Japanese smuggling $134.5B from Italy to Switzerland

Last Week Bloomberg news reported that two Japanese men with $134Billion in US treasury bonds were caught sneaking across the border from Italy to Switzerland. The article is hilarious, I excerpt:

Think about it: 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. Yes, they could have built vacation homes amidst Genghis Khan’s Gobi Desert or the famed Temples of Angkor. Bernard Madoff who?

These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest U.S. creditors. It makes you wonder if some of the time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spends keeping the Chinese and Japanese invested in dollars should be devoted to well-financed men crossing the Italian-Swiss border.

This tale has gotten little attention in markets, perhaps because of the absurdity of our times. The last year has been a decidedly disorienting one for capitalists who once knew up from down, red from black and risk from reward. It almost fits with the surreal nature of today that a couple of travelers have more U.S. debt than Brazil in a suitcase and, well, that’s life.

That's life indeed. How about I walk away with a few countries tucked into my coat pocket??

ps - thankfully, the bonds were fake. Apparently nearly all of US Treasury bonds are electronic now. Which is good for world monetary security but bad for, amongst others, SKAR, the Italian government and the two Japanese smugglers. William Pesek explains:
The bust could be a boon for Italy. If the securities are found to be genuine, the smugglers could be fined 40 percent of the total value for attempting to take them out of the country. Not a bad payday for a government grappling with a widening budget deficit and rebuilding the town of L’Aquila, which was destroyed by an earthquake in April.

pps- the blogosphere is reverberating with North Korean conspiracy theories