Sunday, May 8, 2016

$100 Billion Missing

A new political crime bigger than Watergate? 5/9/16

I recently learned about an ongoing financial crime; by far the largest in history. According to sources that I trust (and based on my own team’s research to verify these claims), something around $100 billion in dividends has already been stolen. Up to $1 billion a month continues to be taken, in what must be the most brazen corporate crime in history. To give you some idea about the scope of this crime (and how big this story will become), the fraud at Enron resulted in the collapse of a $40 billion corporation. What has been stolen in this case is already almost twice that much, in cash.

The most shocking aspect of this case, however, isn’t its enormous size and it’s the largest corporate fraud of all time. What’s truly shocking is that the people behind this fraud were working for the government when the plan was implemented. They’ve been using "executive privilege" as an excuse to cover their tracks, insisting that 11,000 documents that detail how this happened may be vital to national security.

 I had heard rumors about this situation for years. Several hedge-fund friends of mine had asked me to look into this, because I’m something of an expert on the companies at the center of this scandal. But honestly, it all sounded too incredible for me to believe.

It’s a story that reads like a Bourne novel and probably involves the president of the United States. Meanwhile, there’s a growing group of incredibly powerful people (such as Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee) who believe that something sinister and illegal has transpired and is now being covered up.

Grassley’s involvement caught my attention; he isn’t a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist. But what really changed my mind about the situation happened last month when a federal judge insisted on releasing some of the 11,000 documents.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

Right there in black and white is proof that a senior U.S. Treasury official (Tim Bowler); someone who regularly meets with President Obama about these same matters was conspiring to steal tens of billions of dollars from two privately owned U.S. corporations. And it’s not just that. These documents also included the names of several journalists on the staff of a prominent financial publication, who seem to be implicated in this scheme.

 As this story unfolds, I believe it will come to rival Watergate as the best-known example of graft and corruption at the highest levels of Wall Street. Why should you care?

Well, I believe the documents I saw last month prove the existence of a conspiracy among dozens of Treasury officials, journalists, senior administration officials, and even the president that is designed to defraud tens of billions of dollars from these two companies. And this is an ongoing fraud; with so-far-unknown beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, investors in these two firms have seen their share prices wiped out. Eviscerated. Their balance sheets have been ransacked. Their earnings have been stolen. Their dividends have been confiscated. And I believe there is now clear and undeniable evidence that the government stole this money in an illegal conspiracy. When all of the details are finally discovered, I’m almost certain that investors will recoup $75 billion or more. It’s a large enough potential lawsuit to drive these shares up by 10 times.
                 
In my mind, this case represents the best opportunity investors have to make a killing in an investment vehicle that isn’t tied to our economy. In short, the outcome of this investigation and these lawsuits will drive the value of these companies higher, regardless of what’s happening in the broader market. It’s these kinds of "uncorrelated" opportunities that we’re looking for now, given our fears about a looming, massive bear market our fears about a looming, massive bear market
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All of what we know so far is detailed in the May issue of my newsletter, Stansberry’s Investment Advisory, which hit inboxes tonight. We had our team, including a lawyer and two auditors study the documents that have been made public so far and combine this new information with our long history of studying these businesses.

We think this is one of the best, most "asymmetric" risk-versus-reward situations we’ve ever found for investors. This should be the greatest investment story we’ve ever reported on by a wide margin. So even if you don’t normally read my newsletter, I would urge you not to miss this issue.

OK, that’s a pretty dramatic story. But it’s all true. And when you learn what’s happened, I promise you will be shocked and outraged; even if you’re already as cynical as I am about politics and the leaders of our country. (Trust me, Russia isn’t the only country led by kleptocrats.)

But what should you do with this information? How should you manage the risks involved? How should you allocate this investment idea into your portfolio? These questions will be just as important, or more so, than understanding the facts of the case and the investment implications. How you use our investment ideas is at least as important as the investments we recommend.

Source: Porter Stansberry, May 6, 2016


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