Category Archives: Politics

Bill Black: “Budget Hero” – Public Media’s Most Despicable Financial Propaganda

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

We know that the supporters of austerity simultaneously urge us to reject “European socialism” while adopting the key European strategies that drove Europe into recession – twice. American conservatives assume that Europe must epitomize stringent financial regulation. The opposite is true. Europe adopted “light touch” financial regulation pursuant to neo-liberal economic theory. Its embrace of the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization was far more extreme than the United States. The City of London “won” the regulatory race to the bottom with the U.S. European’s adopted the full Basel II reduction in capital requirements without the minimum gearing ratio that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insisted upon. The FDIC prevailed over the intense, but fortunately unsuccessful opposition of the Federal Reserve economists who were the principal architects of Basel II’s disastrous reduction in capital requirements. The result was that European Union banks had roughly twice the leverage of U.S. banks and faced no meaningful regulatory restraints. The result was far larger real estate bubbles in several European nations (as a percentage of GDP) than in the U.S., multiple financial crises, and a Great Recession that reached depression levels in several nations.

Brockton Saves $ and Protests Foreclosure Misdeeds by Moving $170 Million Account from Bank of America

Although consumer-level “move your money” campaigns are popular, the sad thing is that many individuals are only marginally profitable as checking/savings account customers. So transferring your account out does not have enough of an impact to make a difference (unless you do so in a way that makes branch staff uncomfortable, by doing it in person and describing their banks’ bad behavior. Enough of that might make a psychological difference). The key to retail customer profitability is cross selling, usually at the time of account opening. So the checking account is the gateway product for them to get customers to sign up for retirement accounts/brokerage, credit cards, and (hopefully sooner rather than later) mortgages.

By contrast, bigger customers who use multiple products are a sweet spot for banks.

Will It Take Popular Pressure to Get Municipalities to Go After Libor Gaming Costs?

This Real News Network video provides an update on the Libor scandal. Tom Ferguson flags an issue that may come as a surprise to some readers.

Federal Regulators Trying to Leash and Collar Standard Chartered’s Nemesis, Benjamin Lawsky

The plot thickens! Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Regulators Seek Unity in U.K. Bank Talks.”

If you read the article, a more accurate headline would be “Federal regulators desperate to get in front of Lawsky mob and call it a parade.” All the article says is the mucho unhappy and very much outflanked Federal regulators have gotten a meeting with Lawsky. Just look at the disconnect between the PR in the first paragraph and the actual state of play in the second:

Get Everyone You Know in Palm Beach County to Vote for Lisa Epstein for Clerk of the Court Next Tuesday

Readers may know I don’t do political endorsements. I’m making an exception because I’ve worked with Lisa Epstein and am extremely impressed with her knowledge, energy, and tenacity. And separately, readers may have come to recognize that county clerks and registers of deeds can be very important guards of the integrity of property records and legal processes. But only a very few, such as Jeff Thigpen in Guilford County, NC, and John O’Brien in Southern Essex County, Massachusetts, have bothered to investigate their own files and speak up about the large-scale problems they have unearthed.

Lisa is an oncology nurse who has become a self trained and formidable mortgage document and foreclosure procedures (as in abuse) expert.

Standard Chartered Makes Empty Threat to Sue New York Regulator Over Iran Money Laundering

I have to confess I’m really enjoying the dust up between the New York Superintendent of Financial Services, Benjamin Lawsky, and his opponents, namely, his target, Standard Chartered, and the flummoxed Federal regulators that he is showing up as so deeply captured that they genuinely can’t tell regulatory theater from the real thing.

FHFA Threatens to Kneecap Use of Eminent Domain to Condemn Mortgages

All this talk of firing Ed DeMarco seems to have led him to decide to live up to his reputation.

NYS Order on Standard Chartered’s Iran Transfers Opens Up US, UK Regulatory Pig Fight

I hope Benjamin Lawsky, the New York Superintendent of Financial Services, has balls of steel. He will need them.

Barofsky v. Geithner and Administration Mouthpieces (Yglesias Edition)

Neil Barofsky continues to take issue with the Administration’s efforts to depict itself as the friend of ordinary Americans when its real loyalties are to banks. In a Reuters op-ed, he took on the hypocrisy of the Administration and its allies in their “fire DeMarco” messaging. If you are late to this row, Ed DeMarco, head of Fannie’s and Freddie’s regulator, the FHFA, nixed the idea of having his wards make principal reductions on mortgages, despite the fact that top mortgage industry analyst Laurie Goodman has ascertained they are far more successful than mods that don’t lower principal balances.

As various commentators, including yours truly, have pointed out, the criticism of DeMarco is sheer scapegoating.

Where Are the Feds? NY Banking Superintendent: Standard Chartered a “Rogue Institution,” Made $250 Billion of Illegal Transfers With Iran

The New York Superintendent of banks dropped a bombshell today, filing an order against Britain’s Standard Chartered Bank. It charges the bank with having engaged in at least $250 billion of illegal transactions with Iranian banks, including its central bank, from 2001 to 2010, and of engaging in similar schemes with Libya, Myanmar and Sudan (those investigations are in progress). It threatens SCB with the loss of its New York banking license and termination of access to dollar clearing services. The latter alone is as huge deal. You are not a real international bank unless you have dollar clearing. Sumitomo Bank looked at giving up its US banking license in 1985 when it was examining deal structures for making an investment in Goldman, and ascertained that giving up access to Fedwire would cost it over $100 million a year and considerably weaken its position in Japan. SCB is certain to be a much more active dollar player than Sumitomo was and the volume of international transactions has grown hugely since then.

SCB squealed like a stuck pig, claiming that only $14 million of transactions were out of compliance. But the bank has nowhere to go.

Is Draghi’s EuroRescue Plan Coming Unglued?

No sooner had some astute Euro commentators noted that Draghi might have found a path through the Euro mess to keep it patched up long enough for to impose austerity on the periphery and drive all of Europe into a lovely depression, various elements of his plan look as if they were coming unglued.

Will Draghi Outmaneuver the Bundesbank?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph, who correctly called that ECB would not take action last week, argues in his latest article that Mario Draghi and Italy’s Mario Monti have isolated the Bundesbank and are closing in on being able to buy bonds along side the Eurozone rescue facilities once the ESM presumably goes live (the assumption is that the German constitutional court will lift its injunction on September 11). Draghi hopes to keep Mr. Market at bay till then by a combination of happy talk and threats.