Category Archives: Banking industry

OCC Probe of JP Morgan Debt Collection Abuses Will Show if Agency Can Be Reformed

As readers probably know all too well, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has long been the most cronyistic of all bank regulators. So the default assumption when it cranks up an investigation is to assume that it’s just a window-dressing exercise or worse, a stealth bailout of some sort.

Yet the Washington Post tells us that the OCC is widening an investigation into debt collection, where alleged robosigner JP Morgan is the sinner-in-chief. What gives?

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Time to Put the Heat on the Fed and FDIC to Fix Lousy Governance at TBTF Banks

Adam Levitin makes a sensible recommendation in a new post:

…what’s at stake in the corporate governance of a too-big-to-fail bank like JPMorgan Chase is not just the share price, but also the public fisc. There is a strong federal regulatory interest in having good governance at too-big-to-fail banks because of our explicit (FDIC) and implicit (bailout) insurance of too-big-to-fail banks.

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More on the Trumped-Up Charges Against Cyprus

As readers may recall, the Eurozone decided to make an example of Cyprus by using it to set the precedent of raiding deposits to fund a bailout (query: is a self-bailout even properly called a bailout?). But the moralists said Cyprus had it coming, since it was a seedy tax haven. A recently released official report summary supports those charges. Or did it?

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Is Jamie Dimon Really Out of the Woods With Shareholder Thumbs Down on Splitting CEO/Chairman Roles? (Updated)

There’s a surprising degree of blogosphere acceptance of JP Morgan’s messaging on the shareholder vote today regarding whether to split the CEO and Chairman roles, that this result was a vote of confidence in his prowess as CEO. Huh?

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Mel Watt, Nominee to Head FHFA, Opposes Administration by Voting to Deregulate Derivatives

Good progressives like MoveOn, New Bottom Line, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, AFR, Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO have all fallen in line with Obama’s nomination of Mel Watt, Representative from Bank of America North Carolina.

It might help if they looked harder at Watt. If they were honest about it, there’s not much to like.

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Wall Street Hiring More Ex-Government Prostitutes Officials to Assure it Gets its Way

The infamous James Carville quote, “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” seems more applicable to official Washington than the much-maligned Paula Jones.

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