IRS victims testify as new agency scandal emerges

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative groups who were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service are getting their say on Capitol Hill just as the details of another IRS controversy are being made public.

The leaders of six conservative groups were scheduled to tell lawmakers Tuesday about their mistreatment at the hands of IRS agents. Several of the groups say their applications for tax-exempt status were delayed while agents asked intrusive questions that the IRS has since acknowledged were inappropriate. One group, the National Organization for Marriage, says the IRS publicly disclosed confidential information about donors.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRS_INVESTIGATION?SITE=CAOAK&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Faber says financial assets doomed, moving his physical gold to Asia

As Barron's notes in this recent interview, Marc Faber view the world with a skeptical eye, and never hesitates to speak his mind when things don't look quite right. In other words, he would be the first in a crowd to tell you the emperor has no clothes, and has done so early, often, and aptly in the case of numerous investment bubbles. With even the world's bankers now concerned at 'unsustainable bubbles', it is therefore unsurprising that in the discussion below, Faber explains, among other things, the fallacy of the Fed's help "the problem is the money doesn't flow into the system evenly, how with money-printing "the majority loses, and the minority wins," and how, thanks to the further misallocation of capital, "people with assets are all doomed, because prices are grossly inflated globally for stocks and bonds." Faber says he buys gold every month, adding that "I want to have some assets that aren't in the banking system. When the asset bubble bursts, financial assets will be particularly vulnerable."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-01/marc-faber-people-financial-assets-are-all-doomed

On Gold: 

Gold is down 30% from its 2011 peak of $1,921, but has far outperformed financial assets since 1999. A correction was overdue. I have about a 25% allocation to gold and buy some every month. I want to have some assets that aren't in the banking system. When the asset bubble bursts, financial assets will be particularly vulnerable.

Gold is easier to carry than a Lamborghini.

Most of my gold is in a safe-deposit box in Switzerland, but I am shifting it to Asia.

HSBC appoints ex-MI5 chief Sir Jonathan Evans

The former director-general of MI5 is to join HSBC's board as a non-executive director in August.

Sir Jonathan Evans, who spent three decades at the intelligence service, will be paid £125,000 to work 40 days a year at the bank.

He will also become a member of a special committee HSBC created to help combat financial crime.

The unit was set up after the bank was fined $2bn (£1.3bn) in the US over money laundering and sanction breaches.

The bank has already appointed Dave Hartnett, the former head of HM Revenue and Customs, and Jim Comey, a former US deputy attorney general, as advisers to the Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee.

Bill Hughes, a former head of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency was also recruited when the committee was set up in January. BBC News - HSBC appoints ex-MI5 chief Sir Jonathan Evans to board

NFA Membership Totals

NFA Membership Totals by Highest Class*

	As of April 30, 2013
Total Membership	4,026
Swap Dealers	42
Major Swap Participants	2
Retail Foreign Exchange Dealers	11
Futures Commission Merchants	89
Introducing Brokers	1,249
Commodity Pool Operators	1,614
Commodity Trading Advisors	1,012
Exchanges	7
Associates	54,713

*NFA Members are listed by their highest class of membership. However, many NFA Members are registered in more than one membership category. For example, an FCM that manages or exercises discretion over customer accounts may also be registered as a CTA.

http://www.nfa.futures.org/NFA-registration/NFA-membership-and-dues.HTML

Swiss banks to cooperate with IRS

FORTUNE -- Are you among the suspected tens of thousands of Americans with a secret Swiss bank account that you are still hiding from the Internal Revenue Service? If so, you are about to acquire a Matterhorn-sized headache.

Switzerland made a desperate decision on Wednesday to save its battered private banking sector by allowing Swiss banks to cooperate with a broad tax evasion probe by U.S. investigators. It is likely to unleash a flood of fresh disclosures to the IRS by American taxpayers, lawyers say.

Such disclosures could trigger hefty fines that can reach a multiple of what an account holds. To stand a chance of reducing those fines, Americans with hidden Swiss accounts "should run, not walk, to jump in line with an IRS voluntary disclosure in light of this move by the Swiss government," says Josh Ungerman, a tax and estates lawyer in Dallas and a former IRS prosecutor.

Lawrence Horn, a tax and business crimes lawyer in Newark, N.J. and a former federal prosecutor, says he expects "at least 10,000" American taxpayers to come forward in the next 12 months or so.

The Swiss decision has two key points: Over the course of 12 months, banks will be allowed to turn over to American authorities general statistical data on their work with American clients. More significantly, the U.S. can seek concrete account details -- with names of taxpayers -- if the U.S. Senate gets its act together and passes a double-taxation treaty already green-lighted by Bern.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/30/swiss-bank-accounts-irs/?iid=Lead

Volcker: Fed will 'fall short'

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is worried that the Fed is being asked to "do too much."

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The Federal Reserve has been asked to "do too much" to heal the U.S. economy and "will inevitably fall short," former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker cautioned Wednesday.

Speaking before the Economic Club of New York, Volcker said the Fed's independence and credibility are at stake, as the central bank engages in unprecedented stimulus efforts.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/29/news/economy/volcker-economic-club/ 

Nasdaq fined $10 Million for poor systems and decision making

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) agreed to pay $10 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that its mishandling of Facebook (FB) Inc.’s initial public offering last year was a violation of securities laws.

Regulators cited the second-largest operator of U.S. equity markets for its “poor systems and decision-making” during the IPO in May that was delayed by a computer malfunction. The settlement is the largest with an American exchange, which enjoy legal protections because of their self-regulating role.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-29/nasdaq-agrees-to-pay-10-million-to-settle-sec-facebook-charges.html

Liberty Reserve founders charged unmasking $6 Billion in illicit funds

Liberty Reserve SA, whose operators are charged with running a scheme that masked more than $6 billion of criminal proceeds, was designed to help users evade scrutiny, U.S. prosecutors said.

The digital currency company, unlike traditional banks or legitimate online payment processors, didn’t require users to validate their identity and allowed accounts to be opened under fictitious names such as “Russia Hackers” and “Hacker Account,” according to prosecutors. Liberty Reserve Joe Bogus Account Said to Reflect Evasion - Bloomberg

Chart: Stocks relative to Copper

Got Wood? A Housing Recovery Built On Faith

With lumber prices limit-down again (and now over 28% from their March highs), we are left assuming that they are building houses with hopium, as opposed to wood, these days...

 [3]

Of course this is not the first time we have mentioned the precipitous limit-down day-after-day collapse in Lumber prices (here [4]) and why it is relevant (here [5]) but the fact that we havs roundtripped to when QE3 was announced is perhaps notable in its own right (while homebuilders are up 50%)

The question now is - who will be the big bad wolf to blow these housing dreams down?

Charts: Bloomberg

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/474506

Liberty Reserve forced offline

Liberty Reserve - a Costa Rican-based digital currency service - has been shut down after the reported arrest of its founder.

Authorities in the Central American country said Arthur Budovsky had been taken into custody in Spain on suspicion of money laundering, following an investigation which also involved the US.

They added that police had raided several of Mr Budovsky's properties and seized his computer servers.

The site went offline on Thursday.

Liberty Reserve had described itself as being the internet's "oldest, safest and most popular payment processor... serving millions all around a world".

It had allowed users to open accounts and transfer money, only requiring them to provide a name, date of birth and an email address.

Cash could be put into the service using a credit card, bank wire, postal money order or other money transfer service. It was then "converted" into one of the firm's own currencies - mirroring either the Euro or US dollar - at which point it could be transferred to another account holder who could then extract the funds.

The service promised that payment transfers were "instantaneous" and it charged a maximum of $2.99 (£1.98) for each transaction. It also offered a private messaging facility which it said was "much more private and secure than email or instant messenger services".

Security expert Bryan Krebs said Liberty Reserve's features had made it a popular among cybercriminals who wanted to move funds and make payments anonymously.

However, others said they had used the service for legitimate means, viewing it as a cheaper alternative to PayPal. They fear they will now lose money still sitting in its accounts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22680297

Caterpillar North America Sales Collapse Suggests US Economy Back To 2010 Levels

While we have wondered on numerous occasions previously [4]if the collapse in lumber prices is the far more accurate indicator of end demand for housing (as confirmed by the recent collapse in multi-family housing starts [5]), perhaps an even better indicator of trends in housing (and by implication the broader economy) is private sector intermediate end demand, such as Caterpillar North America sales, which unlike government data, are far less subject to political intervention, interpolation, guesswork, seasonal adjustments and otherwise, general manipulation.

And even though we have previously reported [6]on the woes ailing the world's largest seller of bulldozers, excavators and wheel loaders, such focus was primarily targeted in the offshore markets, and especially China (the abysmal European market needs no mention). So maybe the time has come to shift attention to the US, where as Caterpillar just reported, not only are all foreign markets still trending at several impacted levels, but where US machine retail sales just saw the biggest tumble in three years, falling 18% Y/Y: the most since early 2010. What is more disturbing is that CAT equipment is used in far-broader economic activities than merely housing, and likely is a far more accurate indicator of true industrial end-demand than any other number cherry-picked by the government.

 [7]

Whether one can extrapolate general trends in the US economy based on how Caterpiller is doing in its North American market, is an open-ended (rhetorical) question which we leave to readers.

However, maybe a far better question is whether CAT NA sales is the same true proxy for the state of the US economy, as electric consumption - that Achilles heel of Chinese economic data manipulation - is to China.

Compare and contrast the chart above, with the chart below, showing the collapse in Chinese electricity consumption.

 [8]

If the answer is yes, and if indeed both the US and Chinese economies are now operating at a true level not seen since 2010, then just how bad is the rest of the world, if somehow the US continues to be perceived as the cleanest dirty shirt while the world's fastest marginal growing economy is in fact, crashing to earth?

Source: CAT Dealer Statistics [9] [9]

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/474168

CME Halted Silver Trading 4 Times Sunday as Prices Slid 9%

NEW YORK--Exchange operator CME Group Inc. ( CME ) said it halted silver trading four times Sunday evening due to highly volatile markets, a spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires.

The trading halts came as silver futures slumped 9.4% to a low of $20.250 a troy ounce in the first few minutes following the open of electronic trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Silver trading was stopped for two 20 second intervals at 6:07 p.m. EDT and 6:09 p.m. EDT, and two consecutive 20 second halts at 6:09 p.m. and 6:10 p.m., the spokesman said. CME Group owns and operates both the Nymex and the Comex exchanges.

Known as Stop Logic, the trading halts are triggered in highly volatile markets to prevent excessive price movements, the spokesman said.

Silver futures were recently trading down 76.2 cents, or 3.4%, at $21.590 a troy ounce.

CME Halted Silver Trading 4 Times Sunday as Prices Slid 9%

Growing Discontent in the EU

Growing Discontent in the EU

Save Europe: Split the Euro

On the eve of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln famously said that “a house divided cannot stand.” Today, the European Union -- committed for decades to the quest for “ever closer union” -- must confront an agonizing truth. Lincoln’s maxim must be inverted. For the EU to survive, the euro must divide.

Between the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the Single European Act in 1986, Europe’s governments brought about the one great peaceful revolution the continent has seen in its long and troubled history. The creation of a single European currency would build on this remarkable success. It was the next vital step to greater unity and prosperity. The economic crisis in southern Europe shows that the euro system, at least in its current form, has instead become a mortal threat to both.

Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus are trapped in a recession and cannot restore their competitiveness by devaluing their currencies. The euro area’s northern economies have had to join in repeated bailouts and put aside their notions of prudent finance. A vicious circle of resentment and populism in the south and strengthening nationalism in the north is tearing the union apart.

And the crisis isn’t yet abating. France, Europe’s second-largest economy, is now sinking into a grave economic slump. Like the southern countries, it must restore its competitiveness; like them, as part of the euro system, it lacks the means. Because of its size and because of the guiding role it has played in the EU’s development, France, we’ll argue in Part 2 of this article, will be crucial in breaking the vicious circle.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-05-14/save-europe-split-the-euro.html