They're not fake, but they are unauthorized. And, the perpetrators planned to be caught.

Even in a world becoming desensitized to long strings of zeros by trillion dollar bailouts, its still exciting to take a shot at adding things up on a $134.5 billion dollar mystery.

Let's start at the beginning. Here is all we can say with some certainty regarding the key elements of the story:

On our about June 3rd, Italian authorities claim to have caught two Asian couriers trying to leave Italy by train and enter Switzerland with $134.5 billion dollars worth of U.S. securities stashed in the false bottom of a suitcase. The bulk of the securities are supposed to be in the form of U.S. bonds with face values of $500 million dollars each. With a couple of weeks gone by now, a low level apparatchik at the U.S. Treasury says the paper financial instruments are "clearly" fake. The two Asian men, who were carrying Japanese passports of unverified authenticity, have since been released and are nowhere to be found. Who is currently in possession of the mystery bonds, if they still or ever did exist, is also unknown.

OK. What is wrong with this picture? The prevailing logic of those a twitter over this story is starts out like this, "Who would go through the trouble of counterfeiting bonds in formerly astronomical values like $500 million dollars? No legitimate banker, institution or extremely well healed individual with real money is going to cash out a bond for that amount (let alone all $134.5 billion worth) without verifying with U.S. authorities that the paper in question is authentic and being exchanged by a party legitimately tied to the entity the bonds were originally issued to."

From this initial logical assumption, the conclusion is quickly reached by many that the bonds being real makes more sense...except for the fact that someone trying to secretly move $134.5 billion in U.S. debt obligations is also almost too shocking to believe, especially in consideration of the implications this would have on all others who are banking on the "full faith and credit" of the United States government.

How then can we reconcile these two equally incredible possibilities? Taking a hint from Ayn Rand, let's check our assumptions first.

They're real because it makes no sense they would be fake.

Should you seriously believe this? Imagine yourself to be a government, private institution or extremely fortunate individual who is worth at least $134.5 billion dollars. If you set aside only 1% of this amount as a transaction fee you would have $1,345,000,000 dollars to put towards making a secure movement of your wealth into Switzerland. What can you buy for $1,345,000,000 dollars besides two tickets on a train for Italian day laborers? Here is just one suggestion to get you thinking on the right track, "How about the entire train so that you can stash your remaining $1.33 billion or so anywhere you like?" Even if you happen to be one of those rare governments not interested in running a train line, $1,345,000,000 would also buy you one hell of a diplomatic pouch immune to border inspections.

The only way these might be real, authorized bonds is if there is some extremely embarrassing reason they came into the possession of the two Asian men caught at the Italian-Swiss border. For example, suppose the Bank of Japan had a security breach similar to the one that currently has the Royal Canadian Mint anxiously scrambling around its warehouse to find a significant amount of lost gold bullion. Would the Japanese government cover up the disappearance of $134.5 billion worth of its reported $686 billion dollars worth of US debt holdings to avoid the embarrassment and implications involved in public disclosure that the lock they have on their nation's wealth can be picked?

For those who prefer the James Bond version of events, maybe this has traction: Shock! Ben Benanke has a gambling addiction. In a recent high stakes private game of Baccarat with a Saudi Prince, he dipped into his company account and ended up blowing the last $134.5 billion of TARP funds under his control. The Saudi prince in turn, who had lost big shorting the Yen over the last year, transfered his winnings to the Japanese Yakuza gang that he had gotten into hock with. The Yazuka gang thought they had a deal worked out with the local Italian Mafia to move the bonds into Switzerland, but got double crossed at the border. The mainstream media in turn is now trying to keep the lid on this story so as not to alert the general public that the world's financial system is actually in the control of international gangsters (the operators of the U.S. Federal Reserve being the biggest).

Here is the bottom line deficiency in the they must be real logic: People smart enough to have $134.5 billion dollars are smart enough to figure out a better plan than two Asian guys on a train full of local Italians riding economy class. Nobody risks that kind of real money without plenty of protection.

But, they can't be fake, because what would be the point of counterfeiting something that would have to go through a near full-proof verification process?

This is where people are getting off on the wrong track. Why assume that the perpetrators who made up the forgeries could only have the objective of trying to pass them off as good? What if their objective was no more than to achieve what is already happening - having people question the trustworthiness of U.S. financial authorities? Certainly there are plenty of governments and entities around the world that would consider a couple of train tickets and a few bribes to Italian customs agents as a cheap way to attack their opponents in control of the U.S. Treasury.

This logic almost works, except for the problem of having to explain why U.S. and Italian authorities didn't quickly swap a few emails and immediately terminate this "mystery" by adamantly announcing that the bonds are fake, while throwing the two perps caught at the border in jail. This is why I prefer to imagine the bonds are not fake but simply unauthorized. By that I mean, it is possible that U.S. officials gave pause on this story because they were taken aback by what they were looking at: U.S. bonds printed with the same plates, ink, paper and equipment that the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses to create authorized securities with. Whoops, "Fort Worth, we have a problem."

That our $134.5 billion dollar mystery started on the Italian-Swiss border as the G8 Summit was rolling into Italy is not the only tantalizing piece of evidence here. The Italian-Swiss border just also happens to be on the line between the two countries, Italy and Germany, that are home to the handful of companies that control production of most of the world's paper money. If you are holding an official U.S. bond, there is a very high probability that is was printed on a piece of equipment made in Italy or Germany with inks and papers that where also either made or specified by an German company, or its Italian affiliate.

If you want to jump down the rabbit hole that is the secretive world of money masters who create those slips of paper with colorful ink on them that pass for wealth in our world, I recommend starting with a google search on the dual Italian-Swiss national Roberto Giori. The general population only knows of his existence because he had the exceedingly bad luck of getting on a commercial plane hijacked by Muslim terrorists, when his private jet encountered a maintenance problem on his return flight from a vacation to Katmandu in December of 1999.

Luckily for Mr. Giori and his traveling companion, the hijackers apparently never figured out who the Swiss nationals flying economy class on the plane were. The hostage taking ended in Afghanistan with the potentially complicit Taliban government brokering a deal between the hijackers and the Indian government. Mr. Girogi went on to sell the printing press chuck of his company to German partners shortly thereafter. The hijackers when on to infamy with connections to the 9/11 attack and Daniel Pearl murder. But I digress...

Here is the essential assumption I make in my analysis of the $134.5 billion dollar question:

Those in control of the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury are criminals within the world's largest crime syndicate.

In their daily theft from victims around the world, they work in league and competition with co-conspiring criminals from other crime syndicates. Since their system is inherently corrupt and requiring of periodic episodes of massive defrauding and double-crossing as we are currently going through, those who wish to maintain or expand their positions as crime bosses have to make it clear to their competitors what risk-benefit options are in play for them. For a good case study on this works out in our now openly lawless financial system, I encourage you to review the movie, The Godfather.

My answer to the $134.5 billion dollar question is that it's the printed version of Ben Bernanke waking up to a severed horse's head in his bed.

Don't mess with the Don Benny boy. That option you were leaning towards for having the FED come out on top of this mess...forgetaboutit."

Hey, for the moment in this mystery, my two cents are worth just as much as anyone else's.