Italian Students Storm Milan Goldman Sachs Office (Occupy reaches Europe)

While hardly the explanation for why the EURUSD has surged nearly 100 pips in the past 45 minutes on absolutely no news (or, in this bizarro market, explaining it perfectly), and as the market focuses its attention on where the line of angry young protesters is longer: by the New York Stock Exchange or in front of the Apple store, Italians, once again betrayed by their politicians who were bribed by Berlusconi to vote for him in the latest vote of "confidence" (at a price of €250k per vote), have decided to make their feelings for financial innovation, and its patron saint, known, by storming the Goldman office in Milan.

From Corriere: "on Friday students took to the streets to demonstrate for and against the public school funds the crisis and the government. The procession was attended by about ten thousand young people (two thousand according to initial estimates of the Police Station). The raid at the headquarters of U.S. bank Goldman Sachs was the first action of the student demonstration. A group of twenty boys tried to get a surprise in the Milanese headquarters of the U.S. bank, Bossi in the square, near Piazza Cordusio. Rejected by some employees of the home, the young people then smeared with spray paint the hallway and throwing bags full of garbage to the cry of "Goldman Sachs has the courage to face the future without young people."

We doubt this is the last expression of love for those who do God's work in Europe, primarily with austerity-delaying FX swaps... Now that the delay can no longer be delayed.

Italians claim country run by Goldman Sachs

Italians grumble that Goldman Sachs runs their country, much as the Jesuits ran countries during the Counter-Reformation.

Premier Romano Prodi is an ex-Goldman Sachs man, as is central bank president Mario Draghi and the deputy treasury chief Massimo Tononi.

The price paid for having so many friends at court is that the elite bank inevitably becomes entangled in the financial scandals that so often swirl around the Italian political class.

For the past month, Goldman Sachs has been dragged into a widening corruption probe into the Siemens-Italtel merger dating back to the mid-1990s.

The inquiry has moved uncomfortably close to Mr Prodi, who was on the Goldman Sachs payroll from 1990 to 1993 and again in 1997 after his first stint as prime minister.

Politicians from the Forza Italia party have jumped on suggestions that Goldman Sachs may be involved, making damning allegations in the Chamber of Deputies under parliamentary immunity.

The inquiry is just one of several probes across Europe into a €400m (£273m) network of black accounts used by Siemens to grease deals.

Prosecutors in Bolzano, Northern Italy, claim to have unearthed a Siemens payment of DM10m (£3.2m) to a Goldman Sachs account in Frankfurt in July 1997. From there it ricocheted around the world, going to London and Tokyo before returning to Germany in yen - according to Italy’s financial newspaper Il Sole.

A Goldman Sachs employee summoned for questioning earlier this month said the DM10m payment had been made for an unknown third party.

Italian Treasury Police raided the Milan office of Goldman Sachs in February, where they removed a file called “MTononi/memo-Prodi 02.doc”, among other papers.

They have also obtained a letter to Siemens from the Frankfurt office of Goldman Sachs in 1993 pitching for business on the Italtel deal.

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"While hardly the explanation for why the EURUSD has surged nearly 100 pips in the past 45 minutes on absolutely no news"

You didn't hear about the statements from the Fed on more qe when necessary?

And Greece was already relieved of 21% of its debt in a deal with investors. Now, they're talking about making that 50%. Yes. your fund managers omitted that.

Oh, and Iran, N. Korea, oil. Have fun.

The more interesting stuff is yet to come. For one, slaughter beef is still around $1.23 or so a pound. Demand is growing overseas from those who work the jobs that you won't work and can't work (unskilled, retarded Americans, we are). Watch out in the near future.

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