MR2  Wrote: (07-12-2019 08:54 AM)

Deutsche Bank Tried to Sell Off $600M Loan to Russian Bank in Late 2016

Deutsche Bank frantically tried to sell off a $600 million loan to Russian bank VTB in late 2016 in order to minimize its financial ties to Russia, which had been accused of meddling in the U.S. election. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the German investment bank, which counted Donald Trump as a long-time client, was able to sell $300 million of the loan to Russia’s Alfa Bank in December 2016, but that it was unable to sell the remainder. VTB reportedly paid back the last $300 million of the loan in August 2017. Separately, the New York Times reported Saturday that Deutsche Bank declined to loan Trump money in 2016, fearing he wouldn’t pay and that it would have to go after his assets as president in the event he was elected.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/deutsche-b...-late-2016

Multi billionaire Trump?.. and Deutsche Bank was worried they would have to come after his assets?


Oh My...

The thing is, what are the knock off effects of taking down this bank? the potential that some seem to see is a way to get rid of the US president, but on the flip side of that what are the knock of effects if the various sides keep trundling down the route of attempting to take down the financial backers of the other side?

Personally I have nothing invested in Trump, but all I can see from the various sides is that the end result will be the same global confrontation regardless of which direction we come at it from... thats the knock on effect I see.

LoP Guest  Wrote: (07-12-2019 09:26 AM)

The thing is, what are the knock off effects of taking down this bank? the potential that some seem to see is a way to get rid of the US president, but on the flip side of that what are the knock of effects if the various sides keep trundling down the route of attempting to take down the financial backers of the other side?

Personally I have nothing invested in Trump, but all I can see from the various sides is that the end result will be the same global confrontation regardless of which direction we come at it from... thats the knock on effect I see.

They won't and can't let the bank fail....bail outs are coming.

MR2  Wrote: (07-12-2019 09:35 AM)

They won't and can't let the bank fail....bail outs are coming.

While I can see bailouts in the offing for some, I can also see many being thrown under the bus...

The banks have been building huge stock piles of cash since 2008/9 to survive a major economic downtown and economic war... hence the stress testing on how much liquidity they have built up..

but in the meanwhile we have seen a shift from economic driven policies of survival to politically driven ones, which is where my mind keeps coming back to...

Take Instex, the E3s attempt to create an economic vehicle that will side step US sanctions and give Iran an alternative to paying with US$, it is not governed by economists, it's executive board is made up with senior foreign office experts from the E3.. so the nature of the vehicle is political, and the battles they expect it to fight are political ones.. and that begs the question, how good will an economic vehicle be if it is driven by diplomats..

Which seems to be the growing issue as we seem to be shifting more in that direction of politically driven approach... and, as I keep reading, maybe rightly or wrongly, I assume a lot of the issues right now such as Deutsche Bank have strong politically driven issues...

So are we seeing a situation evolve where banks might/might not be taken down for political rather that just economic reasons.. and what kind of effect will this shift to a politically driven environment have on the global economy..

sorry for the meandering response... I tried to distill my thoughts down, but failed :)

Quote:Corporate human rights

More controversially, they may use their status as legal persons to claim aspects of human rights, such as freedom of speech in order to lobby and advertise. For example British American Tobacco claimed in 2008:

That ability, both of manufacturers to communicate and consumers to receive information, is protected by Article 10 of the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights], which recognises free speech (including commercial free speech) as a fundamental right.4

Although there are clearly reasons why tobacco companies might be considered less worthy of human rights protection than others, nevertheless the principle is clear:

The European Court of Human Rights has held on several occasions, that statements made in the commercial context shall come within the realm of protection provided for by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms […].5

This means that commercial statements by business, including advertising actually come under the jurisdiction of human rights law as (commercial) free speech.
Freedom of speech: Unequal powers to persuade

Should corporations be able to exercise such powers? Corporations have the resources to purchase the highest levels of skills and technology to exercise free speech: to advertise their products, develop their image and imprint their brand on the public imagination. Not content with advertising/commercial breaks, corporations are also able to purchase product placement to advertise particular goods in films and television in some parts of the world. Public relations (PR), first invented as a concept by Edward Bernays, a cousin of Sigmund Freud’s, are a critical part of the corporate effort to win over consumers and promote the image of the corporation in question as a friend, an expert or an advocate, and there are now hundreds of PR companies involved in work to develop corporate branding. The title of one of Bernays’ books “The Engineering of Consent” describes exactly what PR is about and why it is so important. As an early example of successful advertising, Bernays developed a campaign in the 1920s to encourage women to smoke, using the statue of Liberty as an image to equate smoking, women and liberation.6 Another aspect of freedom of speech exercised by corporations under article 10 is the freedom to lobby. The right to seek to influence political decision-making and inform politicians is clearly vital to the interests of human persons and civil society groups or alliances. However, once again, corporations have far greater resources with which to carry out lobby campaigns than civil society. Brussels, the centre of Europe’s decision-making, is full of corporate lobbyists, far outnumbering public interest groups. As Corporate Europe Observatory notes, this “results in flawed policies that put commercial interests above those of people and the environment and undermines the very basis of democracy.”7
Libel laws: Unequal powers to defend reputations

Corporations also use their status as legal persons to exploit libel laws in many national legislatures to defend their reputations. The UK is particularly notorious for its libel laws. A famous case was that of McDonald’s versus Helen Steel and David Morris, often called the McLibel case,8 over a pamphlet published by them and other members of London Greenpeace (not connected to Greenpeace International) that criticised McDonald’s on a number of counts. Some of the defendants agreed to apologise, but Helen and David decided to defend the claims made in the pamphlet. The case lasted 313 days in court over ten years and clearly illustrates the disparity in power between a multinational corporation and two individuals without personal resources other than determination. They were not granted legal aid funding by the state to hire lawyers to advise them because this was not allowed in a libel case. This meant that they had to defend themselves in court without advocates, even though they had no training or background in legal matters. They later won a ruling in the European Court of Human Rights that “their rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression were violated when they were denied legal aid”.9

The European Court ruled that UK laws had failed to protect the public’s right to criticise massive corporations whose business practices can affect people’s lives, health and the environment.10

Although this was followed by calls for legal aid to be made available to rectify the imbalance of power and resources that this case so clearly highlighted, this has not happened. Furthermore, it is not just a matter of legal aid. UK libel law has been widely criticised for curtailing freedom of speech and silencing legitimate criticism, but the law itself has not been changed, even though there is clearly a deterrent effect when legal persons have some of the same rights but far more resources with which to enforce them and prevent human persons from challenging them. This case shows how corporate legal personhood, enabling corporations to bring libel cases against other persons, can lead to miscarriages of justice.

But to the conventionally minded English lawyer there is no question that companies should be able to sue for libel. After all, companies are "legal persons" – …. The view is that if "natural persons" can sue for libel then so can companies.11

Human beings cannot directly bring cases against corporations for human rights abuses

Another consequence of human beings and corporations both being persons under the law, is that human beings cannot bring cases directly against corporations for human rights violations because human rights law is about protecting people (persons) against the state. Instead they have to use other laws, such as those regarding negligence, or environmental damage, or they must appeal to the state for redress. Addressing corporate abuses remains an incredibly slow and unequal struggle. Two examples are the Bhopal disaster of Union Carbide, or the ongoing case against Texaco in Ecuador.12 Even recent UK laws on Corporate Manslaughter are of limited use. Although corporations are people (persons), they do not have bodies that can be imprisoned. They often create and use subsidiary corporations with no assets to carry out risky activities or accumulate liabilities. Such subsidiaries can later be dissolved. A corporation accused of corporate manslaughter may simply claim that an employee was behaving in a rogue manner and the corporation did not know what was happening. It may, in exceptional circumstances, be possible to “pierce the corporate veil”13 and hold individual employees of the company responsible for a crime, but such individuals are dispensable and their removal is unlikely to affect the continued “life” of the corporate legal person.
Unequal global powers - beyond the control of national governments

Corporations as persons not only have greater powers than natural persons. They are now more powerful than many states. Their global reach puts them beyond the control of national governments, whose interests are in any case (as we have briefly seen) often closely allied to those of the corporations, for example, in extracting critical resources from other countries. The World Trade Organisation, which can bring sanctions against national governments and even force them to change their constitutions, may be seen in many ways as the creature and instrument of the corporations and those governments that benefit from corporate activities.

Deutsche Bank knows how to kick the can down the road. It does that very well.

LoP Guest  Wrote: (07-12-2019 09:54 AM)

While I can see bailouts in the offing for some, I can also see many being thrown under the bus...

The banks have been building huge stock piles of cash since 2008/9 to survive a major economic downtown and economic war... hence the stress testing on how much liquidity they have built up..

but in the meanwhile we have seen a shift from economic driven policies of survival to politically driven ones, which is where my mind keeps coming back to...

Take Instex, the E3s attempt to create an economic vehicle that will side step US sanctions and give Iran an alternative to paying with US$, it is not governed by economists, it's executive board is made up with senior foreign office experts from the E3.. so the nature of the vehicle is political, and the battles they expect it to fight are political ones.. and that begs the question, how good will an economic vehicle be if it is driven by diplomats..

Which seems to be the growing issue as we seem to be shifting more in that direction of politically driven approach... and, as I keep reading, maybe rightly or wrongly, I assume a lot of the issues right now such as Deutsche Bank have strong politically driven issues...

So are we seeing a situation evolve where banks might/might not be taken down for political rather that just economic reasons.. and what kind of effect will this shift to a politically driven environment have on the global economy..

sorry for the meandering response... I tried to distill my thoughts down, but failed :)

The memory of the last bailouts are still fresh in peoples minds..and Deutsche Bank was given over 1/2 a trillion. Bailouts this time will not be given lightly and will be a huge political hot potato. How this all unfolds is purely speculation but I can see no scenario playing out without server consequences...hope I'm wrong.

Deregulating banks, stocks and corporations, in my opinion, was not a good idea.

LoP Guest  Wrote: (07-12-2019 12:45 PM)

Deutsche Bank knows how to kick the can down the road. It does that very well.

It's almost out of road...but yeah they will try.

MR2  Wrote: (07-12-2019 10:02 AM)

The memory of the last bailouts are still fresh in peoples minds..and Deutsche Bank was given over 1/2 a trillion. Bailouts this time will not be given lightly and will be a huge political hot potato. How this all unfolds is purely speculation but I can see no scenario playing out without server consequences...hope I'm wrong.

Deregulating banks, stocks and corporations, in my opinion, was not a good idea.

I know, lots of speculation, but it certainly feels like we are, or have been shifting national economics into highly politicised topics.. The choice of a non economist to lead the ECB for example.. there seems to have been a huge shift to lawyers and diplomats for these roles... which is itself interesting.. what is it they are expecting that means a diplomat or lawyer is better placed to manage economic issues if not major trade wars resulting from the current geopolitical situation.