Wall Street’s culture of Deception (Part 2)

Bank Stock Value Manipulation:

We are now aware of Lehman Bros SCAM, where they would hide billions of dollars of bad debts by selling them prior to a required reporting period and buy them back directly after the report was filed. This is known now as end-of-quarter balance sheet manipulation, the purpose was to trick investors into thinking the Bank or investment house was less leveraged than it was.

This was a form of stock value manipulation, which is illegal! It also constitutes FRAUD on the investors, who would have sold their stock had they known the truth. It is concealing the true nature and value of the company and of its stock value.

Now as it turns out, almost of all of Wall Street is based on this same phony perception, having been caught using this same Ploy, Bank of America now claims there is nothing wrong with concealing in this manner its bad assets. We respectfully disagree!

Comparing Bank of America's "average quarterly assets" and "end of quarter assets" found that, in each quarter, billions of dollars of assets conveniently disappeared briefly at the end of the quarter, only to return again at the start of the next one.

Like Lehman, Bank of America found some legal loophole in some country somewhere that allowed them to momentarily hide tens of billions of dollars of assets somewhere where Wall Street wouldn't see them. And, naturally, Bank of America thinks it's perfectly acceptable: We believe this has been a common practice on Wall Street for sometime

For those that don’t know Repo 105, Lehman Bros asset disappearance program, it was a sale and repurchase agreement by which Lehman parked about 50 billion in assets (presumably assets they did not want to discuss) overnight via a repo transaction so they would not appear on the balance sheet. Who the counter party was has still not been disclosed.

But unfortunately the Lehman executives do have one point. Repo 105 type balance sheet faking was “an old trick” and well known to anyone who cared to read balance sheets (very) carefully.

With BoA they did the very same thing, the end period assets were always lower than the average assets. Moreover it was not obvious unless you really looked because the quarterly earnings releases did not include average assets (but you could work it out because they stated return on average assets.

Bank of America was parking its assets off balance sheet at the end of every quarter for some time and had been obscuring the fact.

There must be a Counterparty

If Bank of America wanted to shove the assets off balance sheet someone (credit worthy) needed to be found to house the assets overnight. There are not that many parties credit worthy for $50 billion or more of overnight repos.

Well BoA found such a willing participant the counterparty was MUFJ. If you look you can see – the same way that MUFJ had end period assets higher than average assets and that the differences and timing roughly match. Someone had to assist BofA in its financial manipulation and that was MUFJ. MUFJ stands for (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group)

About MUFJ

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFJ), incorporated on April 2, 2001, they are a holding company for The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd. (BTMU), Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation (MUTB), Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co., Ltd. (MUS), Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS Co., Ltd. (Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS), and other subsidiaries.

Through its subsidiaries and affiliated companies, MUFG engages in a range of financial operations, including commercial banking, investment banking, trust banking and asset management services, securities businesses, and credit card businesses, and provides related services to individual and corporate customers. In July 2008, BTMU acquired 49.375% interest in JALCARD, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Airlines International Co., Ltd. In November 2008, BTMU completed the acquisition of all the interest in UnionBanCal Corporation (UNBC), and as a result, UNBC became a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of MUFG.

The Company manages the underwriting of debt and equity instruments for large corporations. It also provides arrangement services relating to private placements primarily for medium-sized enterprise issuers and institutional investors. The Company advises on financing methods to meet various financing needs, including loans with derivatives, corporate bonds, commercial paper, asset-backed securities, securitization programs and syndicated loans. It also offers a range of products to meet fund management needs, such as deposits with derivatives, government bonds, debenture notes and investment funds. It also offers swaps, options and other risk-hedge programs to customers.

Well this is just the second Scam uncovered in the series, stay tuned.