Disinformation » Banks

Ex-Marine Reoccupies His Own Foreclosed Home

Jin_TheNinja — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:28:25 +0000

There seems to be a trend by the Big Banks- wherein they resist all attempts to modify mortgages and commence foreclosure proceedings without justification. Private Property- what does it truly mean in a capitalist system? Via Democracy Now :

Iceland Declares Independence From International Banks

Camron Wiltshire — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:28:42 +0000

Parliament Building in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Bill Wilson writes at NetRightDaily:

Iceland is free. And it will remain so, so long as her people wish to remain autonomous of the foreign domination of her would-be masters — in this case, international bankers.

On April 9, the fiercely independent people of island-nation defeated a referendum that would have bailed out the UK and the Netherlands who had covered the deposits of British and Dutch investors who had lost funds in Icesave bank in 2008.

At the time of the bank’s failure, Iceland refused to cover the losses. But the UK and Netherlands nonetheless have demanded that Iceland repay them for the “loan” as a condition for admission into the European Union.

In response, the Icelandic people have told Europe to go pound sand. The final vote was 103,207 to 69,462, or 58.9 percent to 39.7 percent. “Taxpayers should not be responsible for paying the debts of a private institution,” said Sigriur Andersen, a spokeswoman for the Advice group that opposed the bailout.

A similar referendum in 2009 on the issue, although with harsher terms, found 93.2 percent of the Icelandic electorate rejecting a proposal to guarantee the deposits of foreign investors who had funds in the Icelandic bank. The referendum was invoked when President Olafur Ragnur Grimmson vetoed legislation the Althingi, Iceland’s parliament, had passed to pay back the British and Dutch…

Bank Of America ATMs Altered To Become ‘Truth Machines’

JacobSloan — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:00:23 +0000

San Francisco’s Rainforest Action Network altered 85 Bank of America ATMs around the city last week using sticker overlays, so that the machines would notify users of what their money is being used for. Bankrupting America has a handy map of the affected/improved ATMs.

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The Bank Bailout Was Actually $8 Trillion

JacobSloan — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:28:08 +0000

Ah, free-market capitalism — the economic system that works best, provided that one infuses $8 trillion to stave off total collapse. The Atlantic Wire writes:

Remember the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program with which the federal government came to the rescue of faltering banks in 2008? Well, according to a Bloomberg report, that was just a fraction of the financial help the Federal Reserve Bank wound up doling out to troubled lenders. The real total was reportedly closer to $8 trillion, after you add up benefits outside TARP, including emergency loans given at below-market rates:

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

Bloomberg came up with that number after reviewing “29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions.” Bloomberg adds, “The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day.” That’s nearly twice the amount made public in TARP.

Keep Wall Street Occupied From Your Mailbox

JacobSloan — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:34:24 +0000

Presenting a subversive way to strike back at the banking behemoths and credit card junk mailers clogging your physical mailbox, and to generally excise your daily stress and aggression, via a few small stuffed postal packets:

4 Reasons to OccupyWallStreet

majestic — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:13:19 +0000

This Occupy Wall Street themed video from DC Douglas was heartily endorsed by MoveOn.org, which emailed its members this endorsement:

Occupy Wall Street is Fox News’ worst nightmare, so they’re doing everything they can to downplay this movement and distort its message. It’s up to people like us to tell the real story. This amazingly powerful video—featuring Elizabeth Warren, no less—does exactly that. It’s a must-see for everyone in America who’s got any questions about what #OWS is really all about.

Vatican Calls for ‘Central World Bank’

Join Or DIE — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:19:19 +0000

Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

More: Reuters

JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests

JacobSloan — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:42:12 +0000

Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:

No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude” for the company’s donation.

“These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe,” Dimon said. “We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”

Now readers can point out that this gift is bupkis relative to the budget of the police department, which is close to $4 billion. But looking at it on a mathematical basis likely misses the incentives at work. Dimon is one of the most powerful and connected corporate leaders in Gotham City. If he thinks the police donation was worthwhile, he might encourage other bank and big company CEOs to make large donations.

And what sort of benefits might JPM get? The police might be extra protective of your interests. Today, OccupyWallStreet decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge (a proud New York tradition) to Chase Manhattan Plaza in Brooklyn. Reports in the media indicate that the police at first seemed to be encouraging the protestors not only to cross the bridge, but were walking in front of the crowd, seemingly escorting them across. Over 700 of the marchers were arrested, and the media has a rather amusing “he said, she said” account, with OccupyWallStreet claiming entrapment and the cops batting their baby blues and trying to look innocent.

We simply don’t know whether the police would have behaved one iota differently in the absence of the JP Morgan donation. But it raises the troubling perspective that they might have.

Goldman Sachs Rules The World

majestic — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:31:56 +0000

The trader who went on BBC News and admitted that banks rule the world, not governments, appears to have the media reeling, not sure whether or not to believe this brazen bit of truth-telling.

New York Magazine’s Daily Intel summarizes the confusion:

A trader by the name of Alessio Rastani told a shocked BBC News reporter yesterday, “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.” He warned, “The savings of millions of people are going to vanish,” and said viewers should “get prepared” because the “economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late.” He added, “I have a confession: I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.” Such frank (psychopathic?) language earned Rastani attention from news outlets like theHuffington Post, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail, but the chatter on Twitter is crying hoax. (Update: It appears to be legit! See below for more info.)

BBC Business Editor Robert Peston wrote this morning on Twitter, “BBC (& I) may have been hoaxed by YesMen,” referring to the culture jamming group that touts itself as, “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” Peston and the Internet’s doubters pointed to this Yes Men stunt, which features a fake Dow Chemical spokesman who bears some resemblance to Rastani, the trader.

Peston has since defended the BBC guest: “We spoke to the trader again this morning, & as far as we can tell he is a genuine independent trader, not a member of YesMen.”

The Men Who Crashed The World

JacobSloan — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:08:07 +0000

In a fantastic new series called Meltdown, Al Jazeera looks at the people and machinations around the globe that were behind the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with the assertion that for a brief period, Henry Paulson “was the de facto president of the United States.”

Zombie Bankers Feeding On Us

majestic — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:17:39 +0000

This zombie movie short for 97 Percent Owned promotes what looks like a great new documentary about the need to democratize the money supply. Alex Jones fans will especially like the audio – crank it up!

Federal Regulators Sue Big Banks Over Mortgages

Pelliciari — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:33:55 +0000

Will the Obama administration finally approach national banks with an iron fist? The New York Times reports:

A bruising legal fight pitting the country’s most powerful banks against the full force of the United States government began Friday, as federal regulators filed suits against 17 financial institutions that sold the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nearly $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities that later soured.

The suits are the latest legal salvo fired at the banks accusing them of misdeeds during the housing boom. Investors fled financial shares Friday amid growing concern that the litigation could last for years and undermine earnings and balance sheets in the process.

The complaints were filed just as the stock market closed Friday afternoon, but with word leaking out of the impending legal action during the trading session, shares of Bank of America fell more than 8.3 percent, while JPMorgan Chase dropped 4.6 percent and Goldman fell 4.5 percent.

[Continues at The NY Times]

States To Offer Banks Legal Immunity Concerning Improper Foreclosures

JacobSloan — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:34:29 +0000

To be fair, actually suing the banks for all they’ve done wrong would be unfeasible, because there’s so much of it. Reuters reports:

State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents.

A coalition of all 50 states’ attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and [promises] to follow rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

State and federal officials declined to say if any form of immunity from criminal prosecution also is under discussion. The banks involved in the talks are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CitiGroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial.

Reuters reported Monday that major banks and other loan servicers have continued to file questionable documents in foreclosure cases. These include false mortgage assignments, and promissory notes with suspect or missing “endorsements,” which prove ownership. The Reuters report also showed continued “robo-signing,” in which lenders’ employees or outside contractors churn out reams of documents without fully understanding their content. The report turned up several cases involving individuals who were publicly identified as robo-signers months ago.

Reuters found that such activity has continued even after 14 major mortgage lenders signed settlements with federal bank regulators promising to halt such practices and give remediation to some homeowners who were harmed.

Bank ‘Activity’ Required For Wisconsin Voter ID

JacobSloan — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:34:00 +0000

In the state of Wisconsin, you may be denied the ability to vote for lack of sufficient recent “bank activity”. A woman surreptitiously filmed the interactions as her 18-year-old son leaps through hurdle after hurdle in an attempt to get a constitutionally-guaranteed state ID so that he could vote. At the DMV, the pair is told that voter IDs were not issued when voters’ bank accounts did not show enough “activity.” The clerk had no answer when asked what would happen in the case of a resident who was homeless or unemployed, or too poor to maintain the minimum balance required for a checking account.

Wikileaks’ Mastercard Parody

JacobSloan — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:41:42 +0000

Wikileaks is suffering under a banking blockade. In response, they decided to help make Mastercard’s advertising more accurate:

Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.

For six months, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.

New Russian ATMs To Contain Lie-Detectors, Facial Recognition

BananaFamine — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:48:18 +0000

“While Sberbank’s technology might strike Westerners as too intrusive, many Russians already assume the government can watch or listen to them when it chooses to.” Andrew E. Kramer writes in The New York Times:

MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.

Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.

The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”

The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients include the Federal Security Service — the Russian domestic intelligence agency descended from the Soviet K.G.B.

Dmitri V. Dyrmovsky, director of the center’s Moscow offices, said the new system was designed in part by sampling Russian law enforcement databases of recorded voices of people found to be lying during police interrogations.

Story continues at The New York Times.

How To Foreclose On A Bank

majestic — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:12:54 +0000

Patrick Rodgers, the Philly Vampire who foreclosed on a Wells Fargo Bank branch, has started a revolution against the banksters, it seems. Ann Carrns reports for the New York Times:

Now, a couple in Naples, Fla., have “foreclosed” on a Bank of America branch after the bank managed to foreclose on their home — even though they never had a mortgage on it. According to reports in The Naples News, Time and elsewhere, Warren Nyerges and his wife paid $165,000 in cash to buy the house from the bank, and never borrowed against it. But last February, in an apparent case of mistaken home identity, the bank began foreclosure proceedings against them.

The couple hired a lawyer and the bank action was eventually abandoned, but the couple then went to court and got a judgment for about $2,500 in attorney’s fees. When the bank didn’t pay, their lawyer, Todd Allen, showed up at a local bank branch last week with sheriff’s deputies and a moving truck to begin cleaning out the building. Not long after, the bank paid them more than $5,700, to cover the fees and additional costs. In a statement to The Naples News, the bank apologized and said the letters had gone to a local lawyer whose office had gone out of business…

[continues in the New York Times]

Bank Of America Pays $410 Million To Settle Accusations Of Charging Illegal Overdraft Fees

JacobSloan — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:06:28 +0000

Can we charge Bank of America an overdraft fee? The San Francisco Gate writes:

Bank of America has agreed to pay $410 million to settle a lawsuit in which the lender is accused of manipulating debit transactions to maximize overdraft fees. The agreement is believed to be the first financial settlement by a large bank in a case alleging deceptive overdraft practices. It may presage the outcome of related claims against 30 other lending institutions, including Wells Fargo, Citibank, Chase, Union Bank and U.S. Bank.

San Francisco’s Wells Fargo is embroiled in a separate lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco brought by California customers. That case started before the multistate legal action, but has not concluded because Wells has filed an appeal.

In August, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a scathing ruling ordering Wells Fargo to pay its California clients $203 million. He said the bank’s goal was to “maximize the number of overdrafts and squeeze as much as possible” out of customers.

The crux of the claims against all the banks is that they processed debit transactions from largest to smallest, instead of the order in which they occurred, depleting accounts faster and boosting the number of overdrafts, which cost as much as $35 per transaction.

Are Banksters Too Big To Jail?

Danny Schechter — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:14:37 +0000

Why are we banking on banks to a promote economic recovery? HBO’s “Too Big To Fail” should have been about banksters “too big to jail.”

This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”

It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.

Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.

We heard all the explanations, save one.

There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest. There was panic on THE Street and in the halls of mighty institutions. In many ways, the program recycled and made an official narrative compelling viewing. In the end, everyone was to blame so no one was to blame.

BUT … what was missing was any notion of intentionality and premeditation, almost no mention of systemic fraud and crime, that one word that sums up what really happened for those millions of Americans who have lost jobs and homes. We never saw victims or felt their pain and bewilderment. We were never shown how a shadow banking system emerged or how the finance industry worked with their counterparts in finance and insurance to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the super rich,

When I was but a precocious lad, my elementary school encouraged students to take out a savings account at the nearby Dime Bank in the Bronx. We were each given a bankbook and taught to put in $.50 a week to show us how to build wealth by being thrifty. It was with a sense of pride that I watched my balance grow.

It may have been peanuts in the scheme of things, but to me, it was the way to plan for the future.

At the same time, in those year I watched TV shows glamorize the bank robbing antics of a man named Willie Sutton who also staged jail breaks wearing masks and costumes. When he was asked why he robbed banks, he responded famously, “That’s where the money is.”

And it still is, except in our era, the banks are robbing us.

That’s because what’s now called the “financial services sector” has gone from about 30 percent of our economy to over 60 percent. Through a process called financialization, they have transformed how all business is done.

Making money from money soon began to surpass making money from making things. What we were never warned about was the danger of getting too deeply in debt, or how the economy was shifting from production to consumption.

Private equity, credit swaps, derivative deals and collateralized debt obligations soon drove the economy. Markets became captives of high performance trading by powerful computers.

When Wall Street became the defacto capital of the country, the bankers accrued more power than the politicians who they bought up with impunity. Their lobbying power deregulated the economy and decriminalized their activities. They killed many of the reforms enacted during the New Deal designed to protect the public. They built a shadow (and shadowy) banking system beyond the reach of the law.

And now, here we are, in 2011, five years after the meltdown of 2007, four years after the crash of 2008 and the passage of the TARP bailout that pumped money into their treasuries at taxpayer expense. Since then, there has been a steady parade of scandals and the disclosures that have come out since every week more banks close and or consolidate and run into problems with regulators.

Take “my” old bank in the Bronx. It has been through as many changes as I have been. A website on bank histories runs it down:

Dime Savings Bank of New York, The
04/12/1859 NYS Chartered Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn
09/10/1930 Acquire By Merger Navy Savings Bank
06/30/1970 Name Change To Dime Savings Bank of New York, The
09/30/1979 Acquire By Merger Mechanics Exchange Savings Bank
07/01/1980 Acquire By Merger First Federal S & L Assoc. of Port Washington
08/01/1981 Acquire By Merger Union Savings Bank of New York
06/23/1983 Convert Federal Dime Savings Bank of NY, FSB
01/07/2002 Purchased By Washington Mutual Inc.
01/07/2002 Name Change To Washington Mutual Bank

And then, of course, some years later, Washington Mutual itself, went bust and was bought up for a song by JP Morgan Chase. Here are some of the latest headlines about the bank now known as WAMU:

WaMu Agrees On Post-Bankruptcy Control — Reuters

WaMu, Shareholders, Biggest Creditors Said to Settle …‎ – Bloomberg

WaMu Shareholders Are Offered $25M-Plus To Drop Claims – Puget Sound Business Journal

On the day I wrote this commentary, the New York Times reported:

“The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have steadily amassed real estate empires, acquiring a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump and create a further drag on the economic recovery.

All told, they own more than 872,000 homes as a result of the groundswell in foreclosures, almost twice as many as when the financial crisis began in 2007, according to RealtyTrac.”

To whom does the Times turn for expertise on the subject, but a key former operative at Washington Mutual who was with the bank in the go-go era of shoveling out sub-prime mortgages? Now, he gives advice on risk management:

“These shops are under siege; it’s just a tsunami of stuff coming in,” said Taj Bindra, who oversaw Washington Mutual’s servicing unit from 2004 to 2006 and now advises financial institutions on risk management. “Lenders have a strong incentive to clear out inventory in a controlled and timely manner, but if you had problems on the front end of the foreclosure process, it should be no surprise you are having problems on the back end.”

What were people’s homes are now “inventory” to be stockpiled even though it has a negative cumulative effect on economic recovery of the housing market.

The banks that are increasingly despised and blamed for their role in engineering the financial disaster, are now trying to play nice to change their negative image.

Explains the Times:

“Conscious of their image, many lenders have recently started telling real estate agents to be more lenient to renters who happen to live in a foreclosed home and give them extra time to move out before changing the locks.

‘Wells Fargo has sent me back knocking on doors two or three times, offering to give renters money if they cooperate with us,’ said Claude A. Worrell, a longtime real estate agent from Minneapolis who specializes in selling bank-owned property. ‘It’s a lot different than it used to be.’”

So, they are still foreclosing, but with a smile. Is it a ‘lot different than it used to be’?

Just last month, Huffington Post reported:

“Top executives at Washington Mutual actively boosted sales of high-risk, toxic mortgages in the two years prior to the bank’s collapse in 2008, according to emails published in a wide-ranging Senate report that contradicts previous public testimony about the meltdown.”

“The voluminous, 639-page report on the financial crisis from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations singles out Washington Mutual for its decision to champion its subprime lending business, even as executives privately acknowledged that a housing bubble was about to burst.”

The truth is that most of the bigger banks have emerged from the financial crisis stronger than ever, with executives cashing in with higher salaries and bigger bonuses. That old saying about criminals who “laughed all the way to the bank” has to be revised because, in this case, they never left the bank.

More shocking has been the largely passive response by our government and prosecutors. At last, the Attorney General of New York is said to be investigating but none of the big bankers have yet gone to jail or suffered for the scams and frauds they committed. Most of the State officials, who vowed to offer the banks the absence of aggressive federal actions, have backed down.

So what can “we the people” do? We can do nothing and watch more of what’s left of our wealth vanish, or we can join others in demanding a “jailout,” not a bailout.

A well-known international banker was just arrested for a high profile alleged sex crime, but not one of possibly thousands have been prosecuted for well documented financial crimes.

Where are the political leaders and activist groups willing to “fight the power” and demand accountability and transparency on Wall Street?

Why are so many us banking on a financial recovery to bring back jobs and a modicum of justice created by the very people and institutions responsible for the crisis?

And why didn’t I learn about these dangers when I first discovered the wonderful world of banking? Isn’t that what schools are for?

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofo

Brazil’s Biggest Bank Sued For Funding Amazon Deforestation

BananaFamine — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:34:01 +0000

BBC News recently reported:

Brazil’s biggest bank — the state-run Banco do Brasil — is being sued for allegedly funding deforestation in the Amazon.

Public prosecutors say the bank lent money to companies that illegally cleared the rainforest and used labour practices bordering on slavery. The smaller state-owned Banco da Amazonia is also being sued.

Brazil says it has drastically reduced the rate of deforestation in the Amazon in recent years.

Prosecutors in the state of Para said they had uncovered 55 loans worth nearly $5m (£3m) that the Banco do Brasil approved to farms that had broken environmental and employment laws. They also said they had uncovered 37 loans worth $11m given to farms with similar violations by the Banco da Amazonia.

The loans violated Brazil’s constitution, environmental laws, banking regulations and international agreements signed by Brazil, the independent prosecutors at the Public Ministry said.

For more information, see original article.

The Case Against Goldman Sachs

JacobSloan — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:21:55 +0000

In his usual clear, profane manner, Matt Taibbi lays out why Goldman Sachs’s executives must face criminal charges as soon as possible. Via Rolling Stone:

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.

To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis.

But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them — and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences.

Defenders of Goldman have been quick to insist that while the bank may have had a few ethical slips here and there, its only real offense was being too good at making money. We now know, unequivocally, that this is bullshit. If the evidence in the Levin report is ignored, then Goldman will have achieved a kind of corrupt-enterprise nirvana. Caught, but still free: above the law.

In 2004, in an extraordinary sequence of regulatory rollbacks that helped pave the way for the financial crisis, the top five investment banks — Goldman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns — persuaded the government to create a new, voluntary approach to regulation called Consolidated Supervised Entities. CSE was the soft touch to end all soft touches. Here is how the SEC’s inspector general described the program’s regulatory army: “The Office of CSE Inspections has only two staff in Washington and five staff in the New York regional office.”

Among the bankers who helped convince the SEC to go for this ludicrous program was Hank Paulson, Goldman’s CEO at the time. And in exchange for “submitting” to this new, voluntary regime of law enforcement, Goldman and other banks won the right to lend in virtually unlimited amounts, regardless of their cash reserves — a move that fueled the catastrophe of 2008, when banks like Bear and Merrill were lending out 35 dollars for every one in their vaults.

In 2004, in an extraordinary sequence of regulatory rollbacks that helped pave the way for the financial crisis, the top five investment banks — Goldman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns — persuaded the government to create a new, voluntary approach to regulation called Consolidated Supervised Entities. CSE was the soft touch to end all soft touches. Here is how the SEC’s inspector general described the program’s regulatory army: “The Office of CSE Inspections has only two staff in Washington and five staff in the New York regional office.”

Among the bankers who helped convince the SEC to go for this ludicrous program was Hank Paulson, Goldman’s CEO at the time. And in exchange for “submitting” to this new, voluntary regime of law enforcement, Goldman and other banks won the right to lend in virtually unlimited amounts, regardless of their cash reserves — a move that fueled the catastrophe of 2008, when banks like Bear and Merrill were lending out 35 dollars for every one in their vaults.

Read the rest at Rolling Stone.

Ten Years From Now, Facebook Will Be Your Bank

JacobSloan — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:53:38 +0000

“Why is its important to have a Facebook profile? They are going to start using that to determine what your credit worthiness is.”

The tin-foil-hatted nuts at BusinessWeek explain how and why Facebook will become the largest bank in the United States. (Perhaps most disturbing is the thought of a universal currency called ‘the zuckerberg’.)

Becoming a financial powerhouse would help Facebook avoid the fate of many once-popular networks. AOL, Friendster, Second Life, and MySpace all dreamed of growing forever, too. To survive, Facebook must become more than glorified e-mail. Sharing photos and gossip with friends might make Facebook hard to leave. But upload your checking account and Facebook may just be forever.

Nongamers may have missed Facebook’s clever foray into the world of “virtual currency,” where Facebook Credits cost 10 cents each and can be exchanged for game points or cartoony gifts. Those dimes are adding up—the U.S. market for virtual goods will reach $2.1 billion in 2011. Facebook’s currency, while just part of that market, is getting real. You can now purchase gift cards for Facebook Credits at Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy.

So why couldn’t Facebook use them as real currency, too? In fact, why couldn’t Facebook become your bank?

Facebook today both owns the Web—where 500 million-plus users now spend more time there than on any other site—and is a dominant app on smartphones. Beyond this customer base, Facebook has embedded “Like” buttons on almost every major website, becoming the only real product praise utility. Facebook has persuaded large retailers to build sites, called Facebook Pages, within its platform. Facebook already has a currency, its Credits. And Facebook recently expanded its monetary systems with Facebook Payments, purportedly for paying app developers. But the incorporation documents state that Payments is “organized for the purpose of transacting any or all lawful business.” Hmmm.

If only one of every five Facebook users adopted Credits to buy things, Facebook would be as big as PayPal. And once Facebook makes us comfortable with Credits, it could then transition to a “traditional” global bank, storing your financial assets like gem points in Bejeweled Blitz.

More than a billion-dollar prize, the finance industry would also be a brilliant defensive move for Facebook. The company’s main challenge is that it may be overvalued, based on investors hoping for future growth, while current revenue models do not scale exponentially.

Termites Eat Millions Of Indian Rupees In Bank

BananaFamine — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:12:25 +0000

Via Yahoo News:

LUCKNOW, India – It was an all you can eat buffet at the bank.

An army of termites munched through 10 million rupees ($222,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank, police in northern India said Friday.

The bank manager discovered the damage when he opened the reinforced room in an old bank building on Wednesday, police officer Navneet Rana told The Associated Press.

“It’s a matter of investigation how termites attacked bundles of currency notes stacked in a steel chest,” he said. The money was put in the chest in January.

The termites had damaged bank furniture and documents in the past.

The police have registered a case of negligence against bank officials in Barabanki, a town 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital. In India, police register a case before opening an investigation.

For more information, see original article.

It’s Friday? Time To Rob A Bank

majestic — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:15:31 +0000

Aftermath of a Bank of America robbery. Photo: Colin Brown (CC)

Who knew? From Reuters:

Bank robberies in the United States take place most often in mid-morning, on Fridays and in southern and western states, according to government statistics released on Tuesday.

Robbers stole slightly more than $43 million last year nationwide in 5,546 robberies of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions, statistics released by the FBI showed.

The South led the way with 1,790 bank robberies, followed by the West with 1,691. California had the most robberies at 805, followed by Texas with 464. North Dakota, where there were two bank robberies, had the least.

Overall, there were 5,628 reported bank crimes — the 5,546 robberies along with 74 burglaries, eight larcenies and 13 extortions of financial institutions.

That marked a decrease from 2009, when there were 6,065 such crimes reported, the FBI said…

[continues at Reuters]

…

California Man Pays Off $6,500 Credit Card Bill In Pennies

BananaFamine — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:31:06 +0000

UPI reports:

MIRA MESA — California man upset with his bank for disallowing his requested refinance said he decided to pay off his $6,500 credit card bill entirely with pennies.

Thierry Cahez of San Diego County rolled 650,000 pennies in plastic, loaded them into crates and drove the lot to his Mira Mesa bank, KABC-TV, Los Angeles, reported.

Cahez was turned away by the bank several times but eventually was sent to a branch with a vault large enough to handle the coins.

Cahez said he opted to pay his credit card bill with pennies because he was turned down for a refinance and for the amount of charges and fees on his credit card, KABC-TV said Tuesday.

For more information, see original article.

The Bank of America Data Leak Starts, Thanks To Anonymous

majestic — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:56:43 +0000

In November 2010 Julian Assange created much consternation among banking circles by revealing that WikiLeaks had material that could take down a major bank, which was later revealed to be Bank of America. However, despite or maybe because of Assange’s arrest in Britain, the leak was not forthcoming … until now, it seems.

The group Anonymous has announced an initial BofA release on its Twitter feed and the link to a .rar compressed file is here. The group’s website BankOfAmericaSuck.com appears to be down as of this posting, probably because it’s overwhelmed (or perhaps BofA has attacked it?).

The disinformation team hasn’t had a chance to analyze the leaked material from BofA yet – anyone who has please post your thoughts in the comments.

Philadelphia Vampire Turns The Foreclosure Tables On Wells Fargo

JacobSloan — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:10:16 +0000

An inspiring story from Philadelphia as a homeowner forecloses on (that’s right, forecloses on) a sleazy big bank. Wells Fargo tried to force Patrick Rodgers into paying for an exorbitant home insurance policy, and then broke the law by ignoring Rodgers’ written requests for a response. After the bank refused to pay resultant fines, a judge ordered a sheriff’s sale on its downtown branch. Oh and also: our hero is A VAMPIRE.

New Yorkers Welcome Planned Terror Attacks On Wall Street Banks

majestic — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:15:40 +0000

I know I should be horrified by the comments to this New York Post story claiming that the FBI and NYPD are advising Wall Street banks that terrorists are planning to attack them, but on the other hand it does show just how despised the bankers are because of the never-ending fallout from their self-induced financial crisis. Here are some particularly choice examples:

sadtruth
02/01/2011 1:32 PM
Planning attacks against major wall street executives? When? Do they need housing and accommodations?

Cut Off The Freeloaders
02/01/2011 1:25 PM
Shouldn’t we be referring to them as “superheroes” instead of terrorists? ANyone who has any dealing with US banks in the last few years would agree Im sure. The heads of US banks are the biggest criminal empire known to man.

TommyNYC
02/01/2011 10:32 AM
This will be the first terrorist attack sanctioned by the american taxpayers!! Take the executives but leave the buildings please!!

actressdiva
02/01/2011 7:57 AM
good thing all the records of the investigations on Wall Street were destroyed on 9-11….yeah….good thing huh Goldman??

Swiss Banker Gives WikiLeaks Damning Data On Wealthy Tax Evaders

majestic — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:42:35 +0000

Another week, another round of WikiLeaks. Clearly there are no sacred cows and in fact it is the biggest targets who are going down fastest, from corrupt governments to cheating taxpayers. Playing the Bradley Manning role this time is ex-Bank Julius Baer executive Rudolf Elmer. AP/Yahoo News has the story:

A former Swiss banker on Monday supplied documents to WikiLeaks that he alleges detail attempts by wealthy business leaders and lawmakers to evade tax payments.

Rudolf Elmer, an ex-employee of Swiss-based Bank Julius Baer, said there were 2,000 account holders named in the documents, but refused to give details of the companies or individuals involved.

He has previously offered files to WikiLeaks on financial activities in the Cayman Islands and faces a court hearing in Zurich on Wednesday to answer charges of coercion and violating Switzerland’s strict banking secrecy laws.

“I do think as a banker I have the right to stand up if something is wrong,” said Elmer, who addressed reporters at London’s Frontline Club alongside WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. From that point of view, I wanted to let society know what I know. It is damaging our society,” Elmer said…

[continues at AP/Yahoo News]

The Federal Reserve Is Going Broke

majestic — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 14:16:34 +0000

Everyone’s favorite private business pretending to be a government agency by using “Federal” in its name — no not Federal Express, I’m referring to the Federal Reserve — may be on its way to going broke according to economics professor (and consultant to the Minneapolis branch of the Fed) Varadarajan Chari. From Reuters:

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s journey to the outer limits of monetary policy is raising concerns about how hard it will be to withdraw trillions of dollars in stimulus from the banking system when the time is right.

While that day seems distant now, some economists and market analysts have even begun pondering the unthinkable: could the vaunted Fed, the world’s most powerful central bank, become insolvent?

Almost by definition, the answer is no.

As the monetary authority, the central bank is the master of the printing press. It can literally conjure up money at will, and arguably did exactly that when it bought about $2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries to push down borrowing costs and boost the economy.

The Fed’s unorthodox steps helped it generate record profits in 2010, allowing it to send $78.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury Department. But its swollen balance sheet leaves the central bank unusually exposed to possible credit losses that could create a major headache at a time of increasing political encroachment on the Fed’s independence…

[continues at Reuters]