Japanese Men Caught Smuggling $134 Billion of US Bonds

The name is Bond. US Securities Bond. And the amount is $134 Billion. The location: the Swiss-Italian border. The crime: attempting to smuggle the bonds from Italy into Switzerland. The alleged perpetrators: two Japanese men caught on the train with their bonds in a suitcase.

According to Bloomberg, if the securities are not funny-money, the implications for the United States investors are serious, namely that the United States "risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale."

"These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia."

It doesn't sound so nice when you put it that way, does it?

The men had 259 bonds stuffed into a suitcase, ten of which had a face-value of $1 billion. I had no idea that the United States even had bond denominations in the billion dollar range. The plot thickens even a little more when you consider that the particular kinds of bonds being carried have not been issued by the United States treasury since 1982. Those in the know are even wondering whether the United States has been selling the bonds under the table for years.

Why were the men carrying the bonds in the first place? If they are counterfeit, who counterfeited them so well that they are indistinguishable from real bonds? Where were they planning to cash them, if at all? And if they were not, how long were they planning to store them for? Were the men on a secret mission from their government?

The jackpot if the bonds are real is pretty sweet for the Italians; legally the government can keep "1/3 of the amount as a statutory penalty for smuggling." Speculation about the bonds is rampant. Was it the Italians looking for a little cashola to help their fallen economy? Was it the North Koreans, the Russians? The complicating factor is that no one is likely to have this much cash in bonds on hand.