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- FDIC Reports 27 Percent Jump In Problem US Banks

- FDIC Report: ‘We Were Broke And Getting Broker’

Regulators shut 7 banks in Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio and Utah

WASHINGTON (AP) — Regulators on Friday shut down seven banks in five states, bringing to 37 the number of bank failures in the U.S. so far this year.

The closings follow the 140 that succumbed in 2009 to mounting loan defaults and the recession.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over First Lowndes Bank, in Fort Deposit, Ala.; Appalachian Community Bank in Ellijay, Ga.; Bank of Hiawassee, in Hiawassee, Ga.; and Century Security Bank in Duluth, Ga.

The agency also closed down State Bank of Aurora, in Aurora, Minn.; Advanta Bank Corp., based in Draper, Utah; and American National Bank of Parma, Ohio.

The FDIC was unable to find a buyer for Advanta Bank, which had $1.6 billion in assets and $1.5 billion in deposits. The regulatory agency approved the payout of the bank’s insured deposits and it said checks to depositors for their insured funds will be mailed on Monday.

The failure of Advanta Bank is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund $635.6 million.

For the other banks: Continue reading »

Tags: Bank Failure, Banks, Economy, FDIC, U.S.

- Here’s Why Putting The Fed In Charge Of Regulation Is A Joke (The Business Insider)

In the footnotes of a speech U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke would have given to the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 10, lies a unique and startling disclosure.

Hosted on the Federal Reserve’s own servers, the written testimony of the bank’s chairman explains in plain text what expanding the Fed’s powers will do.

“The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system,” footnote number nine, at the bottom of the page, explains without additional qualification. Continue reading »

Tags: Banks, Dollar, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Government, Politics, Ron Paul

See also:

- Timmy-Gate: Did Geithner Help Hide Lehman’s Fraud? (Prof. L. Randall Wray)

- Dylan Ratigan & Eliot Spitzer on The Lehman Brothers Report (MSNBC)

- Report: JPMorgan, Citigroup helped trigger Lehman collapse (Telegraph)

- Lehman bosses used accountancy gimmick to cover up debt (Times)

- EXPLOSIVE: Lehman Corruption - Where Are The Cops? (Market Ticker)

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Ernst & Young LLP, the Big Four auditor that failed to keep Lehman Brothers from misleading investors about its financial condition, still can’t get its facts straight.

Last week, after Lehman’s bankruptcy examiner accused E&Y of malpractice in a report on the investment bank’s collapse, the accounting firm issued a brief statement standing by its audit work and offering up its best defense.

“After an exhaustive investigation, the examiner made no findings in his report that Lehman’s assets or liabilities were improperly valued or accounted for incorrectly in Lehman’s November 30, 2007, financial statements,” E&Y said, referring to the last fiscal year for which it performed a full-fledged audit of Lehman’s books.

Part of that statement is a half-truth. The other part stretches the truth past the breaking point.

It’s true the examiner, Anton Valukas, didn’t find that Lehman’s assets or liabilities were improperly valued at the end of 2007. One thing E&Y left out: Valukas did find evidence that Lehman used unreasonable asset values for the first and second quarters of 2008, including one investment he said was overvalued by as much as $500 million.

E&Y issued signed opinion letters for both quarters. Those letters, which Lehman disclosed in its financial filings, said the firm had reviewed Lehman’s financial statements and found nothing wrong.

‘False and Misleading’ Continue reading »

Tags: Banks, Economy, Lehman Brothers

See also:

- Dylan Ratigan & Eliot Spitzer on The Lehman Brothers Report

Timmy-Gate Takes a Turn For The Worse: Did Geithner Help Lehman Hide Accounting Tricks?

Timothy Geithner at the Council on Foreign Relations

By L. Randall Wray

L. Randall Wray, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute. His research expertise is in: financial instability, macroeconomics, and full employment policy.

Just when you thought that nothing could stink more than Timothy Geithner’s handling of the AIG bailout, a new report details how Geithner’s New York Fed allowed Lehman Brothers to use an accounting gimmick to hide debt. The report, which runs to 2200 pages, was released by Anton Valukas, the court-appointed examiner. It actually makes the AIG bailout look tame by comparison. It is now crystal clear why Geithner’s Treasury as well as Bernanke’s Fed refuse to allow any light to shine on the massive cover-up underway.

Recall that the New York Fed arranged for AIG to pay one hundred cents on the dollar on bad debts to its counterparties-benefiting Goldman Sachs and a handful of other favored Wall Street firms. (see here) The purported reason is that Geithner so feared any negative repercussions resulting from debt write-downs that he wanted Uncle Sam to make sure that Wall Street banks could not lose on bad bets. Now we find that Geithner’s NYFed supported Lehman’s efforts to conceal the extent of its problems. (see here) Not only did the NYFed fail to blow the whistle on flagrant accounting tricks, it also helped to hide Lehman’s illiquid assets on the Fed’s balance sheet to make its position look better. Note that the NY Fed had increased its supervision to the point that it was going over Lehman’s books daily; further, it continued to take trash off the books of Lehman right up to the bitter end, helping to perpetuate the fraud that was designed to maintain the pretense that Lehman was not massively insolvent. (see here)

Geithner told Congress that he has never been a regulator. (see here) That is a quite honest assessment of his job performance, although it is completely inaccurate as a description of his duties as President of the NYFed. Apparently, Geithner has never met an accounting gimmick that he does not like, if it appears to improve the reported finances of a Wall Street firm. We will leave to the side his own checkered past as a taxpayer, although one might question the wisdom of appointing someone who is apparently insufficiently skilled to file accurate tax returns to a position as our nation’s chief tax collector. What is far more troubling is that he now heads the Treasury - which means that he is not only responsible for managing two regulatory units (the FDIC and OCC), but also that he has got hold of the government’s purse strings. How many more billions or trillions will he commit to a futile effort to help Wall Street avoid its losses? Continue reading »

Tags: AIG, Bailout, Bank of America, Banks, Ben Bernanke, Citigroup, Economy, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, Fraud, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Politics, Timothy Geithner, Wall Street

Goldman Sachs Demands Collateral It Won’t Dish Out

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., speaks during a session on day two of the World Economic Forum in Davos, on Jan. 24, 2008. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

March 15 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., two of the biggest traders of over-the- counter derivatives, are exploiting their growing clout in that market to secure cheap funding in addition to billions in revenue from the business.

Both New York-based banks are demanding unequal arrangements with hedge-fund firms, forcing them to post more cash collateral to offset risks on trades while putting up less on their own wagers. At the end of December this imbalance furnished Goldman Sachs with $110 billion, according to a filing. That’s money it can reinvest in higher-yielding assets.

“If you’re seen as a major player and you have a product that people can’t get elsewhere, you have the negotiating power,” said Richard Lindsey, a former director of market regulation at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who ran the prime brokerage unit at Bear Stearns Cos. from 1999 to 2006. “Goldman and a handful of other banks are the places where people can get over-the-counter products today.” Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of America, Banks, Citigroup, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Goldman Sachs, Hedge Funds, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, U.S., Wells Fargo & Co.

- Report: JPMorgan, Citigroup helped trigger Lehman collapse (Telegraph)

- Lehman bosses used accountancy gimmick to cover up debt (Times)

- EXPLOSIVE: Lehman Corruption - Where Are The Cops? (Market Ticker)

Added: March 12, 2010 MSNBC

Tags: Banks, Ben Bernanke, Dylan Ratigan, Economy, Eliot Spitzer, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Lehman Brothers, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street

Added: 13th Mar 10

- Gerald Celente: ‘The Crash is Coming in 2010.’

- The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

- Survivor, America: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse,’ Gerald Celente Says

- The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010

If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
- New York Post

When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
- CNN Headline News

There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.
- CNBC

Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
- The Wall Street Journal

A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
- The Economist

Tags: Banks, EU, George Papandreou, Gerald Celente, Gordon Brown, Government, Lehman Brothers, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, U.S., Wall Street

See also:

- Lehman bosses used accountancy gimmick to cover up debt (Times)

- EXPLOSIVE: Lehman Corruption - Where Are The Cops? (Market Ticker)

The implosion of Lehman Brothers was in part triggered by excessive capital demands from JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, and in part by the manipulation of its balance sheet by leading directors, a wide-ranging official report into the investment bank’s collapse has found.

Dick Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman, is criticised in the report which has taken a year to compile

In what is likely to kick-start a series of costly and long-running court cases, the exhaustive investigation found that the two Wall Street banks demanded significant amounts of capital and extra guarantees in the run-up to Lehman’s downfall - with JP Morgan Chase requesting $5bn (£3.3bn) just three days before Lehman’s bankruptcy filing.

At the same time, Lehman directors, including chairman Dick Fuld and former finance director Erin Callan, failed to disclose key practices, and certified misleading statements. The astonishing claims are made in a 2,200-page, nine-volume report written by court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas, which Judge James Peck admitted read “like a best seller”.

The explosive report also calls into question:

• The use of accounting tactics designed to move $50bn from Lehman’s balance sheet.

• The work of auditor Ernst & Young.

• Barclays’ subsequent purchase of Lehman’s US assets.

Among Mr Valukas’s findings - which are designed to help the court and the bank’s trustees establish where there may be legal grounds for future claims - he asserts that the evidence “may support the existence of a . . .[valid] claim that JP Morgan breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by making excessive collateral requests” to Lehman.

“The demands for collateral by Lehman’s lenders had direct impact on Lehman’s liquidity pool,” he says. Continue reading »

Tags: Banks, Citigroup, Economy, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, U.S., Wall Street

Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to prevent crap like this:

From the paper:

Lehman employed off-balance sheet devices, known within Lehman as “Repo 105″ and “Repo 108″ transactions, to temporarily remove securities inventory from its balance sheet, usually for a period of seven to ten days, and to create a materially misleading picture of the firm’s financial condition in late 2007 and 2008.2847

Oh yeah, that’s legal?  It’s not supposed to be!

Lehman regularly increased its use of Repo 105 transactions in the days prior to reporting periods to reduce its publicly reported net leverage and balance sheet.2850  Lehman’s periodic reports did not disclose the cash borrowing from the Repo 105 transaction - i.e., although Lehman had in effect borrowed tens of billions of dollars in these transactions, Lehman did not disclose the known obligation to repay the debt.2851  Lehman used the cash from the Repo 105 transaction to pay down other liabilities, thereby reducing both the total liabilities and the total assets reported on its balance sheet and lowering its leverage ratios.

Isn’t that special?

It gets better, as you might expect.

The Examiner concludes that colorable claims of breach of fiduciary duty exist against Richard Fuld, Chris O’Meara, Erin Callan, and Ian Lowitt, and that a colorable claim of professional malpractice exists against Arthur Anderson Ernst & Young.2915  (strikethrough mine, not in the original)

It is stated that Government Regulators (FRBNY and The SEC) had “no knowledge” of these practices.  Perhaps true.  But this calls into question why we’re hearing of this just now, and whether other firms have or are at present doing the same sort of thing.

There also appears to be a colorable claim that Lehman Management was fully-aware of what was going on: Continue reading »

Tags: Banks, Ben Bernanke, Corruption, Economy, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, Government, Lehman Brothers, Politics, SEC, Timothy Geithner, Treasury, Wall Street

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank caused a bit of an uproar Friday when he suggested the U.S. government does not guarantee the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Rep. Frank later recanted and backed a Treasury Department statement reassuring investors that, yes, Fannie and Freddie Mae debt is guaranteed by the U.S. government. “Going forward,” he said in a statement, we “will make sure that there are no implicit guarantees, hints, suggestions, or winks and nods…we will be explicit about what is and is not an obligation of the federal government.”

But after years of winks and nods, there’s no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. The U.S. government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship in September 2008: “This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The problem is that $5 trillion of so-called agency paper is not treated as if it is a debt of Uncle Sam for accounting purposes, says Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at Niagara International Capital and ValueEngine.com.

“Get it on the balance sheet - that’s where it belongs,” Suttmeier says. “Add it to the $14.2 trillion in [federal] debt and let’s move on.”

Another Time Bomb Ticking

But $5 trillion is a lot of money - even by government standards — and moving on may be the problem because of ongoing problems in the housing market, Suttmeier says. “There’s a general concern on Main Street U.S.A. that ‘my neighbors are throwing in their keys, there’s more for sale signs in my community…do I want to buy a new home, risking there’s still downside risk to housing?’ ” Continue reading »

Tags: Banks, Barney Frank, Economy, Fannie Mae, FDIC, Freddie Mac, Government, Politics, Taxpayers