JP Morgan Employee Shot And Killed His Wife Before Taking His Own Life

JP Morgan Employee Shot And Killed His Wife Before Taking His Own Life

by JULIA LA ROCHE | BUSINESS INSIDER | JULY 10, 2014

A bank executive from London shot his wife dead before turning the gun on himself.

Julian Knott, 45, an executive director for J P Morgan, shot 47-year-old Alita repeatedly, police said.

The father-of-three was found dead alongside her in their home in Jefferson Township, New Jersey, on Sunday. He had worked in the City for almost 20 years before moving to the US in December 2012.

In a tribute posted online soon after the bodies were found, their daughter Kayleigh said that the couple were: “now stress-free”.

The university student wrote on her Instagram page: “Although I am heartbroken that they will never see me graduate college ... get married or to be grandparents for my children, I can still have inner peace knowing that they are now stress-free in a much better place.”

Referring to her two teenage brothers, Tom and Luke, she wrote: “We will be just fine with our angels watching over us. Rest in peace mummy and daddy, stay close.”

Today Mr Knott’s relatives in Britain said they were still waiting for information about the tragedy.

Police said they were called to the couple’s home at 1.12am on Sunday and found the bodies. Initial investigations showed the deaths were a result of murder-suicide. The couple met in London 20 years, ago when Philippines-born Mrs Knott was a personal assistant to a Bahraini sheik. They married and

settling in Southwick, West Sussex, where Mrs Knott opened nursery school Quayside Tots.

Mr Knott joined J P Morgan as a network services manager in 2001. He moved to New Jersey when he was promoted to be executive director of the global network operations centre. In a biography posted online, Mrs Knott wrote: “After meeting my husband while working in London, I married, had three children and started my own pre-school nursery business, which I still own.”

Alongside a 2012 photo of Mr Knott carrying his wife on a beach, she wrote: “Been married for almost 18 years and love him more now. He is not just my husband, he is my best friend who understands the scatty Filipina I am.”

In a statement, police said: “Preliminary investigation has revealed that the two adults died as a result of gunshot wounds and the incident has been determined to be a murder/suicide. Julian Knott, age 45, shot his wife Alita Knott, age 47, multiple times and then took his own life with the same weapon.”

On Facebook, friend of the couple Reyes Cham Ortega wrote: “I worked with him for only two years but that was enough to know a lot about him and his family. I am still shocked and cannot believe it.”

J P Morgan declined to comment.

Cashless Society Results In Less Liberty

by JOHN F. MCMANUS | INSIDE JBS | JULY 10, 2014 Trend toward a cashless society brings to mind George Orwell’s tyrannical Big Brother A truly important aspect of the use of money has been lost or forgotten in the age of credit cards, checking accounts, and other methods of conducting commerce.

It is that when one uses unmarked cash for buying and selling, the transaction cannot be traced. The buyer and seller remain anonymous. They are free from peering eyes and snooping agencies, especially those possessed by snooping governments.

The reality is that anonymity in the use of money is an important part of freedom. If you can’t buy or sell what you want without having to reveal who you are or why you are buying or selling, you have been forced to lose your anonymity. Others who might not have your best interests in mind know what you are doing.

Today’s worldwide trend is toward creation of a “cashless society” where all transactions would be accomplished electronically. This would create a record of all monetary transactions that ought to be no one else’s business. Governments and others with access to such records would then know a great deal about everyone’s business, a rather scary consequence being promoted in the name of efficiency. Use of checking accounts, credit and debit cards, etc., should be everyone’s choice, but not the only choice.

As might be expected, the United Nations is one of the chief promoters of doing away with cash. Two of its agencies, the World Food Program and the United Nations Development Program have expressed support for the idea. What this amounts to, of course, is an obvious step toward eventual knowledge of everyone’s previously anonymous conduct of personal affairs. In addition, world planners are backing a program that would have micro-chips placed in everyone’s body to serve as an ID, but also to function as a credit/debit card.

While being promoted in the names of efficiency and safety, the trend toward a cashless society brings to mind George Orwell’s tyrannical Big Brother. He would surely champion the idea.

Chinese Purchases Of U.S. Real Estate Jump 72% As The Bank Of China Facilitates Money Laundering

by MICHAEL KRIEGER | LIBERTY BLITZKRIEG | JULY 10, 2014 American citizens already have a hard enough time affording a home. Squeezed out by financial oligarchs buying tens of thousands of properties for rental income, and faced with real wages that haven’t budged since the mid-1970s, the demographic of U.S. citizens that historically dominated the new home market has been forced to live in their parents’ basements. Just to kick em’ when they’re down, Americans now face the impossible task of competing with laundered Chinese money.

Of course, this isn’t a new trend. I first covered it in January 2013 in the post: Corrupt Chinese Politicians are Buying Billions in U.S. Real Estate. This was then followed up a couple of months ago in the piece: Zillow Opens the Floodgates to Chinese Buyers in Order to Keep Housing Bubble 2.0 Inflated.

While this trend may not be new, it is certainly accelerating. According to the National Association of Realtors in its annual report on foreign home purchases, transactions from Greater China (includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) were up 72% in the past year to $22 billion. In some California communities, 90% of real estate buyers are from China. Yes, 90%. Naturally, many of them are buying multi-million dollar homes in “all cash” transactions.

Bloomberg reports that: Henry Nunez, a real estate agent in Arcadia, California, met with so many homebuyers from China that he bought a Mandarin-English translation app for his phone.

The $1.99 purchase paid off last month, when he sold a five-bedroom home with crystal chandeliers, marble floors and two kitchens, one designed for smoky wok cooking. The buyers were a Chinese couple who paid $3.5 million in cash.

Buyers from Greater China, including people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, spent $22 billion on U.S. homes in the year through March, up 72 percent from the same period in 2013 and more than any other nationality, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday in its annual report on foreign home purchases. That’s 24 cents of every dollar spent by international homebuyers, according to the survey of 3,547 real estate agents.

Chinese buyers paid a median of $523,148 per transaction, compared with a U.S. median price of $199,575 for existing-home sales.

Publicly traded builders are responding by catering to Chinese buyers in areas with high demand.Brookfield Residential Properties Inc. staged feng shui blessing ceremonies before beginning work on projects in Anaheim and Foothill Ranch communities in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. The New Home Co. consulted with a feng shui master on the land plan for its Orchard Park development in San Jose, California, that opened in April.

Buyers from China are driving up prices and fueling new construction in Southern California areas such as Arcadia, a city of about 57,500 people with top-rated schools, a large Chinese immigrant community and an array of Chinese restaurants and markets.

“About 90 percent of my buyers are from China,” said Peggy Fong Chen, a broker with Re/Max Holdings Inc., who sold 80 homes in Arcadia last year. “They want new construction. They want two levels. In China, it is considered a mansion if it has two levels.”

Chinese investors are moving into development in Arcadia, Chen said. They are buying lots with homes built in the 1970s and ’80s, tearing them down and erecting sprawling houses like the one Nunez sold for $3.5 million, which has a double-height entry hall and woodpaneled library.

“Local people really cannot afford these most of the time,” Chen said.

Since when did anyone care about the interests of the average American citizen anyway?

“A Chinese national bought one of our houses at Arcadia in Irvine after reading about it on a blog,” Tri Pointe CEO Doug Bauer said in a telephone interview. “It was a Chinese blog. We couldn’t even read it.”

Some wealthy Chinese have come up with ways to evade the yearly $50,000 per-person limit on taking money out of the country so they can buy U.S. real estate, Yu said.

Methods include laundering money through Macau casinos and cooking the books of import-export companies, he said.

More on this later…

“A lot of people over-invoice export proceeds, so they can park some money outside,” Ha Jiming, chief investment strategist for Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s China investment

management division, said at a Los Angeles conference in April.

“It’s just the beginning of a tidal wave,” he said in a telephone interview.

Overseas buyers are changing Arcadia, according to Nunez, 55, who has lived in the city since he was 6 years old.

“You drive every street and there are three or four new houses being built,” he said. “It’s just incredible, the demand.”

It appears the only people not buying American real estate are Americans needing a place to live.

So what is the fuel behind this demand? As suspected, it appears much of it comes from Chinese laundering dirty money. They are scrambling to get it out of the country before the authorities crack down on the source of these funds. It appears The Bank of China is playing a central role in this money laundering, which may be angering Chinese authorities. We learn fromBloomberg that: Bank of China Ltd. denied a report by the state broadcaster alleging it broke the nation’s foreign-exchange rules by providing services that help clients move “dirty money” abroad.

Reports by China Central Television and other media “contain discrepancies with and misunderstanding of the facts,” the Beijing-based lender said in a statement on its website late yesterday. “References to an ‘underground bank’ and ‘money laundering’ are inconsistent with the facts.”

CCTV said Bank of China Ltd. was among lenders that circumvented the foreignexchange regulations. Customers at the country’s fourth-largest lender by market value can convert unlimited amounts of yuan into other currencies through a product called “Youhuitong,” CCTV said in the 20-minute broadcast yesterday, which included interviews with several unidentified employees of the bank.

“Bank of China introduced a cross-border yuan transfer service in 2011 that only allows money to be moved for immigration and overseas property investment purposes,” the lender said. The company has strict and robust operational procedures for its cross-border yuan transfer business, it said.

Youhuitong targets customers who wish to invest in or migrate to North America, Australia and some European countries, CCTV said, referring to documents shown by unidentified Bank of China employees.

Now just imagine what will happen to the U.S. real estate market in these areas when Chinese authorities decide to turn off the spigot…

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