This bad.
Tag Archives: banks
Only an expert
Laurie Anderson explains the (non-)solution to our problems: only an expert can do it. This is one song that addresses Oprah, Iraq, torture, and Wall Street financial crimes, while being kick-ass msuically. The version below is live, but the version on the album, Homeland, is even more terrific.
The studio version is available on iTunes for those who like her work.
Quelle surprise
It turns out the bankers continue to this day fabricating loan documents and using robo-signers in foreclosures, despite promise to improve their operations and bring foreclosures into legal compliance.
Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.
Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist.
Many banks are missing the original papers from when they securitized the mortgages, in some cases as long ago as 2005 and 2006, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers. They and some industry members say the related mortgage assignments, showing transfers from one lender to another, should have been completed and filed with document custodians at the time of transfer.
“It’s one thing to not have the documents you’re supposed to have even though you told investors and the SEC you had them,” says Lynn E. Szymoniak, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. “But they’re making up new documents.”
Why aren’t bankers going to jail over this, or at least being held in civil contempt for filing falsified documents in court?
(via The Big Picture)
Related articles
- Mortgage servicers still lying in court (blogs.reuters.com)
- Report: U.S. to sue big banks over mortgages (cbsnews.com)
- JPMorgan, BofA take heat for foreclosure program (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Wall Street quote of the day
Well I hear the whistle blowin, it plays a happy tune
The conductor is calling “all aboard”, we’ll be leavin soon
With champagne and shrimp cocktails and that’s not all you’ll find
There’s a billion dollar bonus and no banker left behindNo banker, no banker, no banker could I find.
When the train pulled out next mornin’, no banker was left behind
– Ry Cooder, from the song No Banker Was Left Behind, recorded on his 2011 album Pull Up Some Dust & Sit Down. (via Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
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Falling demand
The fear about the economy’s prospects is so high that huge amounts of cash are pouring into banks.
In a sign of just how much cash had poured into commercial bank accounts, Bank of New York Mellon said on Thursday that it would charge institutional clients with more than $50 million on deposit a fee of 13 basis points. The move is intended to recover some of the cost of managing the money, but is also a bid to slow the so-called hot money that has been ricocheting between Treasuries, money-market funds and pure cash balances at the big banks.
The Bank of New York Mellon said the fee would only be applied “to a small number of institutional clients with extraordinarily high deposit levels where the deposits have increased significantly in recent weeks, well above market trends.” The bank did not disclose just how much cash had poured into its coffers recently.
Over all, banks took in nearly $200 billion between mid-June and mid-July as institutional investors fled money market accounts and sought the safety of accounts protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, according to Joseph Abate, a money market strategist at Barclays Capital.
While its rivals have not yet announced similar moves, the Bank of New York’s charges are likely to force cash out of banks and back into money market funds and Treasuries, driving rates even lower where possible, Mr. Abate said in a note to investors Thursday.
All that cash, stashed in a bank account, at a time when lending and other demand is low, is a huge drain on the economy. And some are even claiming that BONY’s imposition of the charge triggered a panic and the resulting huge stock market losses yesterday.
Stimulus is needed.
Related articles
- Bank of New York adds 0.13 percent fee to deposits (sfgate.com)
- BNY Mellon Planning to Charge for Holding Big Deposits of Cash (online.wsj.com)
- Bank of New York Mellon charges depositors (telegraph.co.uk)
Do you bank at Chase?
If so, be very, very afraid.
The check had Njoku’s name and address on it and was issued by JP Morgan Chase. But the Chase Customer Banker who handles large checks at the Auburn branch was immediately suspicious.
“I was embarrassed,” Njoku said. “She asked me what I did for a living. Asked me where I got the check from, looked me up and down—like ‘you just bought a house in Auburn, really?’ She didn’t believe that,” he said.
The Customer Banker said the check looked fake, so she took it, along with Njoku’s driver license and credit card, and called Bank Support.
After waiting for about 15 minutes, Njoku said he got impatient and told Chase he was leaving to do an important errand. By the time he got back, the bank was closed. Njoku said he called customer service and asked them what he should do. He says they told him to go back to the bank the next day to get his money.
But when Njoku arrived, it wasn’t the money that was waiting for him.
“They just threw me in jail; they called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.
Auburn police arrested him for forgery – a felony crime.
“I was like – you’re making a mistake, you’re making a mistake, don’t take me to jail, I got work tomorrow. I can’t afford to miss work,” he said.
Njoku was taken to jail on June 24, 2010, which was a Thursday. The next day, Chase Special Investigations, realized it was a mistake. The check was legitimate. The Investigator called Auburn Police and left a message with the detective handling the case, but it was her day off. So Njoku stayed in jail for the entire weekend. Finally, on Monday, he was released.
Related articles
- Auburn man jailed for cashing check at Chase bank (thenewstribune.com)
The “poor” Greeks
Greek coat of arms. Image via Wikipedia
At lunch today with some friends, I expressed the view that if the Greeks were really smart, they would refuse the co-called “bail out,”, depart from the European Union, and flat out default on their debt. The debt is primarily held by banks in Germany, and to a lesser extent in France. Why would this be the best approach? Because it would stiff the lenders who made idiotic (or worse) decisions to lend to an uncreditworthy country. Why should the Greek citizens suffer through a very prolonged painful period of austerity to benifit richer countries who knowingly took obvious risks?
Now, Barry Ritholtz expresses a similar view:
… the Greeks are not so different than you or I. We Americans socialized the losses of our banks, while being so dumb as to leave the profits privatized. (The worst of both worlds!). Or the Irish, for that matter, who like us and the Greeks, were foolish enough to assume the bad debts of their reckless bankers.
Whenever you hear a Bailout being discussed, look to see who it is that is actually being bailed out. It is not the Greek people or even the Greek government — rather, it is the creditors of Greece. These are the banks mostly in Europe, primarily in Germany and France, but also includes Japan, China and the US.
Thus, it is no surprise that Greek people are rioting and the banks are rallying. They are the beneficiaries of the Greek austerity, of the EU’s largesse, of the various rescue.
Greece has all sorts of problems, from their tax base to their economy. But the Greek people can tell when they are being raped and pillaged . The media may not get it, but the ones who seem to know the score are the rioters in the streets of Athens, Thessaloniki and Syntagma Square.
Check this out:
“Chancellor Merkel said today that this was really a very good piece of news [that the Greek parliament had voted for massive new austerity cuts]. And of course the German government continues to focus on trying to avoid a Greek default,” he told RT. “They see that as the main danger here. Chancellor Merkel said that if the Greeks were to default on [their] debt, that would throw the whole eurozone into chaos, and it would unleash a crisis worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers.”
Of course this is “good news” … for German banks.
Related articles
The in-audacity of hope
President Obama, speaking at the LGBT Gala in New York last week, again refused to endorse same-sex marriage. Such refusal came as New York, lead by Andrew M. Cuomo, was legalizing same sex marriage in the state. Why Obama cannot bring himself to openly support a freedom that the majority of citizens now supports is beyond confusing. His failure to support same-sex marriage is a betrayal of his promises of equal rights for all.
This is yet another in a long string of disappointments for those of us who voted for him, expecting that he would alter the policies of the Bush administration. We are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guantanamo remains open. The DOJ has refused to investigate credible claims that we tortured prisoners in the so-called war on terror using the cover of wrong-headed opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel. Our civil liberties continue to be eroded by the extension of the Patriot Act and new spying tools claimed by the FBI. We are fighting a third war in Libya, without Congressional approval, despite Administration claims that we are not involved in hostilities. The big banks have been bailed out but not homeowners who owe billions to the banks as a result of abusive loan tactics. No officials of the banks have been convicted for wrongdoing.
Change? Hope? Nope. Not from Obama.
Homeowner forecloses on Bank of America
This is too, too good.
Related articles
- Homeowner Forecloses on Bank (volokh.com)
- IT’S COME TO THIS: Bank Of America Padlocked After Homeowner “Forecloses” On It. It was actually a… (pajamasmedia.com)
The Fed’s fatal flaw
SNL does DSK
Wall Street financed reality show: US politics
(via The Big Picture)
Inside Job (updated)
I just watched the film “Inside Job” (link to trailer) that dissects the causes of the “great recession” we are still suffering from. It is the most cogent and understandable explanation of a very complex set of issues I have seen yet. The film won a 2011 Academy Award for best documentary. Now out on Blue Ray and DVD. Watch it.
Update: And it looks like the Federal and New York regulators and prosecutors are finally getting serious about all this.
People v. Goldman Sachs
You have to read the latest Matt Taibbi essay on Goldman Sachs.
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
It is scathing, and apparently true. The New York Times today also highlights the growing pressure to bring charges against Goldman.
Senator Carl Levin, who headed up the Congressional inquiry, has sent his findings to the Justice Department to figure out whether executives broke the law.
Such was the topic of the latest piece by Mr. Taibbi, who famously called Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” in a 2009 article on the bank. His recent article was titled: “The People vs. Goldman Sachs. A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges.”
Goldman’s stock was down more than 3 percent in early trading on Thursday. It is currently trading around $142. It closed 2010 at $168.16.
Related articles
- Goldman Sachs shares fall on talk of possible criminal lawsuit (telegraph.co.uk)
- Wow, Goldman Gets A Downgrade BECAUSE Of The Matt Taibbi Article (businessinsider.com)
- Forget Vampire Squid: Goldman Is Worse Than A Pudgy Housewife Who Had Too Many ‘Nilla Wafers Between Meals (businessinsider.com)
Foreclosure suffering continues…
Watch all these clips about the suffering that is still plaguing Americans and largely caused by mortgage lenders. It makes so sad and so angry as well. Besides the terrible suffering for the homeowners involved, this type of behavior continues the decline in real estate values for everyone. Over 5 million foreclosures and counting. Where is the outrage? Why is all the governmental support going to the banks and not to people?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The text version of this story is available here.