Category Archives: Banking industry

Governments Need to Take the Reins Back From Central Banks and Deal with Economic Imbalances

Macrobusiness flagged a short interview with Ann Pettifor, a highly-regarded international finance expert who is the Director of Policy Research for Macroeconomics on the ABC program The Business. Pettifor argues that economists are responsible for the bias today to over-rely on monetary policy to solve problems that can only be addressed by government spending. Leaning too heavily on monetary policy to try to address weak growth simply generates asset bubbles.

FBI Raids, Lord Heseltine’s Haymarket Media Group, Financial Regulator “Crackdowns”, “What Car” Magazine…and Carbon Neutral Investments Limited

How two wide boys with shady pasts snared a leading British publisher that has major political connections.

We Discuss the JP Morgan “Settlement” on Democracy Now

I was glad to get the chance to discuss the misnamed JP Morgan settlement on Democracy Now yesterday. It’s misnamed because it’s not a single settlement, but a series of settlements, mainly if not entirely FHFA and state actions, bundled together, plus fines. Plus as you will see soon that’s far from the only way it’s been misreported!

Gretchen Morgenson on Bill Moyers: Ignore Those Crocodile Tears for JP Morgan

Yves here. Gretchen Morgenson gives an accessible presentation of why no one should feel sorry for the fact that JP Morgan is set to pay a roughly $13 billion settlement of a raft of mortgage-related liability. And she also dispatches the myth that the Department of Justice took a tough stance.

Yanis Varoufakis: The Dirty War for Europe’s Integrity and Soul

As Lambert says, get a cup of coffee, or maybe two. This is a long piece, but that is in part because it includes many damning vignettes from the Eurocrisis, so this is the antithesis of a dry read.

How Banks Profit From Distress (British Edition)

Yves here. Readers will notice how closely the US banking model hews to the UK version (or more accurately, original), particularly in its predatory practices.

OCC Replies to Elizabeth Warren Reveal Extent of Regulatory Capture on Derivatives

I thought readers would have fun taking apart a reply by the Thomas Curry, the Comptroller of the Currency, to some written questions posed by Elizabeth Warren after a July 11 Senate Banking Committee hearing on systemic risk.

Bill Black: The New York Times Publishes the Most Ironic Sentence of the Crisis

Yves here. I enjoyed this piece by Bill Black because 1. Anyone who tries to pretend the Administration is serious about prosecuting bank-related fraud needs to be named and shamed and 2. I like the device of using a single sentence as the basis for a post.

Fed Gives Middle Finger to Congress, Commodities Customers, and Public, Proposes to Allow More Banks to Participate in Commodities Business

Nothing like watching a captured regulator like the Fed use a public hue and cry to execute a big bait and switch. Here the ploy is to change rules to further disadvantage the parties making complaints. But it takes finesse to make the finger in the eye look plausible and reasonable, so that when the well-understood bad effects show up later, the perp can pretend to be mystified.

Reps. Alan Grayson and John Conyers Call for End to Bank Welfare, Tough Rules on Bank Capital

Congressmen Alan Grayson and John Conyers have published a well-thought-out proposal on bank equity, with the objective of assuring that when banks do stupid things (which they do with great regularity, even before the era of casino banking, they’d embrace some new fad and run off the cliff together, like lemmings), they have enough capital to absorb losses. And that means a lot more capital than regulators are demanding they have now.

So I urge you to co-sign their letter (full text below) at http://nobankwelfare.com/.

Mirabile Dictu! Bank of America Found Guilty of Fraud for “Hustle” Mortgage Lending Program

Don’t get too excited.

The Ridiculous “Jamie Dimon as Victim” Meme on the Pending JP Morgan Mortgage Settlement

Nothing like having a credulous, leak-dependent media to carry your messages.

French Officialdom Now Discussing Eurozone Exit

Just because a taboo has been broken does not necessarily mean that more radical action is in the offing. But the flip side is that, while we’ve been busy following debt ceiling and budget hijinx in the US, there are some surprising developments on the other side of the pond. One is that, as anti-Euro candidate Marine Le Pen is leading in polls in France, respected members of its ruling bureaucracy are deeming the Euro as a failed experiment and presenting detailed plans as to how an breakup could be executed.

Mind you, the Eurozone has been limping from crisis to crisis for so long that it’s hard to take new signs of trouble seriously.

So How Big a Deal is the Pending “$13 Billion” JP Morgan Settlement?

One of the big news stories of the weekend is that JP Morgan and the Department of Justice, brokering a settlement of liability across multiple Federal agencies, have reached a tentative $13 billion settlement on the bank’s mortgage-related conduct in the run-up to the crisis. But the size is not necessarily a metric of accomplishment.