Talk:Italian border guards seize $134 billion in U.S. bonds at Swiss border

Kennedy bonds?
I have not been able to find information confirm the existence of such securities. All searches point back to this story. --SVTCobra 22:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 22:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Try Googling "Kennedy Bonds" it all comes back to this story ... no disrespect to adnkronos, I am sure that what was found says "Kennedy Bonds" that doesn't mean they are real. --SVTCobra 22:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Here contains picture of the said "Kennedy Bonds" - http://www.agenziadogane.it/wps/wcm/connect/resources/file/ebc2ab0abd8b8ed/cre-s-20090604-78836_chiasso.pdf?MOD=AJPERES / This for comparison is a genuine million USD bearer bond - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_07Vo5mDNg18/SjG0o3s-hAI/AAAAAAAAACw/qZFWJmppPak/s1600-h/bond1small.jpg - Vtuxlinzjheucc (talk) 16:32, 12 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The so-called "Kennedy bond" has the format of a currency note and not a bond. A bond always contains a substantial amount of text on its face declaring how, when, and where interest are principal paid.  The only remaining mystery is why the U.S. Treasury or the U.S. Secret Service did not immediately declare them from the photographs impossible to be genuine and end a lot of silly speculation.  The "Kennedy bond", if it does exist, will be a huge surprise to my colleagues and I who deal with government securities daily and the authors of recent books on the structure of the treasury market. Patsw (talk) 15:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Almost certainly fake
I am the original poster. I have now more information.

Here is the picture that the Italian released: http://static.10gen.com/www.businessinsider.com//f?id=4a31481814b9b9c700ee1783

Note the bond to the front left, and also a bond to the front right.

Now, look at this known fake bond that was found in San Diego: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040910/images/bonds2.jpg

And here is another type of known fake: http://www.treasuryscams.gov/images/instit/statreg/fraud/fraud_fdicinsurancecert.jpg

I suspect the two Japanese men were the victim of some con (perhaps a variant of the Nigerian scheme) and thought these were genuine.


 * They could also be perpetrators of the scheme or at least part of it. And they may not be Japanese at all. Imagine if they turn out to be North Korean agents. --SVTCobra 23:04, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The link to foreign debt outstanding is very misleading and ought to be deleted from the news page. The foreign debt is held in book-entry and registered certificate form.  I updated Bearer bond to point to a more helpful page listing the amount of outstanding bearer form U.S treasury debt (approx $100 billion).  The face amount of the certificates seized was $134 billion and therefore another piece of evidence pointer to counterfeiting. Since all the bearer form debt has matured, the holders of bearer bonds are not being paid interest -- they are essentially gifting to the federal government the use of the money.Patsw (talk) 16:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

editprotected


 * Add
 * Remove
 * See above for detail. Patsw (talk) 16:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Done add, not done removal. --Brian McNeil / talk 16:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Foreign debt is not held in bearer form
editprotected

Further, according to the U.S. Treasury only the nations of China, Japan, and Russia own this much in U.S. debt instruments.


 * The statement above in the Wikinews article is wrong. What was seized at the Italian-Swiss border were not generic "U.S. debt instruments" but ostensibly "U.S debt in bearer form".  Foreign holdings of U.S. debt are not held in bearer form.  This is obviously true because all the bearer U.S. debt has matured.


 * No bearer form U.S. debt instrument is paying interest.
 * No foreign government would have any incentive to hold bearer bonds as opposed to registered bonds or book entry form which pay interest. (Only $34 billion is outstanding as registered bonds paying interest)
 * Total foreign holdings of U.S. treasury debt is $3.2 trillion Patsw (talk) 18:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Errr, well, we can't change the sentence itself, because the article is past it's editable point. I can however place a corrected statement at the top of the page, saying what part of the article is incorrect (note that this is only for things that were incorrect when the article was written, not for new information that has been discovered since, such as the fact that the bonds were false). What would you suggest that statement say, in a short sentence or two? I'm uncertain exactly which bit you want corrected because I don't know anything about the subject in question. Gopher65talk 21:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The article doesn't specify bearer form, so the assumption is any form. That this is a smaller subset leaves the statement true. Furthermore, the statements about foreign holdings are presented to provide scale of the amount seized more than anything else. --SVTCobra 22:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Declared Fake
editprotected

Amend original article to indicate that the bonds are counterfeit.

"U.S. government bonds found in the false bottom of a suitcase carried by two Japanese travelers attempting to cross into Switzerland are fake, a Treasury spokesman said.

“They’re clearly fakes,” said Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Washington. “That’s beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what’s out there.”"




 * ❌ We cannot alter the content of a story more than 36 hours after it has been published, please see the archival policy. Any new updates should be placed into a new article instead. Tempodivalse [talk]  21:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

image replacement
editprotected replace File:CustomsCiass.JPG, which is a thumb with bad name, by the original File:Zoll_Chiasso.jpg --Ikar.us (talk) 11:43, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Pi zero (talk) 11:55, 6 September 2017 (UTC)