section our US strategists detail their expectations for defaults in this sector and how that will filter through into the wider US HY market.

It’s also true that credit spreads are relatively elevated and price in a default rate markedly higher than current levels. Indeed as we’ll see throughout the body of this report, at an aggregate level a buy-and-hold investor would need to see defaults worse than virtually all observed periods through history for them not to get a positive excess return relative to Government bonds from this starting point. However if we do see a recession even if defaults are relatively subdued the illiquidity of financial markets could easily see big mark-to- market losses. Recession tend to bring big overshoots in credit spreads relative to default risk anyway. So lower structural defaults may not provide comfort in the heat of the next recession but current spreads should give longer-term investors some comfort across the vast majority of sectors.

All of which perhaps explains why the ECB is well on its path to monetizing junk bonds once it is done with investment grade corporates.

John Mack: Don't Worry About Deutsche Bank, It Will Be Bailed Out By The Government

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/10/2016 10:44 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-10/john-mack-dont-worry-about-deutsche-bank-it-would-be-bailed-out-government
When it comes to government bail outs of insolvent banks few are as qualified to opine as John Mack who was CEO of Morgan Stanley when the bank, along with all other U.S. TBTF banks, was bailed out with a multi-trillion rescue package in the aftermath of the Lehman failure. Which is why it was illuminating, if not surprising, that during an interview with Bloomberg TV discussing the future of Deutsche Bank, John Mack said that "there’s no question in my mind, it is absolutely good for every penny." In other words, "Deutsche Bank is fine."
Why is he so confident? According to Mack, "this idea that I heard yesterday, the possibility of not making their interest payments, it’s just absurd. The government will not let that happen."
Said otherwise, it will be bailed out. One wonders if Germany's citizens were polled before John came up with this conclusion.
This is what else he said:

While German regulators at this point shouldn’t ban short-selling as U.S. authorities did in the 2008 financial crisis, the German central bank should make a statement in support of the lender, Mack said. Deutsche Bank shares jumped the most in almost seven years Wednesday, paring a decline that had exceeded 40 percent this year.

“People overreact,” Mack said. “The bank’s name is Deutsche Bank. It’s the German bank. Politically, they will stand up, if they need a safety net, and give it to them.”

Which was to be expected: after all DB had a gross notional derivative exposure of roughly $60 trillion as of 2014, several times greater than the GDP of Europe, and a net balance sheet which is a large portion of German GDP.


This is also why last thing Germany, Europe, or the world's central bankers will allow, is DB to fail, and it has never been a question whether or not they will try to, but whether and how they can save it. And, if a political bailout is unfeasible in the current climate, whether instead of a bailout, would Deutsche Bank be the first major European bank to rely on Europe's new "bail in" regime to stuff depositors for any capital shortfalls.
Still, without focusing on the specifics, a government (or ECB) backstop is precisely what the market is contemplating today as noted earlier, and as manifested in the stock which has soared the most in 5 years, just as Lehman did in its turbulent final days.

Deutsche Bank Is Scared: "What Needs To Be Done" In Its Own Words

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/09/2016 12:37 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-09/deutsche-bank-terrified-here-what-needs-be-done-its-own-words
It all started in mid/late 2014, when the first whispers of a Fed rate hike emerged, which in turn led to relentless increase in the value of the US dollar and the plunge in the price of oil and all commodities, unleashing the worst commodity bear market in history.
The immediate implication of these two concurrent events was missed by most, although we wrote about it and previewed the implications in November of that year in "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed."
The conclusion was simple: Fed tightening and the resulting plunge in commodity prices, would lead (as it did) to the collapse of the great petrodollar cycle which had worked efficiently for 18 years and which led to petrodollar nations serving as a source of demand for $10 trillion in US assets, and when finished, would result in the Quantitative Tightening which has offset all central bank attempts to inject liquidity in the markets, a tightening which has since been unleashed by not only most emerging markets and petro-exporters but most notably China, and whose impact has been to not only pressure stocks lower but bring economic growth across the entire world to a grinding halt.
The second, and just as important development, was observed in early 2015: 11 months ago we wrote that "The Global Dollar Funding Shortage Is Back With A Vengeance And "This Time It's Different" and followed up on it later in the year in "Global Dollar Funding Shortage Intensifies To Worst Level Since 2012" a problem which has manifested itself most notably in Africa where as we wrote recently, virtually every petroleum exporting nation has run out of actual physical dollars.
The point is, it all started with the rising dollar and the ensuing global dollar shortage, and thus, the Fed embarking on what may be the biggest central bank error of all time. To be sure, the consequences are wide ranging: from the collapse in crude, to the tremors and devaluations in China, to the tightening financial conditions, to the (manufacturing) recession in the U.S., and most recently, to whispers that Deutsche Bank, the bank with $60 trillion in notional derivatives, may be the next Lehman Brothers.
Which, incidentally, brings us to none other than one of Deutsche Bank's most respected credit analysts, Dominic Konstam, who clearly has an appreciation of the existential risk he finds himself in, not only career-wise, but in terms of the entire financial structure. We know this, because after reading his email blast from this morning we realize just how vast the fear, if not sheer terror, is among those who truly realize just how broken the system currently is.
We have reposted his entire letter below, because it represents the most definitive blueprint of everything that is about to be unleashed - especially since it comes from the perspective of one of the people who is currently deep inside Deutsche Bank and realizes just how close to the edge the German bank is.
What Konstam makes clear, in no uncertain terms, is that the the problem is the one we laid out back in November 2014: "It is not oil, it is not in the banks, it is a run on central bank liquidity, especially dollar based and there needs to be much more ($) liquidity."
He also makes it quite clear that investor fears about contagion are well-founded: here it is in the words of a Deutsche Banker:

The exposure issue has been downplayed but make no mistake banks are heavily exposed to Asia/MidEast and while 10% writedown might be worst case for China but too high for the whole, it is what investors shd and do worry about -- whole wd include the contagion to banking hubs in Sing/HKong

His solution? It's actually quite disturbing to all those who thought that all our warnings that cash would be outlawed were nothing but a joke. For those pressed for time jump straight to the "What needs to be done section" - it's a doozy.

So back to the  original question WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Simple?

1. Recognize the problem. It is not oil, it is not in the banks..it is a run on central bank liquidity, especially dollar based and there needs to be much more ($) liquidity. Keynes said to deal with overinvestment boom you cut you don't raise rates. QE is impractical but getting the dollar down would greatly lift dollar based liquidity. So for a starter Fed shd stop raising rates and clearly signal an extended time out.
2. Draghi shd follow up with a one 2 punch, not to get rates down but open the refi spigot to banks and ease liquidity concerns.
3. China needs to come clean. Devalue, stabilize reserves and then allocate 1 tn+ to short up strategically important institutions. Stop intervening in equity markets.
4. And Basel 3 (?4) should be delayed specifically regarding leverage ratios and threat of higher. As a token move there shd be deemphasis of the SSM/bail in rules until there is clarity from the ECB on liquidity sources for stressed banks.
5. how about some fiscal stimulus
6. on negative rates -- instead of making them punitive on the banks allow the banks to earn the spread, make them punitive to savers.. Cash shd be charged interest -- put the micro chip in large denom notes/tax cash withdrawals.. encourage spending not saving .. mortgage rates can be negative and banks can still earn a spread. The spread is the problem not the rate.

The existential fear in Deutsche Bank's analyst is tangible, as is the implied threat: "don't do these things, and if Deutsche Bank and its $60 trillion in derivatives blow up, it will be on you."
And with that we check to the central bankers who will do precisely as instructed, because Deutsche Bank is simply too vast and too systemically important to fail: in fact its failure would be orders of magnitude more costly and more destructive for modern capital markets than Lehman.
As a result, we expect all of Konstam's suggestions, from a major China devaluation, to a halt to negative rates, to a Yellen relent (perhaps as soon as tomorrow), to negative rates being passed on to savers, to the taxing of cash withdrawals "to encourage spending not saving", and all the other bullet points. Unless, of course, someone is intent on seeing Deutsche Bank liquidate, as was the case with Lehman.
That said, Konstam's final sentence is the most ominous:

"Austria July 31 1932 was a great success; Sept 1 1933 beginning of the end (see Worgl experiment, Gesell)."

He is referring to the "Miracle of Worgl", when during 1932 - in the middle of the Great Depression - the Austrian town unleashed a monetary experiment in which "Certified Compensation Bills" were issued, a form of currency commonly known as Scrip, or Freigeld, one influenced by the monetary theories of the "hyper-Keynesian" Silvio Gesell.
Why does Konstam bring up scrip as the solution to not only Dutsche Bank's problems, but the entire problem of a run on central bank liquidity, and by implication, credibility?
Because it's coming... just to save the banks one more, final time. 
* * *
Appendix: the part from Konstam's letter not dealing with policy recommendations is below
Strategy Update: What we need....Main point is still policymakers need to recognize the problem and have a total rethink of strategy...Yellen is a detail in the grand scheme of things if its more of the same about risks to the outlook but labor mkt strong, blah blah Even Draghi has clear re-think issues.. no longer about more negative rates in the way they have been doing it but cutting thru the incipient financial crisis. All of these though are symptoms of the wider problem -- the collapse in global liquidity that  is on going in the post Fed qe phase, reflected in an overly strong dollar/loss of reserves and end user deleveraging from china to opec to credit. It picks off the weaker links and makes people think that that is the "problem".
So about 3 weeks everyone was saying if only oil would stabilize.. and "it has".. but that wasn't the solution; Now it's if only euro bank credit stabilizes, and no doubt there will be a level when that happens.. but that won't be it.. The PCA analysis from Jerome was neat becos it captures the investor base-plus running on the hampster wheel thinking it's found the problem. The very fact that the weightings have shifted from oil to euro financials doesnt mean the problem is different now then it was, it's the same problem but PCA can't find it-- by definition. (Correlation is not causality). It merely captures the menu du jour. Soon enough the "problem" will be equities generally or maybe core rates dropping "too low", these weightings invariably will rise -- and thats why its very dangerous to use the last year's correlation to determine which markets have over or under reacted to the best proxy of the problem, at any particular time. For example rates look too low in the PCA now but that's precisely becos they were almost invariant to lower oil late last year.
The refrain from the customer base last year if you recall was that rates don't rally when there's risk off.. that must be becos of loss of reserves or investor too long etc (George's QT).. But now they are moving and the correlation is becoming stronger. I would posit that instead of a low correlation dissauding investors from hedging with rates they are actually needing to get super long to make up for poor performance on risk assets becos it is they only thing that comes close to a proper hedge. So the mother of all rate rallies will be driven by investors going way over long on the either side UNLESS or UNTIL policymakers do the right thing... Our traders have been debating whether the market trades long or not with idea that there seems to be better selling.. but CoT got shorter last week and even on the open interest adjment Alex Li did, it still looks to us that the market trades short -- or not long enough..And that means we do not want to fade this move absent the policy shift,.. and that means why can't 10s test the old lows. On the euro financial issue itself.. our equity analysts have got a lot of attention around the specifics of the euro fincl issue from the concerns over exposures to commodities/china.. the inability to earn in a low for long/negative yield world to the overreach of regulation with limitations on capital raising/bail in issues.. One of the main issues we would argue is that policymakers need to be break what wd become a liquidity issue for banks in the status quo. TLTROs had poor take up becos banks were capital constrained and didn't want to lend -- that now limits their access to liquidity going forward so if the exposure/bail in concerns force banks to the ECB there better be an open door. In the xtreme the ECB cd buy the (sub) debt but the politics probably don't allow that -- better might be to simply offer cheap liquidity for alternative vehicles to do so or better yet have unconditional LTROs -- either way it is probably not the time to go deeper negative on rates.
The exposure issue has been downplayed but make no mistake banks are heavily exposed to Asia/MidEast and while 10% writedown might be worst case for China but too high for the whole, it is what investors shd and do worry about -- whole wd include the contagion to banking hubs in Sing/HKong.. and for the record BIS data is as follows for countries' bank exposures -- we'll give China first, whole second.. Australia: 32bn/74bn; france 43bn/226bn; germany 28bn/120 bn; japan  70 bn/367bn; uk 169bn/657bn; US 87bn/409bn. Note according to Fed rough proxy of US bank capital is over 1.5 tn so in worst case scenario it would "only" be 3% of capital.. a lot but managable.. but that's then becomes the problem for UK, French banks in particular,,ironically not obviously Germany so much..altho Europe has the issue of earning the capital that US banks are better able to do.

22 Signs That The Global Economic Turmoil We Have Seen So Far In 2016 Is Just The Beginning

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/05/2016 20:00 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-05/22-signs-global-economic-turmoil-we-have-seen-so-far-2016-just-beginning

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

As bad as the month of January was for the global economy, the truth is that the rest of 2016 promises to be much worse.  Layoffs are increasing at a pace that we haven’t seen since the last recession, major retailers are shutting down hundreds of locations, corporate profit margins are plunging, global trade is slowing down dramatically, and several major European banks are in the process of completely imploding.  I am about to share some numbers with you that are truly eye-popping.  Each one by itself would be reason for concern, but when you put all of the pieces together it creates a picture that is hard to deny. 

The global economy is in crisis, and this is going to have very serious implications for the financial markets moving forward.  U.S. stocks just had their worst January in seven years, and if I am right much worse is still yet to come this year.  The following are 22 signs that the global economic turmoil that we have seen so far in 2016 is just the beginning…

1. The number of job cuts in the United States skyrocketed 218 percent during the month of January according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

2. The Baltic Dry Index just hit yet another brand new all-time record low.  As I write this article, it is sitting at 303.

3. U.S. factory orders have now dropped for 14 months in a row.

4. In the U.S., the Restaurant Performance Index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008.

5. In January, orders for class 8 trucks (the big trucks that you see shipping stuff around the country on our highways) declined a whopping 48 percent from a year ago.

6. Rail traffic is also slowing down substantially.  In Colorado, there are hundreds of train engines that are just sitting on the tracks with nothing to do.

7. Corporate profit margins peaked during the third quarter of 2014 and have been declining steadily since then.  This usually happens when we are heading into a recession.

8. A series of extremely disappointing corporate quarterly reports is sending stock after stock plummeting.  Here is a summary from Zero Hedge of a few examples that we have just witnessed…

• SHARES OF LIONS GATE ENTERTAINMENT FALL 5 PCT IN EXTENDED TRADE AFTER QUARTERLY RESULTS – RTRS
• TABLEAU SOFTWARE SHARES TUMBLE 40 PCT IN AFTER HOURS TRADING – RTRS
• YRC WORLDWIDE SHARES DOWN 16.4 PCT AFTER THE BALL FOLLOWING RESULTS – RTRS
• SPLUNK INC SHARES DOWN 7.6 PCT IN AFTER HOURS TRADING – RTRS
• LINKEDIN SHARES EXTEND DECLINE, DOWN 24 PCT AFTER RESULTS, GUIDANCE – RTRS
• HANESBRANDS SHARES FURTHER ADD TO LOSSES IN EXTENDED TRADE, LAST DOWN 14.9 PCT – RTRS
• OUTERWALL SHARES FALL 11 PCT IN EXTENDED TRADING AFTER QUARTERLY RESULTS – RTRS
• GENWORTH SHARES DOWN 16.5 PCT AFTER THE BELL FOLLOWING RESULTS, RESTRUCTURING PLAN

9. Junk bonds continue to crash on Wall Street.  On Monday, JNK was down to 32.60 and HYG was down to77.99.

10. On Thursday, a major British news source publicly named five large European banks that are considered to be in very serious danger…

Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Santander, Barclays and RBS are among the stocks that are falling sharply sending shockwaves through the financial world, according to former hedge fund manager and ex Goldman Sachs employee Raoul Pal.

11. Deutsche Bank is the biggest bank in Germany and it has more exposure to derivatives than any other bank in the world.  Unfortunately, Deutsche Bank credit default swaps are now telling us that there is deep turmoil at the bank and that a complete implosion may be imminent.

12. Last week, we learned that Deutsche Bank had lost a staggering 6.8 billion euros in 2015.  If you will recall, I warned about massive problems at Deutsche Bank all the way back in September.  The most important bank in Germany is exceedingly troubled, and it could end up being for the EU what Lehman Brothers was for the United States.

13. Credit Suisse just announced that it will be eliminating 4,000 jobs.

14. Royal Dutch Shell has announced that it is going to be eliminating 10,000 jobs.

15. Caterpillar has announced that it will be closing 5 plants and getting rid of 670 workers.

16. Yahoo has announced that it is going to be getting rid of 15 percent of its total workforce.

17. Johnson & Johnson has announced that it is slashing its workforce by 3,000 jobs.

18. Sprint just laid off 8 percent of its workforce and GoPro is letting go 7 percent of its workers.

19. All over America, retail stores are shutting down at a staggering pace.  The following list comes from one of my previous articles…

-Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the United States.

-K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.

-J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more stores after closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.

-Macy’s has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay off approximately 2,500 employees.

-The Gap is in the process of closing 175 stores in North America.

-Aeropostale is in the process of closing 84 stores all across America.

-Finish Line has announced that 150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.

-Sears has shut down about 600 stores over the past year or so, but sales at the stores that remain open continue to fall precipitously.

20. According to the New York Times, the Chinese economy is facing a mountain of bad loans that “could exceed $5 trillion“.

21. Japan has implemented a negative interest rate program in a desperate attempt to try to get banks to make more loans.

22. The global economy desperately needs the price of oil to go back up, but Morgan Stanley says that we will not see $80 oil again until 2018.

It is not difficult to see where the numbers are trending.

Last week, I told my wife that I thought that Marco Rubio was going to do better than expected in Iowa.

How did I come to that conclusion?

It was simply based on how his poll numbers were trending.

And when you look at where global economic numbers are trending, they tell us that 2016 is going to be a year that is going to get progressively worse as it goes along.

So many of the exact same things that we saw happen in 2008 are happening again right now, and you would have to be blind not to see it.

Hopefully I am wrong about what is coming in our immediate future, because millions upon millions of Americans are not prepared for what is ahead, and most of them are going to get absolutely blindsided by the coming crisis.

European Bank Risk Soars To 3 Year Highs, US Risk Rising

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/04/2016 09:53 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-04/european-bank-risk-soars-3-year-highs-us-risk-rising
We are going to need more "whatever it takes." And with Draghi's efforts to shove sovereign bonds down the throat of Europe's banks, the sovereign-to-financial linkage is now systemically as worrisome as it has ever been...

Deutsche Bank's CDS continues to push higher...smashing European bank risk to its highest since 2013...

Unicredit remains the most risky among EU banks...


And it is spreading to America...

Deutsche Bank Reports Massive Loss, Will Cut 35,000 Jobs, Exit 10 Countries In Sweeping Overhaul

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/29/2015 07:53 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-29/deutsche-bank-reports-massive-loss-will-cut-35000-jobs-exit-10-countries-sweeping-ov
As we put it a few days ago while mocking Saudi Arabia’s attitude toward “collateral damage” from its bombing runs in Yemen, “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” Well, over at Deutsche Bank, John Cryan has been busy crushing whole cartons worth. 
From sweeping job cuts, to reorganizations, to eliminating the dividend, Cryan has been a veritable wrecking ball since taking the helm from co-CEOs Anshu Jain (who is gone) and Jürgen Fitschen (who is leaving).
Just yesterday, Europe’s largest bank announced that the dividend would be scrapped as part of “Strategy 2020.” Here are some other key points from Cryan’s “plan”:

• CET 1 ratio: at least 12.5% from the end of 2018 
• Leverage ratio: at least 4.5% at the end of 2018 and at least 5.0% at the end of 2020 
• Return on Tangible Equity (RoTE): greater than 10% by 2018 
• Adjusted Costs (total noninterest expenses excluding restructuring and severance, litigation, impairment of goodwill and intangibles and policyholder benefits and claims) of less than EUR 22.0 billion by 2018 
• Cost/income ratio (CIR) of approximately 70% in 2018 and of approximately 65% in 2020 
• Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) (excluding regulatory inflation following regulatory changes expected to be at least EUR 100 billion by 2019/2020) of approximately EUR 320 billion at the end of 2018 and of approximately EUR 310 billion at the end of 2020. 

Well, the hits just kept coming on Thursday as Deutsche Bank made good on a promise to write down billions in assets in its investment bank and retail- and private-banking operations. The Q3 loss: €6 billion.
 That’s a record, and Cryan understandably described it as “highly disappointing.” The pain was largely attributable to “impairments of goodwill and other intangibles,” or, put differently, “marking things to reality.’” As a reminder, here's what DB said earlier this month:

An impairment of all goodwill and certain intangibles in Corporate Banking & Securities (CB&S) and Private & Business Clients (PBC) of approximately EUR 5.8 billion. This is largely driven by the impact of expected higher regulatory capital requirements on the measurement of the value of these segments as well as current expectations regarding the disposal of Postbank.

And here's what the writedown looks like in the context of previous quarterly results:

So yeah, nothing good about that. Other highlights from the report: investment banking revenues were marginally higher Y/Y with fixed income holding up. Overall revenues were down 7%. Here are Goldman's summary bullets:

• FX moves aside, (i) FICC down -25% q/q and up +20% y/y – the y/y results falls from +20% to +5% y/y if we adjust for CVA gains, CVA methodology changes and FVA impact; (ii) equities fell 20% y/y (and 40% q/q); (iii) advisory -8% y/y. All-in, this is a solid result y/y, compared to reported averages thus far helped by (1) the weak Euro and (2) low base effect. We await company clarification on the composition of the FICC result.
• IB revenues up +3% y/y, with the US$ strength (~+14% vs € y/y) contributing substantially.
• Divisional PBT, on an underlying basis: (1) CB&S --45% y/y; (2) GTB +15% y/y; (3) PBC: 53%y/y ; (4) AWM:-15% y/y (5) non-core unit lost €278 mn headline
• B3 CET1 ratio up 10bps to 11.5%, this contrasts to the 11% the company expected as of October 7. This discrepancy is driven by the reversal of previous dividend accruals in line with the announced elimination of the dividend.
• Stated TBVPS fell 1%, to €38.99 putting the stock on 0.7x P/TB. 

And now for the fun stuff. As part of the "new" strategy (which Morgan Stanley thinks looks a lot like the "old" strategy), the bank will exit 10 countries including Mexico, Norway and New Zealand, and move trading operations from Brazil to global and regional hubs.
Additionally, Cryan will cut a total of 35,000 jobs. As WSJ notes, "the overall head count reduction includes 9,000 full-time jobs, 6,000 external contractors and 20,000 additional roles through the disposal of assets." Deutsche will also dump a host of assets including its Postbank retail unit.
But don't worry, because as John Cryan said, "Deutsche Bank does not have a strategy problem."
That's probably true. It's hard to have a strategy "problem" when you have no strategy at all.
*  *  *
Bonus humor for those who know something about Austrian black swans (via Bloomberg):

• Deutsche Bank wrote up Heta Asset Resolution claim by EU24m
• Doesn’t give reason for write-up

Deutsche Bank Sums It Up "The Fragility Of This Artificially Manipulated Financial System Was Finally Exposed"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/24/2015 09:05 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/deutsche-bank-sums-it-fragility-artificially-manipulated-financial-system-was-finall
Today's dose of vile tinfoil hattery magick comes straight from the bank with the cool $55 trillion or so in derivatives, Deutsche Bank:

The fragility of this artificially manipulated financial system was exposed over the last couple of days of last week. It all ended with the S&P 500 falling -3.19% on Friday - its worst day since November 9th 2011.
* * *
We've long felt that the only thing preventing another financial crisis has been extraordinary central bank liquidity and general interventions from the global authorities which we still expect to continue for a long while yet. So when policy changes, risks arise. The genesis of this recent sell-off has been the threat of the Fed raising rates next month, but China's confrontational move two weeks ago and the subsequent knock-on through EM have accelerated us towards something more serious. We always thought something would get in the way of the Fed raising rates in September and we're perhaps seeing this now. With 24 days to go until we find out, the probability of a hike has gone down to 34% from a 54% recent peak on August 9th. Having said we always thought something would come along to derail a Fed rate hike we probably should have gone underweight credit. However with trading liquidity poor and with a reasonably high desire to be long amongst investors there has to be a big move to justify the change in stance. Also with a strong possibility that the Fed will relent and that China could add more stimulus soon, there may be a small window to be short European credit. So at the moment this could be a dangerous time to sell. However if it wasn't for expected intervention and extraordinary central bank policy we would be very bearish as the global financial system remains an artificial construct reliant on the largesse of the authorities.

So 6 years after we first said what at the time was seen as heretical "tinfoil" conspiracy theory, now everyone admits it. Almost time to take a vacation maybe...

Hedge Fund That Hired "Master Manipulator" From Deutsche Bank Implicated In LIBOR Suit

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/10/2015 14:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-10/hedge-fund-hired-master-manipulator-deutsche-bank-implicated-libor-suit
In many ways, Christian Bittar has come to personify the global effort to manipulate the world’s most important benchmark rates. Regular readers will remember Christian as the Deutsche Bank prop trader we first introduced in 2012 and who we later noted was dismissed from the German lender only to be hired at BlueCrest Capital Management. Here’s our six-point summary from 2013:

1. Deutsche tells an internal prop trader to "do everything legally and by the book or else."
2. Bittar colludes with virtually everyone else under the sun to generate billions in profits;
3. Bittar makes tens if not hundreds of millions of bonuses for himself;
4. Finally, DB no longer can hide the deception and claws back a portion of Bittar's bonuses, while washing its hands of the full affair;
5. He went to work for BlueCrest Capital Management LLP, Europe’s third- biggest hedge fund with $30 billion under management.

But that wouldn’t be the end of it.
Earlier this year, after Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle rate rigging charges, we got a look at exactly what Bittar said on the way to fixing the fixes (so to speak). You can view some of the highlights here.
Finally, when WSJ released the full text of a letter sent to Deutsche Bank by German financial watchdog BaFin, we got an in depth look at the relationship between Bittar and former CEO Anshu Jain. Unsurprisingly, Bittar’s lucrative trading activities at the bank made him a star in the eyes of upper management.
Now, none other than Bittar’s post-Deutsche Bank employer BlueCrest is being sued along with the usual suspect banks for conspiring to rig the Swiss franc LIBOR rate. The allegations appear to stem from the documents which were made available when Deutsche Bank settled with US regulators earlier this year. BlueCrest is the only hedge fund named.
From the complaint:

On April 23, 2015, the NYSDFS revealed that BlueCrest conspired with Defendant Deutsche Bank to manipulate Swiss franc LIBOR for its financial benefit, requesting that Deutsche Bank make a false 1 month Swiss franc LIBOR submission on February 10, 2005. Upon information and belief, that request was sent via electronic communication to a Deutsche Bank Swiss franc LIBOR-based derivatives trader and/or Swiss franc LIBOR submitter located in New York.

Defendant BlueCrest has deep connections to the Contributor Bank Defendants, including several individual traders directly involved in the manipulation of LIBOR. In addition to being funded in part by Defendant JPMorgan, BlueCrest hired Deutsche Bank master manipulator Christian Bittar after he was publicly fired by Deutsche Bank for his involvement in various rate-rigging schemes.

So there you have it. Precisely what we said more than three years ago has been proven to be unequivocally (and usurprisingly) true.
To wit (ca. 7/18/2012):

The bankers who were allegedly involved in Libor manipulation in some capacity in their previous lives working for banks, decided to quietly depart under mutually acceptable conditions and find new lives, still trading Libor and IR derivatives, in some of the best known, and even less regulated, hedge funds and private banks.

Our question then is the following: while much has been said about Lieborgate as being purely associated with the 16 BBA USD fixing member banks, just who else made money, and [are others in the financial community] about to be exposed for having profits far more from Lieborgate than any of the BBA member banks?

Because if the stigmatized traders were accepted with open arms at various hedge funds, one would think there may, just may have been, some quid pro quo in the past (for those who have worked in the financial industry this needs no further explanation).

Bluecrest Lawsuit

Exclusive: The Inside Story Of How Deutsche Bank "Deals With" Whistleblowers

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/14/2015 15:15 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-14/exclusive-inside-story-how-deutsche-bank-deals-whistleblowers
Back in May we brought you "The Real Story Behind Deutsche Bank's Latest Book Cooking Settlement," in which we detailed the circumstances that led the bank to settle claims it mismarked its crisis-era derivatives book to the tune of at least $5 billion.
Deutsche Bank settled the issue with the SEC for the laughable sum of $55 million a few months back.
The SEC inquiry was prompted, in part, by Dr. Eric Ben-Artzi who was fired from Deutsche Bank in 2011 after expressing his concerns about the bank's valuation methodology.
What follows is the real, play-by-play account of Ben-Artzi's dismissal from Deutsche Bank, told in its entirety for the first time. 
*  *  *
Your Services Are No Longer Needed
On November 7, 2011 Dr. Eric Ben-Artzi walked into a conference room at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. headquarters in lower Manhattan. Seated at a conference table was Sharon Wilson from the Human Resources department. Lars Popken, DB’s head of market risk methodology and Ben-Artzi’s manager, was videoconferenced in.
Ben-Artzi had just returned from FMLA paternity leave and although things had gotten tense just prior to his time off, he certainly didn’t expect what came next. Ben-Artzi’s job, Popken said, was being moved to Germany.
Ben-Artzi thought back to the summer when, in response to rumors that some U.S. positions were likely to be moved overseas, he had mentioned he’d be happy to relocate to Berlin. No such luck. Minutes later, he was terminated and Wilson hurriedly ushered him out of the building. Ben-Artzi wasn’t even allowed to collect his personal belongings. 

The (Brief) Backstory
The events that ultimately led Deutsche Bank to boot Ben-Artzi from 60 Wall without so much as a cardboard box for his pictures, pens, and legal pads date back to 1998 and for the sake of brevity, we won't recount the whole story but encourage anyone interested in the entire narrative to review it here. 
In short, Deutsche Bank was heavily involved in every single aspect of the market for third-party asset backed commercial paper in Canada prior to the financial crisis. They had an equity stake in the parent of at least two issuers, they served as a liquidity provider on over half of all Series A commercial paper issued by Canadian conduits, they sold the paper through their securities division, and perhaps most importantly, they structured the programs (e.g. LSS deals) that backed the paper. But in the simplest possible terms: Detusche Bank was deeply embedded in a market that collapsed in August of 2007.
As mentioned above, the events that unfolded between June and October of that year are a story in and of themselves, but suffice to say that the market for commercial paper issued by the Canadian conduits imploded on August 13, 2007 (BNP’s move to freeze three ABS funds four days earlier sparked a panic) imperiling retail investors, small- to mid-size corporations, and pension funds and triggering a massive (and incredibly messy) restructuring effort.
Most of this drama had ended by the time Eric Ben-Artzi arrived at Deutsche Bank in June of 2010 and the former Goldmanite likely had no idea what he was about to uncover when he began to look at how Deutsche went about accounting for their exposure to the Canadian conduits during the crisis.
Deutsche Bank played an outsized role in the market for LSS deals in the years leading up to the crisis. In fact, Deutsche Bank accounted for between $120 and $130 billion of the $200 billion (notional) in total LSS deals between 2005 and 2007.
When Ben-Artzi, who has a PhD in applied mathematics from NYU Courant, began to look at how the bank was valuing the gap option on the LSS trades, he made a rather disconcerting discovery. 
As a refresher, here’s a simple explanation of the gap option problem with LSS deals:

The laughable thing about LSS deals was that they were effectively non-recourse, meaning that the protection seller was allowed to sell protection on a notional amount that was multiples of the collateral posted, but in the event the market moved against the seller enough to chew through that collateral and a margin call was made, that seller could just say “to hell with it” and walk away from the deal. More simply, I, the seller, insure $100 million in debt, but only post $10 million up front. If there’s a credit market meltdown and my $10 million is no longer sufficient and you, the protection (insurance) buyer, call me looking for more money to compensate you for the elevated risk, I can politely tell you to piss off. The risk that I tell you to piss off is called “gap risk.”

To be a bit more specific, the seller of protection (in this case the Canadian conduits) had the option to walk away from the deal without posting additional collateral (this is the “gap option”), and the value of that option changed depending on a number of factors including credit spreads and correlation.
As it turns out, Deutsche Bank began making these trades without even having a model to value the gap option -- standard models (e.g. a copula model) cannot be used for LSS trades. Not only that, the bank’s credit correlation desk didn’t even bother to consult the market risk methodology department (where Ben-Artzi worked and which was responsible for verifying the appropriateness of valuation models) and instead decided to simply discount the value of the trades by 15%. Sensing that this was likely inadequate, Deutsche briefly attempted to determine the actual value of the gap option on the trades, but when the numbers came back looking rather nasty, the bank did what any pre-crisis sell side firm worth its salt would do: they scrapped that model and went with something that made the results look more favorable. In this case, Deutsche simply set up the equivalent of a loan loss reserve for the entire book and called it a day. At the time (i.e. between 2007 and 2009), other players in the industry valued the gap option at between 2% and 8% of notional. Taking the midpoint there, and taking the midpoint between Deutsche’s estimated $110 and $120 billion in notional exposure, the value of the gap option for the bank would have been nearly $6 billion.
How Deutsche Bank Deals With 'Problem' Employees
Sometime around October of 2010, Ben-Artzi began to ask questions, starting with the Director and Head of Risk Research and Development. Discussions with management continued into the new year until finally, fed up with what he perceived to be an attempt to sweep the issue under the rug, Ben-Artzi contacted the SEC on March 7, 2011 and called Deutsche Bank’s employee hotline four days later.
On March 17, Ben-Artzi met with Robert Rice, then Deutsche’s Head of Governance, Litigation & Regulation for the Americas who said there was an ongoing investigation into some of the issues Ben-Artzi had raised. Later that month, Ben-Artzi suffered through a lengthy meeting with Rice and William Johnson, Deutsche’s outside counsel.
What’s important to note here is that Bob and Bill (as Rice and Johnson are known to their friends) weren’t exactly strangers. As it turns out, they both worked in the  U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York with Mary Jo White and Robert Khuzami.
After his first stint in public service, Khuzami went on to become General Counsel to  the Americas at Deutsche and by the time Ben-Artzi reported his concerns to the government in 2011, Khuzami had moved on to become Director of Enforcement for the SEC. Mary Jo White would of course become SEC Chair in 2013, and almost two years to the day after Ben-Artzi first met with Rice, Bob would be named Chief Counsel to White.
As such, Ben-Artzi was (and still is) essentially squaring off against a tight-knit faction of former attorneys for the Southern District of New York who have managed to turn the SEC into an extension of Deutsche Bank, much as Goldman has turned the Fed into an extension of the Vampire Squid. As an aside, Deutsche’s General Counsel Richard Walker worked at the SEC for a decade and served as Director Of Enforcement from 1998 until his move to join the bank in 2001.
On May 12, 2011, Ben-Artzi sat down to discuss the issue further with Rice and Matt Spaulding (then global head of finance for Deutsche). Also in attendance were two employees from the corporate and investment bank, Stefan Schafer and Andreas Kodell, both of whom had come over from London.
Maybe it was the jet lag, or maybe it was the fact that Ben-Artzi was essentially threatening to expose a multi-billion dollar "error" in the way the bank was valuing its LSS book, but whatever the case, Schafer and Kodell weren’t happy. The two proceeded to give Ben-Artzi a rather sharp tongue-lashing for questioning the bank’s valuation of the trades.
In the process, Schafer and Kodell did shed some light on Deutsche’s previous attempts to evaluate their exposure to the gap option. Unfortunately, they were unable to explain why Ben-Artzi’s calculations were incorrect and Spaulding was similarly unable to justify the bank’s initial use of a 15% haircut or explain how the subsequent decision to adopt a reserve against the trades was in any way sufficient. Lars Popken, who was also in attendance, remained surprisingly quiet.
On May 23, in a meeting that included Sharon Wilson from HR, Rice said Deutsche Bank would be providing no further information into how it valued the trades and suggested Ben-Artzi contact an SEC attorney.
At the end of that month, Popken assured Ben-Artzi that despite the controversy, no retaliatory action would be taken by the bank.
Ben-Artzi began his leave of absence on June 30 and returned to work on October 19.
Less than three weeks later, he was fired.

*  *  *
Epilogue
If ever there was a story that exemplified virtually everything that is wrong on Wall Street surely this is it. Here we had one of the largest banks in the world by assets agreeing to facilitate leveraged bets in synthetic credit by Canadian special purpose entities which had virtually no equity whatsoever on their books. Deutsche knew the collateral for these bets came from the sale of commercial paper to clueless retail investors and pension funds, and not only did the bank not care, Deutsche actually encouraged the conduits to pile leverage on top of the posted collateral, creating an enormous amount of risk not only for the holders of the commercial paper, but for the bank itself. Deutsche then proceeded to guarantee the commercial paper in the event the market ceased to function only to refuse payment to noteholders when the market finally did collapse in August of 2007, leaving retail investors and pension funds out in the cold.
Meanwhile, the bank intentionally underreported its exposure by systematically refusing to model the gap option built into the trades and when someone honest finally came along and called them on their obfuscation, they summarily dismissed him. 
Of course the punchline here is that convincing the SEC to acknowledge the sheer absurdity of the entire ordeal has been, and will continue to be well nigh impossible for the following reasons: 1) Robert Khuzami, the agency’s head of enforcement when Ben-Artzi’s complaint was filed, was Deutsche’s General Counsel to the Americas the entire time the bank was mismarking its LSS book, 2) Bob Rice, the SEC’s current Chief Counsel, was Deutsche’s Head of Governance, Litigation & Regulation during Ben-Artzi’s tenure at the bank, 3) the current SEC Chair, Mary Jo White, goes way back with both Rice and Khuzami as well as with Bill Johnson, Deutsche’s outside counsel at time of Ben-Artzi’s complaint, and 4) Deutsche’s current General Counsel worked at the SEC for 10 years, including a stint as chief enforcement officer.
In the end, all the boxes are checked. This story truly has it all: risky derivatives, leverage, the destruction of retail investors’ savings, hidden risk, the termination of honest employees, and the revolving door between Wall Street and the U.S. government.

SEC Commissioner Furious At Deutsche Bank's "Decade Of Lying, Cheating, And Stealing"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/05/2015 15:01 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-05/sec-commissioner-furious-deutsche-banks-decade-lying-cheating-and-stealing
Last week we commented on the latest travesty in the legal system when Deutsche Bank paid $2.5 billion to settle charges that it had manipulated LIBOR, EURIBOR and various other -BORs. As usual in situations such as this one, not a single banker went to prison, but there was some hope that Deutsche Bank's gross criminal conduct would at least land it on the SEC's "bad actors" list, which is like the Dodd-Frank equivalent of ‘time out’ and restricts the offender from participating in exempt securities offerings.
Not to worry: as we reported as part of its settlement, Deutsche Bank, as well as every other criminal financial institution, had - deep in the fine print - inserted language that exempted the offender from such stigma. As the WSJ noted, "the language allows the banks to avoid asking the SEC for a waiver—a process that has become fraught with uncertainty amid commissioner disagreements over whether to allow financial firms to avoid a “bad actor” ban…"

We concluded that "It’s good to be TBTF" because clearly no matter how many laws are violated and how much money is stolen (LIBOR was the reference security for nearly $1 quadrillion in global rate-sensitive derivatives), i) nobody ever goes to prison, ii) there are absolutely no negative consequences, and iii) the cost of running a criminal organization is tiny - the settlement usually amounts to far less than 1% of the gains reaped from years of illegal activities.
Frankly, at this point one should just sit back and watch in amusement, because until the revolution and/or war predicted by Paul Tudor Jones arrives and the guillotines start working overtime, nobody in a position of wealth or power will be held accountable.
That same message was, in rough terms, what prompted SEC commissioner Kara Stein, a Democrat, to write her "dissenting statement" regarding granting Deutsche Bank the waiver for ineligible issuer status.
Here are the choice excerpts:

I respectfully dissent from the Commission’s Order (“Order”), approved on May 1, 2015, by a majority of the Commission. The Order grants Deutsche Bank AG a waiver from ineligible issuer status triggered by a criminal conviction of its subsidiary, DB Group Services (UK) Ltd. (collectively with Deutsche Bank AG, “Deutsche Bank”), for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”), a global financial benchmark. This waiver will allow Deutsche Bank to maintain its well-known seasoned issuer (“WKSI”) status, which would have been automatically revoked as a result of its criminal misconduct absent a Commission waiver.

With these WKSI advantages comes a modicum of responsibility. WKSIs must meet the very low hurdle of not being ineligible. This means that, among other things, they have not been convicted of certain felonies or misdemeanors within the past three years. In granting this waiver, the Commission continues to erode even this lowest of hurdles for large companies, while small and mid-sized businesses appear to face different treatment.

This criminal scheme involving LIBOR manipulation was designed to inflate profits, and it was effective. It created the impression that Deutsche Bank was more creditworthy and profitable than it actually was. Accordingly, the conduct affected its financial results and disclosures. Because LIBOR plays such an important role in the worldwide economy, manipulation of it goes to the heart of many aspects of Deutsche Bank’s disclosures. Interest rates represented to clients and the public also were clearly false. Based on this conduct, I do not find any basis to support the assertion that Deutsche Bank’s culture of compliance is dependable, or that its future disclosures will be accurate and reliable.

Even the SEC is shocked that the CFTC is an organization that caters exclusively to keeping criminal bankers out of prison, rather than getting them in it:

In addition, the Commission adopted rules disqualifying felons and other “Bad Actors” from Rule 506 offerings on July 10, 2013. Based on the criminal conduct in this case, I expected to receive a request from Deutsche Bank AG for a waiver from the automatic disqualification contained in Rule 506. After all, the final CFTC order was “based on a violation of any law that prohibits fraudulent, manipulative, or deceptive conduct.” It should therefore trigger an automatic disqualification absent a waiver.

However, based on a loophole contained in Rule 506(d)(2)(iii), the CFTC has intervened and prevented the bad actor disqualification question from even coming before the Securities and Exchange Commission. The CFTC saw fit to opine on the SEC’s Rule 506 jurisprudence about whether Deutsche Bank AG should receive a waiver from automatic disqualification under SEC rules. It is unclear to me what, if any, analysis went into this decision and what prompted the CFTC to insert language into its final order stating that a bad actor disqualification “should not arise as a consequence of this Order.”The implications of the CFTC’s actions here — and in other actions — are deeply troubling. The Commission should closely review this provision and how it is being used.

Don't worry: former CFTC chief Gary Gensler will soon be US Treasury Secretary - then it will be his job to make sure no criminal with a net worth over a few million dollars ever has to face the US "judicial" system.
In the meantime, the CFTC will never do its actual jobs and root out maniupulation and rigging in precious metal markets...
... instead leaving it to fringe blogs):
As for the piece de resistance:

Deutsche Bank’s illegal conduct involved nearly a decade of lying, cheating, and stealing. This criminal conduct was pervasive and widespread, involving dozens of employees from Deutsche Bank offices including New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and London. Deutsche Bank’s traders engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud Deutsche Bank’s counterparties and the worldwide financial marketplace by secretly manipulating LIBOR. The conduct is appalling. It was a complete criminal fraud upon the worldwide marketplace.

Dear Kara, are you really confused why "complete criminal fraud" by a bank goes unpunished? Here is a hint: go to OpenSecrets, type in Deutsche Bank, and you will find just who the German bank paid off to avoid any true penalty. To your great surprise you may even find that the biggest beneficiary of DB's generosity in 2014 is, drumroll, the Democratic National Convention...


... not to mention over $3 million donated in the last two decades to America's "two" parties (of which 61% went to democrats).