Attempt to smuggle 134 billion in US bonds in a suitcase?

Additional Info:

- The 2 Japs are not held in pre-trial custody

- They did not use a high speed train, but a slow one when travelling into switzerland


(Yes, sjfan, maybe it is a guerilla marketing campaign for Toshiba Color Copiers haha)
 
Quote from Random.Capital:

We're supposed to be traders, right? Ok, Let's place a wager on it.

I'll take the non-genuine side.
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No thanks. Statistical odds/probability would put me into serious disadvantage.
 
Quote from local_crusher:

No thanks. Statistical odds/probability would put me into serious disadvantage.
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If you truly believe what you posted - that the bonds are "most likely genuine" - the odds are in your favor. So why not take the wager?
 
Interesting article/announcement from Japan:

Yosano Says Japan’s Trust in Treasuries ‘Unshakable’ (Update2)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agTTqVJ0rhJI

I'm not viewing this as an isolated incident. I am viewing this incident against the backdrop of:

1)US credit rating being questioned
2)US Dollar world reserve status being questioned
3)BRIC countries diversifying their holdings
4)North Korea's history of counterfeit operations against the US

I don't see this as just two idiots thinking they can score big. Whether the bonds are real or not - there are others behind this. Yes, this could be a scam similar to ones in the past - but there are differences as well, and more importantly, the current credit crisis and exploding government debts worldwide.

Something's amiss here. I'm not dismissing this as two lone crackpots. As I said before - It's been over a freakin week with no formal anouncement from any government. But it is interesting to note that the Japanese Finance Minister said: Japan’s Trust in Treasuries ‘Unshakable’ - that's pretty strong language.

I have no experience in what it takes to counterfeit such docs - so I am also assuming (possibly wrong) that it takes a high level of knowledge/sophistication to counterfeit these bonds. Who were these guys going to meet? Did someone in Switzerland - the "bankers" they planned on meeting tip off the Italian police?

Again, the authenticity of the bonds is just one part of the story - given our current global financial predicament - there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
 
Suppose a big Swiss bank is insolvent and has an audit approaching. Suppose Japan or some of its officials wanted to keep the bank around for one reason or another. How better than to loan it a few bearer bonds. Now suppose there is a systemic solvency problem with banks throughout Europe. Japan does not want the European banking system to collapse because it is a big expert market. So it sends a slew of bearer bonds to be passed from bank to bank and from country to country to keep the banks appearing solvent.

Suppose the U.S. would rather have those banks fail so that Goldman and J.P. Morgan can move in and gobble up the remains. It bribes the Italians to make the interception.

Now that could lead to economic warfare.
 
Link of what 134 billion looks like...

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/citigroup-spx-socionomics-kevin-depew/index/a/23040

Quote from ipatent:

Suppose a big Swiss bank is insolvent and has an audit approaching. Suppose Japan or some of its officials wanted to keep the bank around for one reason or another. How better than to loan it a few bearer bonds. Now suppose there is a systemic solvency problem with banks throughout Europe. Japan does not want the European banking system to collapse because it is a big expert market. So it sends a slew of bearer bonds to be passed from bank to bank and from country to country to keep the banks appearing solvent.

Suppose the U.S. would rather have those banks fail so that Goldman and J.P. Morgan can move in and gobble up the remains. It bribes the Italians to make the interception.

Now that could lead to economic warfare.
More...
 

Attachments

The seized notes include 249 securities with a face value of $500 million each and 10 additional bonds with a value of more than $1 billion, the police force said on its Web site. Such high denominations would not have existed in 1934, the purported issue date of the notes, Mecarelli said. Moreover, the “Kennedy” classification of the bonds doesn’t appear to exist, he said.
 
my bet is its either a) a huge media hoax and one of the publishers will come out proclaiming it was all to show how authorities can be wound up with this for over a week and still not figure out what is going on or b) this was orchestrated by some criminal organization with the hope that this will all explode in the news while they placed shorts on US treasuries. The Japanese yakuza nowadays employs whole back alley trading rooms placing bets on small Japanese businesses of which they possess insider information why not paying couple yen to 2 idiots and possibly even tipping off autorities making everyone believe at least in the beginning those papers are possibly real. Much more lucrative than pushing drugs that most Japanese have no use for.

Willing to put on a bet that it turns out to be one of those two.
 
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