Rumor now has it that Wikileaks’ next leak will be the bust of a major American bank. The exciting question, perhaps, is less what the details might be (we’ve basically seen it all over the past two years, if we’ve been paying attention) than what bank Wikileaks will bust.
Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks, did a major interview with Forbes magazine’s Andy Greenberg on what he refers to as a bunch of “megaleaks” that look far more relevant than some thirty-year old pieces of pseudo-military gossip and philandering.
According to Zero Hedge, Assange says he has “one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it.” Assange hints that this will do for criminal investigations into banks at the executive level what happened to Enron.
“There will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war. You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.”
Apparently the big bank documents will be released in the new year.
Speculations on which major bank? Assange assures that it’s a bank still in operation. This is not about Lehman Brothers, though no doubt it would have applied to them, too. My pick? Judging by other speculations, it sounds as though it could be Goldman Sachs or even the Federal Reserve itself (perhaps unlikely).
And then what will the markets do? What kind of trade is the Wikileaks trade? Share your thoughts in the comments below – even as this leaks and keeps unfolding.
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