Yearly Archives: 2011

Citi Joins Bank of America in Finding New Ways to Bleed Customers

As readers know all too well, the very short story of the financial crisis was consumers and banks went on big borrowing party and it all ended really badly, except for the banks.

However, banks built their businesses with the expectation that consumers would continue to rack up debt. But consumers aren’t too keen about that any more. Moreover, banks have also gotten a bit of religion and are more careful with extending loans. Since they aren’t making as much money on consumer lending, their natural impulse is to find other ways to ~~fleece~~ obtain more revenue from consumers.

Catch Us on Harry Shearer’s Le Show Today

Hope you have the opportunity to tune in. You can find local broadcast times here.

Links 10/1/11

Game Over: California Attorney General Breaks From “50 State” Mortgage Settlement

We’ve been saying for months that the 50 state attorney general settlement was not going to happen. Despite the vigorous efforts by people on the side of the Federal regulators involved in the negotiations and Tom Miller’s (the AG leading the negotiations’) office to make it seem as if the deal was moving forward, the content of the reports showed otherwise. There was a huge gap between the positions of the banks and even the bank friendly position of the state AGs at the table and the banking regulators. Like the Vietnam War, where negotiations of two fundamentally opposed dragged on till one side capitulated, there was not going to be a settlement that was anything other than an abject sellout with a 11 figure payoff to mask that fact. And there were too many attorneys general who were already troubled by the terms of the deal that Miller had put forward for that to happen.

Now that Kamal aHarris, the California state attorney general, has officially abandoned the talks, they don’t mean much, at least from the state side. The departure of such a big state, in population, foreclosure exposure, and Electoral college terms, along with other states (New York, Delaware, Nevada, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Minnesota, likely Arizona) means any settlement has limited practical meaning from the state side and even less credibility.

Links 9/30/11

Quelle Surprise! SIGTARP Report Finds Citi, Bank of America Allowed to Leave TARP Prematurely

We said at the time it was inexcusable for the Treasury to allow banks to repay the TARP as early as they did (US banks are still below the capital levels many experts consider to be desirable; Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England has made a well-substantiated case that higher capital levels cannot remedy the problem, since the social costs of a major bank blow up are so great, and you therefore need very tough restrictions on their activities).

And why were the bank so eager slip the TARP leash? To escape some pretty minor restrictions on executive compensation. This had NOTHING to do with the health of the enterprise and everything to do with executive greed. And not surprisingly, Treasury indulged it.

Bank of America to Charge $5/Month for Any Debit Card Use; Financial Reform Blamed

Banks don’t like it when their imperial right to loot customers runs into interference, do they?

The Los Angeles Times reports that Bank of America intends to start charing customers $5 per month for any debit card use starting next year.

Links 9/29/11

New Zealand: Where Health Scam Companies Get Stock Exchange Listings

New Zealand is playing host to the sort of large scale miracle cure scam that would get investigated for wire fraud in the US. One company even has a New Zealand stock exchange listing!

The Bots of FX

By Greg McKenna, aka Deus Forex Machina. He is the CEO of Lighthouse Securities and has spent past two decades in financial markets in a number of senior roles including Head of Currency Strategy at the NAB and Westpac. Cross posted from MacroBusiness

High Frequency traders (HFT) have been around for a long time. What else were the locals on the SFE back in the floor days and at the establishment of many contracts except HFT? But we never thought of them in the way that many, myself included, think of the HFT guys these days.

Randy Wray: Euro Toast, Anyone? The Meltdown Picks Up Speed

Yves here. Readers may note that Wray cites the cost of the US bailout of the financial crisis as $29 trillion. I’ve never seen a figure like that (the highest estimate I’ve seen was from SIGTARP, which set the “theoretical maximum” at $23 trillion, and that figure was widely criticized. Barry Ritholtz has kept tab over time, and his tally has been in the $10-$11 trillion range). But this estimate is not core to his argument.

By L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

Greece’s Finance Minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt and hinted that a fifty percent write-down is likely. Greece’s sovereign debt is 350 billion euros—so losses to holders would be 175 billion euros. That would just be the beginning, however.