In fact, the more I work through what has been publicly released, the more I'm convinced that MF Global likely cleared their Italian bond trades through JP Morgan. When the short term Italian paper when south, JP Morgan issued a margin call to MF and MF didn't have the money so they took it from customer accounts. JP Morgan has covered the tracks on this OR the FBI has the proof and is not releasing (recall the FBI raided MF's offices early on). Otherwise, why are there no electronic trails, of which there should be several? I'm 85% certain this is what happened.

Behavioral Finance Report

*Not a good day for the PPT, yet they still managed to bring the DOW way off its lows.

*The yield of the 10 yr. T note is 1.96%.

As mentioned the other day, Goldman Sachs is the Treasury’s investment house and JP Morgan is the Fed’s bank. They were the original ringleaders of The Gold Cartel. Some input on both of them…

What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

While ordinary people fret about austerity and jobs, the eurozone's corridors of power have been undergoing a remarkable transformation

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman's interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says. "Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions."

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-
price-the-new-democracy-goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html

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Former JPMorgan Banker: Exploiting Consumers Is ‘The Purpose Of The Banking Organization’

Wall Street continues to ignore America’s anger at it, sipping champagne from rooftops while protesters march below

http://www.alternet.org/story/153129/_former_jpmorgan_banker%3A_exploiting_
consumers_is_%E2%80%98the_purpose_of_the_banking_organization%E2%80%99