AFP
via Yahoo! News (UK & Ireland)
5/9/2012
The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that three major Chinese banks have won approval to enter the US banking market.
ICBC (HKSE: 0349.HK – news) , China’s biggest bank; Bank of China; and Agricultural Bank of China have been cleared to have branches in the United States, the Fed said.
The Fed authorized Bank of China to set up a branch in Chicago, and Agricultural Bank of China to establish one in New York City.
The board approved an application from Industrial (Mexico: ST2000.MX – news) and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia (KOSDAQ: 900110.KQ – news) , a deal that would make it the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.
The US unit of Bank of East Asia operates 13 branches in New York (Frankfurt: A0DKRK – news) and California.
ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding overseas.
ICBC has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion and the Chinese government owns some 70 percent of its shares, the Fed said.
Update: Bombs away!……………….from Rico
Gold hit a 4-month low yesterday, Silver followed. They are being ‘bombed’ again today.
The ONLY reason Gold & Silver have ‘fallen’ for the past four months is not because anything has been ‘fixed’ in EUrope or the US. Equities, paper fiat and Sovereign debt are not suddenly safe places to be again. Nyet and Nope!
– It is due SOLELY to market manipulation and massive paper shorting.
– Yesterday was again an example of the ‘unusual’ trading activity that is increasingly becoming commonplace [read: manipulation]. At the NY trading open 6,000 Gold futures were sold in minutes, triggering momentum-driven algorithm follow-on selling.This allows the paper shorts to ‘cover’ at lower than what true/free-market prices would otherwise be.
– It also allows those ‘uncivilized’ Chinese (and others) to happily scoop-up more physical at bargain prices, thanks to these games being played by our paper ‘masters of the universe.’
Something BIG is coming our way, as evidenced by the continued ferocity of these paper bombing raids…
…I am now considering that MF Global may have been a ‘dry run’ for the BIG default that is coming…
Read the whole thing.
