We may be witnessing a new chapter in the saga of the Bearer Bonds scandals, or then again, we may not be; we'll get to that eventually. But in this last week, there has been a new story involving yet more trillions of dollars in fake bonds, this time involving the Vatican Bank. Before we go any further with this story, however, I want to make note of soomething else very significant. As many of you know, many people send me articles on various topics, and part of my weekly(and in some cases, bi-- or tri-weekly) ritual is to go through all the articles from various people that I have archived, and then select those which, by dint of sheer numbers or other factors, seem to be of most interest to regular readers here. I can honestly say that on this particular story, so many of you sent me various versions of the coverage of this story that it would literally take a paragraph of mentioning just the initials of all of you who sent this story. In a way, I find this very consoling, because it means many people are watching the international financial news, and doing so with en eye to detail, and rational speculation on what it all might mean.

I. THE STORY ITSELF

With this in mind, now let's look at various versions of the story:

Zero Hedge: Trillions in Fake Euro Bonds Seized at Vatican Bank

RT: Two men caught with $4.1tn worth of fake bonds at Vatican Bank

IE: Two Men Caught in Vatican Bank Fraud Attempt

Newser: Italian police say 2 men with false bonds tried to access Vatican bank in foiled swindle plot

IBT: Vatican Bank Targeted In €3 Trillion Fake Bond Fraud

II. THE FACTS AS ALLEGED

Reviewing all of this, we end with the following intriguing data set of alleged facts in the case:

Two men claimed to have appointments with someone in the Vatican, though this is unclear. One source, the International Business Times, the last article referenced above, claims that officials, presumably Vatican officials, state that the men did have appointments, while another source, Newser, the second to last source linked above, claims that the men themselves made such statements, but that no appointments were officially logged; One man appears to have been an American, and another was, according to the third article linked above, was a Dutchman of Malaysian descent, an intriguingly suggestive heritage, given the conspiracy obfuscation being pushed both in the lamestream and alternative media over the disappearance of Malaysian Air flight 370; The Two individuals were allegedly known for similar fraud attempts in Asia, according to the third and first articles linked above; The Two individuals were subsequently released by authorities, ostensibly because Italian law does not permit the arrest of individuals who merely attempt fraud; According to the Newser article(the third article linked above), a search of the men's hotel room recovered the stamps and seals used to create the false bonds; and finally, The bonds themselves were apparently denominated in US and Hong Kong dollars, euros, and were counterfeits of corporate bonds and securities, rather than of alleged sovereign debt instruments - a fact which distinguishes this affair from the bearer bonds scandals, when gold-backed USA bearer bonds were recovered. The amount, involved in this latest incident, however, some 3 trillion euros, or $4 trillion dollars, recalls the amounts of the Spanish and Italian Bearer Bonds scandals, which were for 2 and 6 trillion dollars respectively. As in all three bearer bond scandals, however, the bonds here are claimed to be counterfeit. However, unlike in all three Bearer Bonds Scandals - the Japanese, Spanish, and Italian scandals about which we have blogged on this site previously - no pictures of the allegedly counterfeit securities accompany any of the articles.

III. PECULIAR PARALLELS

There are a number of peculiar parallels that emerge from these stories, and readers of my book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations will recall a couple of them. In that book, I detailed a Mafia scheme that was uncovered by detectives of the New York City Police Department to counterfeit some $900,000,000 of US corporate bonds and securities and use them to create a fraudulent system of credit within the Vatican bank, a scheme allegedly involving the then head of the Vatican Archives, the well-known French bishop, Eugene Cardinal Tisserant(readers will also recall that I reproduced the actual document signed by Cardinal Tisserant confirming the "arrangement" with a Mafia representative). Thus, the scheme at one level seems to parallel activity that surfaced in connection with the Vatican bank some decades earlier.

Other parallels closely resemble the Japanese Bearer Bond scandal, in which two men(again!) were intercepted by the Italian financial police, the Guardia di Finanza, at the Swiss border, attempting to smuggle in $134.5 billion in allegedly counterfeit US bearer bonds, ten of which, it will be recalled, were denominated in one billion dollars each, in the so-called "Kennedy Bearer Bonds." What is interesting to recall in this connection is that, at the time of the Japanese Bearer Bond scandal (2009) a number of articles appeared in the Asia News, a Vatican-connected news service, and these articles maintained, somewhat contrary to US government pronouncements that the bonds were all fake, and that no such billion-dollar denominated bond had ever been issued, that some of the bonds were so skillfully "counterfeited" that they were almost indistinguishable from the genuine items.

Additionally, like this most recent affair, the two Japanese men's counterfeit bonds were discovered in a briefcase, and the two men were subsequently released by the Italian authorities. Then, as now, their names were never released. We have then not just one, but three points of resemblance between the two affairs, and resemblances with yet another affair involving the Vatican bank and Eugene Cardinal Tisserant.

What all this might mean for our customary High Octane Speculation will have to wait until tomorrow.

See you on the flip side...