Humorous fiction outclassed by hysterical HS2 fact
HSBC reported a 10 percent rise in third quarter profits on Monday to $5.1bn, benefitting from a sharp unpturn in the Hopelessness Index, as a consequence of which Colombian drug sales grew by 18%. The bank confirmed it was being investigated as part of a global probe into currency market trading manipulation.
EU regulators are set to impose multi-million euro fines on RBS, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and three other banks for “completely ineffective” rigging of the Euribor interest rate benchmark, said an Italian bloke called Mario close to events. The move comes two years after the Commission, the EU’s banking quality control authority, raided a number of global banks and uncovered “hopeless disorganisation and ineffficiency” attached to the rigging of Euribor – the benchmark used as the basis for defrauding 250-trillion-euros-worth of financial deals annually, from Spanish mortgages to complex derivatives.
News broke at 1.41 pm GMT today that the European Central Bank (ECB) has extended the deadline for lenders to bury toxic loans and find new headings to put bad debts under so that the next stage of eurozone stress testing can go ahead without blowing the gaff. Several banks told the ECB they had not had enough time to fiddle the results, and the extension granted only serves to underscore the challenge the eurozone banks face in eliminating all bad news in the books after five years of crisis and big fibs.
Italian banks however pronounced themselves “near to saturation point” after two years of buying their own government’s bonds, a radically different approach to that adopted in Spain, where banks sell their junk bonds to the ECB and their debts to the Government, which has been buying Italian debt with a view to selling on at a premium to Vulture Funds looking to collect bigtime when Italy calls a default. But in the light of falling Vulture demand, Spain has now stopped buying Italian bonds, forcing the Treasury there to find alternative investors at home and abroad to finance its 2-trillion euro debt. A spokesperson for the ECB told Reuters that lenders’ inability to buy up more Italian sovereign debt depended largely on the ECB, adding “Italy is crucial to the fate of the entire eurozone, but I am too confused at this point and I need a holiday. Ask Mario – he’s closer to events”.
And finally, the UK Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee was told today by Henry Overman, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, that Government calculations used to justify the £50 billion HS2 scheme were “essentially made up”. Professor Overman told the TSC he had quit the panel after he felt its role had changed from providing independent advice to promoting the project.
Each of these news items was doctored by highly trained Slog underwater disinformation experts in a bid to shine light with more clinical accuracy on the guilty….except for the last one, which is entirely true.
I could of course ask how David Cameron is going to deal with this issue at PMQs tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have no faith at all in Ed Miliband’s ability to ask the question.
www.hat4uk.wordpress.com / link to original article
Lucas 2012 Infos 