Let's address two tragedies today.
The first is how Jamie Dimon & Co. and all the guilty big banks get away with murder.
The second is something I want to share with you because 50 years ago today, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. It isn't a conspiracy theory about who did it, but a likely theory about what happened and the conspiracy to cover that up.
On the record JPMorgan fine it's going to pay to settle allegations it misled investors about the quality and safety of the mortgage-backed securities it sold them, leading to the 2008 mortgage meltdown and financial crisis... I'm going to keep this simple.
And I need to thank one of my Wall Street Insights & Indictments readers for what I'm about to call what's happening, because he came up with this, and it's perfect. So thank you, Harry M.
Here's what the $13 billion JPMorgan "fine" really amounts to...
To JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), paying $13 billion is nothing more than a "licensing fee."
So what if the JPMorgan "fine" is far and away the largest penalty ever paid to settle a civil investigation?
It doesn't matter that the civil investigation never resulted in actual charges, or that there are ongoing criminal investigations over allegations contained in the civil investigation.
It doesn't matter that JPMorgan Chase has already paid out tens of billions of dollars in settlement costs for other criminal behavior it neither admitted nor denied. It doesn't matter that the bank still faces investigations over its part in the massive LIBOR manipulation scheme, or the massive foreign currency pricing manipulation scheme, or for covering up its knowledge in the massive Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, or any of the other criminal behavior the bank profits from (which we could go on and on about).
It doesn't matter.
And it doesn't matter that all the other big banks have settled and will settle and may be prosecuted criminally and have paid billions of dollars in fines and will pay tens of billions more in settlements, fines, and litigation costs.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that these big banks are criminal enterprises. Yeah, I said it, and I'll say it again, so sue me. These guilty banks are criminal enterprises.
The only thing that matters is that they pay their licensing fees.
The fact that these big banks are coddled by central banks that liquefy them in times of trouble, steepen yield curves to fatten up their bottom lines, and that they are protected by the same governments that license them and grant central banks the power to empower such behemoth criminal enterprises is, besides just the way it is, bloody murder.
Okay, next.
What happened 50 years ago on November 22, 1963? Who killed JFK?
We may never know. The only thing we think we know is that there was a conspiracy.
I think there was a conspiracy. I never believed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin (which is what the Warren Commission concluded, only to have a House assassination investigation in the 1970s find otherwise).
Sure I've read a lot of books about the assassination and pored over a lot of "evidence" and tried to piece together what was plausible or possible. But I never got anywhere. There was always something missing. There was always something nagging at me.
No matter what theory seemed plausible, I couldn't get out of my head how the Secret Service had been involved in every aspect of the case - from the moment Kennedy was shot, to what happened at Parkland Memorial, to who was in the operating room, who controlled the X-rays, who shepherded the body, who was in the autopsy room in Bethesda, who ended up with JFK's brain... It was all the Secret Service.
How could a conspiracy have happened without the Secret Service being involved? How could so many Secret Service men be in on a conspiracy that pinned the plot on the mob, or the Russians, or the CIA, the FBI, or Cubans, or LBJ?
The other day when I came across something I'd never seen before, something I never knew, something that was made public in a book I never heard about, something that was just made into a 90-minute documentary that first aired on Nov. 13, 2013. I saw the documentary, and it changed everything. It is the most possible, although seemingly improbable, conspiracy theory. It makes sense to me.
It doesn't address Oswald, or any plot to kill JFK, which is unsatisfying. But it does suggest - and is backed up by substantial evidence that does add up - who fired the fatal shot that killed JFK.
The documentary is based on "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK." That's a 1992 non-fiction book by Bonar Menninger. It describes a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith, and ballistics expert Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the shot that actually killed President John F. Kennedy.
While it was theoretically possible for Oswald to have fired three shots from the book depository, it was unlikely he could have hit his target twice successively in the space of time the two shots that hit JFK were captured in the Zapruder film.
Nellie Connolly, Governor John Connolly's wife, who was sitting next to the governor in the seat in front of the Kennedys, testified she heard the first shot and saw Kennedy grab his throat, then she heard the second shot, which she said hit her husband. The third shot, which came almost on top of the second shot Nellie heard, hit Kennedy from the back, making the theory of a shooter on the grassy knoll whose bullet would have entered from the front unlikely. (There was no frontal wound.)
"Mortal Error" concludes that the fatal shot that blew a quarter of JFK's skull off and mortally wounded him resulted when Secret Service agent George Hickey, in the open car behind the presidential limo, after hearing the first shot, reached down and picked up the loaded AR-15 (a new assault weapon at the time) on the floor in front of him. And with his finger on the trigger, and the weapon coming up and facing forward, accidently pulled the trigger, unleashing the fatal shot at JFK.
While there is only one picture of Hickey holding the rifle, there is a photo of it. Witnesses said they saw him pull up the gun and fall back (possibly from the recoil).
"Mortal Error" claims there was no Secret Service conspiracy to kill the President; it was an accident. And it in no way diminishes theories about Oswald or other potential conspirators.
A lot of missing pieces come together with this theory.
The fatal shot would make sense in terms of the trajectory of its entry point being almost lateral and not from above.
The difference in the bullets that came from (supposedly) Oswald's gun and the AR-15 are telling. Oswald's carbine bullet (the "magic bullet," which was supposedly the one that went through JFK's neck and into Governor Connolly, through multiple bones and layers of clothing, and was found on a clean stretcher in Parkland Memorial Hospital) was "pristine." Meaning it had not fragmented. The AR-15 was loaded with "frangible" ammunition, which is consistent with the small entry wound on the back of the President's skull, which exited after "breaking apart" through the right side of the skull, causing the horrific damage seen in the Zapruder film and described in the autopsy.
Why else would the Secret Service cover up autopsy results that showed bullet fragments in the skull? Why else would the President's brain have disappeared once it was given to a Secret Service agent? Why would the autopsy results from Bethesda have been burned?
Regardless of any conspiracy to kill JFK in Dallas 50 years ago, it's possible that the fatal shot was a horrific tragedy, and that's why so many pieces of direct evidence controlled by the Secret Service disappeared.
Someone, probably several people out there, knows the truth. What is the truth? What do you believe?
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About the Author
Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.
The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.
Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.
Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.
Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.
Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.