The Money Masters

[2cents]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

No on the surface it does not make any sense to a person that has little experience with financial statements & accounting of defaulted debt. But I assumed someone like you understands how write offs are used to protect profits against taxes. I mean, you almost pretend to be this super rich super expert so I'm sure you know how it works.

as it so happens i do... used to set up and/or monitor and/or unwind dozens of SPVs for a top-tier IB, all sort of schemes, incl distressed debt repackaging, tax 'mixers', transfer pricing across entities in separate jurisdictions etc... am not 'proud' of it or anything, thats just the way it is... also been in banking and finance, on the consulting & accting side, regulatory & compliance side, business development & trading side, for roughly 20 years now... thats also why i can say that you are seriously misguided... i'll skip over your 'you almost pretend etc etc' comment... pretty lame of you to 'almost' attribute statements to s.o. but hey, thats YOUR life...

A loss does not equal a write off in my book, not 100%. A write-off, while ideally should be a real loss, can also be financially manufactured or even bought for tax savings. Yes, there is a very very small market where tax shelters and write offs are traded. Call it a joke if u want, but it is there and I have even tried packaging smth like this with a certain Federal Tax Credit.

A real loss means money out of the pocket that has been lost. I hope we can agree to that. So now think, how can a major CC company experience a REAL loss from a bad debtor when the money to fund that credit line came from....? It can't be its own assets because a bank's assets are its deposits and by law they cannot use someone else deposits to fund a credit card. It can't be from retained earnings put in as capital because if you simply look at the outstand CC debt, the numbers don't add up. Plus, consider all the capital expenditures, dividends, etc these banks do with their profits .
You can check on this. A bank literally takes your promise to pay, which is the agreement you sign, and get money printed for it from the Fed Reserve system. Money out of thin air, lended to you at interest. How is there ever a real loss if you don't pay? But when u do default, the bank takes a write off on the outstanding debt (which is usually inflated to the max with penalties & interest), then sells it for 20% discount or so to a collection agency. What a business.

Well if it's so easy, why don't they all do it? Well they DO. Have you seen consumer debt? Have you ever asked, how the hell does the system not collapse which so many maxed credit cards, BKs, late payments, etc. I think the video hints at it very well.

Now when a smaller player, like Nextcard, tries to play the same game, they go BK. Nextcard operated on loans which they would relend. When the defaults went up, Nextcard couldn't handle it. Nextcard could not even last 2 years. Yet the big banks do the same and nothing bad ever happens, only profits. I mean, look at Capital One, a State Federal Reserve member, do you realize how loose their lending is? And these guys are rocking with profits.

CC companies go BK because their customer default risk assessment is over-optimistic and losses are losses, period... write-offs are just a tax & financial accting way to mark a debt (loan) as irrecoverable (there are other uses but they are irrelevant for this discussion)... if u sell that debt to another entity (for cents on the $ usually), group or outside (non-conso), there is an appropriate tax & fin accting treatment for that... yes there is a mkt, and there is also a mkt for tax deferral / avoidance and a 1,000 other window-dressing type schemes under the sun, but that still doesn't give yr argument any legs to stand on... sorry to rain on yr parade...

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from 2cents:

First of all, I did not mean the "almost pretend" as an insult that you are faking it, you just have a very overpompous & pretentious tone just like 90% of MDs at an Ibank.

Second of all, I see there is no way to get you to answer or even pay attention to my very specific questions I keep asking over and over which are:

1. Where does the money come from to fund the CC line?

and once you get to the answer of that

2. Explain how it is a real loss


And you're right, the way you are answering and replying to my posts, my argument has no legs. But apparently a few judges and arbitrators feel that it does, as well as some American Express, Discover & Citibank lawyers. Once you unveil the process, it's nothing more than fraud & usury and apparently the major CC bank legal teams feel that dropping 20k-50k credit lines is better than having some very well prepared & smart defendants taking the matter further. I don't think the major banks want certain types of individuals taking to the level that it has been in Canada, it's just not part of their plans.

 

[2cents]

and we just gloss over such statements?

Quote from Hydroblunt:

So now think, how can a major CC company experience a REAL loss from a bad debtor when the money to fund that credit line came from....? It can't be its own assets because a bank's assets are its deposits and by law they cannot use someone else deposits to fund a credit card. It can't be from retained earnings put in as capital because if you simply look at the outstand CC debt, the numbers don't add up. Plus, consider all the capital expenditures, dividends, etc these banks do with their profits .

whereas in fact deposits are a bank's LIABILITIES... that the traditional role of banks is the TRANSFORMATION of credit, i.e. typically using their assessment of early withdrawal and other flow / rotation related risks on "callables" (eg short-term deposits), and of the supply / sufficient availability of the bank's risk capital (own or other stakeholders), to originate and fund (longer-term) loans...

if you had an area of expertise and i'd simply come and talk shit about that area like you do in this thread, is there a chance that one may find your responses to me to be overpompous and pretentious do u think?

what is it you really want, a lesson on "funding"? F101 for dummies? where is this gonna end?

Quote from Hydroblunt:

Second of all, I see there is no way to get you to answer or even pay attention to my very specific questions I keep asking over and over which are:

1. Where does the money come from to fund the CC line?

since when is money-on-acct the only way to fund a credit line? note that the bank itself has 'credit' and that's based on an external assessment of various solvency ratios, including debt/capital ratios, the bank's own assets etc... not mentioning the regulatory risk-related ratios applying out of Basel II etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_II

what matters AFAIAC is the ability of the issuing institution, of the CC in this case, to pay up, should the credit line facility beneficiary / card holder, default on principal repayment... i.e. WHETHER THE MONEY WILL COME AS EXPECTED IN THE END, WHEN ITS NEEDED, to pay a service provider here or there... capice?

sooo, what gives me reasonable confidence that this is not getting out of control with institutions issuing so much that they put the whole system at risk of generalized bankruptcy? THATS BECAUSE THEY ARE REGULATED, GIT IT?, MONITORED, AND EVEN IF I KNOW ITS NOT PERFECT AND THERE ARE AND WILL BE ABUSES, I KNOW HOW IT WORKS... AND I ALSO KNOW THAT IT WORKS... am not just reading some austrian school / libertarian type hogwash for the masses...

2. Explain how it is a real loss?

when a card holder defaults on principal repayment and the issuing institution has paid the service provider, you don't see how it is a REAL LOSS??

as i said earlier dude, can't help u... ask BNT perhaps, he is from Wharton... or a cabbie perhaps...

And you're right, the way you are answering and replying to my posts, my argument has no legs. But apparently a few judges and arbitrators feel that it does, as well as some American Express, Discover & Citibank lawyers. Once you unveil the process, it's nothing more than fraud & usury and apparently the major CC bank legal teams feel that dropping 20k-50k credit lines is better than having some very well prepared & smart defendants taking the matter further. I don't think the major banks want certain types of individuals taking to the level that it has been in Canada, it's just not part of their plans.

yeah no smoke without fire right? the good old saying... that goes such a v.long way into making your case mate...

$20K's the cost of a few legal person/days' work... like 3-4 days... but thats the wrong way to count... actually when the bank looks at it in the round, incl. the total weighted cost of its own people (compliance, legal, operations, internal audit, management etc, the cost of the real estate they're sitting on, electricity etc) involved in a litigious case, plus the cost of external legal and accting etc type expert opinions etc, it comes down to hours or minutes...

just not worth the aggro, sorry

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from 2cents:

I'm questioning whether you see the scam and just wanna maneuvre around it without ever admitting because of your background or you simply do not have the open mind & logic to understand it. I highly doubt it's the latter.

Look, Chase or Citi open an unsecured CC account for Joe Sixpack. They do not back it with other clients deposits, that is LAW and Federal Reserve regulations. They can only back it with Joe's, but thats rarely the case.
They take the agreement Joe Sixpack signed on and get the money to lend from the Fed system under the complicated pretenses & procedures that you pretty much listed (Really a bunch of BS window dressing)

All cool right? Except this little part. Chase & Citi are member banks of the Fed, as well as 2 major shareholders, possibly still the biggest ones. So in essense, they are simply lending money to themselves at the fed fund rate and then relending it to the masses at loan shark rates. The money is printed by US Treasury under the fractional reserve system against the bank's total deposit base, all through their specially designed system. (That's where the loophole lies where you can catch CCs but less than 5% of the people that try have the brainpower, mental strength, worth ethic, determination to carry it out and succeed.)

Quote from 2cents:


$20K's the cost of a few legal person/days' work... like 3-4 days...
just not worth the aggro, sorry

Listen man, you can explain the "official" thinking but as I have stated before, you are halfway across the world and do not know what really goes on. I spent 2 years of my life learning and researching about the CC system and I stumbled upon the scheme by total accident simply because I was trying to find how to best handle CC debt thanks to the frivilous spending of the college years.

Discover, Citibank, American Express, etc. will fly 3 lawyers first class and put them up at a 4 star hotel for a f**king 3k-5k debt. Discover will even come for ONE person with a 2k debt and even set up their lawyers for a weekend at a hotel (thats 3 nights). How is that worth it, even if they spend only 1 day in court? On occasion they get to hit up two or more debtors at the same time, I guess thats the best argument you can put up. But thats usually not the case.
Yet when someone who is well prepared and puts up the argument relentlessly, these guys will back off their legal teams from a 30k-50k debt after a few hours in arbitration? No appeal or anything. Arbitration decisions may be binding but these guys can appeal if they need to and always find some loophole, we are not talking about ambulance chasers here. One would think that they would for such big credit lines, especially considering how much they will do for the small ones.

Debt is a form of control. It has been used as such to rob third world nations of their natural resources and wealth. It is used by big lenders to push the financial masses into serfdom. And when you have the power to create this debt capability out of nothing through an elaborate, yet deceiving banking system, you have the power to slowly dominate the globe.

Some quotes from who I would think are your idols.

"Those few who can understand the system (check book money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on it favors, that there will be little opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."
ROTHSCHILDS BROS. OF LONDON

"Give me the power to issue a nation's money; then I do not care who makes the law."
ANSELM ROTHSCHILD

I think I'll place more value on these guys rather than selective wikipedia paragraphs. And I love wikipedia.

 

[2cents]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

Listen man, you can explain the "official" thinking but as I have stated before, you are halfway across the world and do not know what really goes on.

I spent 2 years of my life learning and researching about the CC system and I stumbled upon the scheme by total accident simply because I was trying to find how to best handle CC debt thanks to the frivilous spending of the college years.

....

Debt is a form of control. It has been used as such to rob third world nations of their natural resources and wealth. It is used by big lenders to push the financial masses into serfdom. And when you have the power to create this debt capability out of nothing through an elaborate, yet deceiving banking system, you have the power to slowly dominate the globe.

i haven't always been, plus the world is much smaller than you think as you'll find out when you grow up, but thats not even the point... its clearer now that your just one of those untrustworthy angry folks who only know to blame 'the system' instead of looking themselves in a mirror

my response remains, there's no cure... dinosaur line plse, along with the libertarians, "austrians" etc...

u're not worth the aggro... ciao pal

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from 2cents:

its clearer now that your just one of those untrustworthy angry folks who only know to blame 'the system' instead of looking themselves in a mirror

Whether this is true or not, it has absolutely nothing to do with what we are discussing. In fact, this is the worst argument you have made by far. Am I supposed to ignore the information and just pretend everything is fine & dandy and all time and all the people in power are goody two shoes. Am I supposed to assume that every major financial system is 110% super duper honorable & just? I've said it before, what really hit me in the video is how much of it I recollected from AP History. You act as if I am fabricating conspiracy theories, what I said about CCs, there are docket numbers behind those, what I said about third world debt, there are demonstrations and riots against IMF and World bank to show that.

Don't the quotes of the Rothchilds make you think just a little? I did not even want to bring up Jackson, Garfield, Bismarke & Lincoln's quotes because I find the Rothchilds quotes the most interesting & mind-boggling.

I dunno, you just straight up puzzle me. I think you're putting on a front, who knows. Or maybe it's cause you're in Tokyo, it's a little different when you can't help but notice the obvious disparaties between the cover stories and the reality.

Ciao to you too.