Masters of the Universe category archive

Watch the digit counters fall:

Orion Bank, Naples, Florida

Century Bank, FSB, Sarasota, Florida

It’s interesting that the Florida banks have both been given over to a bank in Louisiana.

Pacific Coast National Bank, San Clemente, California

Bloomberg (emphasis added):

At least three U.S. banks failed in the past year after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. deemed them healthy enough to qualify for a program that reduced the time examiners spent on reviews by at least 20 percent.

(snip)

“The program was misconceived from the beginning,” said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the examiners. “Employees believed the procedures were directed more at reducing examination hours than at ensuring proper supervision.”

The program started in 2004.

The cynical amongst us might consider it as part of the “why regulate anybody, the monied classes can do no wrong” policy of the Republican Party.

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, believes banks serve a social purpose and are doing “God’s work.”

If the work of God is running a bucket shop . . . Follow the link for Great Adventures in Rationalization.

Cthulhu fhtagn

I can understand why, after Lehman fell, the Bush Administration panicked and pretty much shovelled money onto the Acela to New York.

I don’t like the no-strings attached way they did it, but I don’t think it was done out of malevolence (unlike, say, the whole concentration camp thing). I think it was done because they were in unthinking “OMG We Have To Do Something” mode, and, combining that with the Republican belief that the wealthy are inherent virtuous, produced dumbness.

The principle, “Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity,” applies.

But the result has been to reward the outfits who had the most to do with turning financial markets into a world-wide bucket shop while penalizing the little guys, like these, who bank no more:

United Commercial Bank, San Francisco, California

Gateway Bank of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri

Prosperan Bank, Oakdale, Minnesota

Home Federal Savings Bank, Detroit, Michigan

United Security Bank, Sparta, Georgia

Susan Antilla writes at Bloomberg:

In fact, those Bloomberg customers said any limits on pay will boomerang. Asked “Do you think limits on executive compensation in the financial industry will do more to control excessive risk-taking or more to discourage useful innovation?” 65 percent of the ones working in the U.S. said limits on pay would choke innovation.

Knowing what we do about innovation in finance, we wouldn’t want that to happen.

Are there actually credible people worried that capitalism will be brought to its knees if restrictions on pay, and related reforms in regulation, are imposed on Wall Street?

“Financial innovation” is Wall Street shorthand for “new ways to pull off the wallet drop.”

Possible price fixing by Wall Street banksters. Oh, noes.

Only after the Internal Revenue Service investigated five years later did local officials learn that Rubin’s firm, CDR Financial Products Inc., had entered into a secret side agreement with the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank. CDR’s share would be worth as much as $340,000, based on city and federal records.

“IRS believes that CDR, Bank of America and possibly others may have colluded to fix pricing,” an unidentified Atlanta employee wrote in an undated internal memorandum after city authorities met with IRS investigators in September 2005.

Who woulda thunk?

They all bit the dust after I retired for the evening. Quite a body count.

Ahh, the geniuses of the fee hand of the market.

North Houston Bank, Houston, Texas

Madisonville State Bank, Madisonville, TX

Citizens National Bank, Teague, Texas

Park National Bank, Chicago, Illinois

Pacific National Bank, San Francisco, California

California National Bank, Los Angeles, California

San Diego National Bank, San Diego, California

Community Bank of Lemont, Lemont, Illinois

Bank USA, NA, Phoenix, Arizona

Reducing the number of bank stocks on the market. These are no more:

American United Bank, Lawrenceville, Georgia

Partners Bank, Naples, Florida

And that’s just the Eastern Time Zone.

Actually, they weren’t done with the Eastern Time Zone.

Flagship National Bank, Bradenton, Florida

Hillcrest Bank Florida, Naples, Florida

Moving west:

Riverview Community Bank, Otsego, Minnesota

Bank of Elmwood, Racine, Wisconsin

First Dupage Bank, Westmont, Illinois

Sheila Bair on the 100th bank failure of the year and your deposit insurance.

“The chances of your bank failing are low . . . . For an insured depositor, a bank failure is a non-event.”

Me: But the bank failures say a lot about the calibre of the banksters.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., based in New York, set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009, up 46 percent from a year earlier and enough to pay each worker $527,192 for the period. The amount set aside this year is just shy of the all-time high $16.9 billion allocated in the first three quarters of 2007. Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally in New York declined to comment.

I suspect that none of it is going to the file clerks and administrative staff.

And this surprises us how?

And they proceed to produce a study based on data as carefully researched as General Mills’s now-withdrawn claim that Cheerios reduce cholesterol.

The study, and the way the insurance industry is using it, is so misleading PricewaterhouseCooper — which conducted the study — released a statement last night emphasizing that “the report itself acknowledges, other provisions that are part of health reform proposals were not included in the PwC analysis.” That’s right: PwC released a statement last night distancing itself from the way its own study is being used, and pointing out that their study is not a comprehensive look at health care reform proposals but rather a narrow assessment of “four components” of the Senate Finance bill that ignored “other provisions” in it.

Remember, the health insurance industry is the same bunch that 30 years ago was claiming that, if they could just force everyone into HMOs, health care would be peachy keen and affordable until hell froze over.

Well, hell has frozen over and they want to just keep on ice fishing.

Via Atrios.

They’re baaaaaaaaaack.

Predatory lenders.

And now they are in reverse.

But some of the people responsible for subprime and predatory lending apparently have turned to the reverse-mortgage business in force, using high-pressure tactics to trap more seniors into giving away everything and getting little in return.

“There are 2,700 [reverse-mortgage lenders] in the market today, and 1,500 of them made their first loans in 2008,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), who has been working on a bill to curb some of the worst abuses – including widening yield-spread premiums that benefit lenders and brokers at the expense of elderly borrowers.

Wellpoint wants guaranteed profits from health “insurance.” The only thing they want to insure is their income.

Pah!

I must stop here. Beyond lies profanity.

Still bursting:

Penn Treaty Network American Insurance Co., the provider of long-term care coverage for 120,000 customers, was pushed by a Pennsylvania regulator toward liquidation in what may be the biggest forced breakup of an insurer in the U.S. in at least five years.

Back story: They invested in what Wall Street was selling.

Follow the link to find out whether your insurance company is on the short list.

From a story on banks’ reducing their overdraft fees:

If you’re looking for small silver linings in the financial collapse and the Great Recession it spawned, here’s one possibility: the end of the $35 hoagie.

That’s the sandwich that, to me, came to epitomize the dangerous presumption that the market will always take care of itself, and its corollary: that banks and other businesses can do no wrong if their intentions are laid out ahead of time in the fine print.

The high-priced hoagie came from a Wawa, but the convenience store chain wasn’t to blame. It was a $4 sandwich, to be precise, plus a $31 overdraft charge – triggered when college student Jeremy Spiller bought it with his Visa debit card and his bank balance fell 11 cents short.

Banks claim that they approve payments and then slap customers with overdraft fees, rather than simply declining the purchase, so as to better serve their customers.

It is possible to say, “Hey, Bank, I can’t keep track of all the coffee I buy on my debit card; just decline the payment.” But you have to opt-out of the fee-generation machine.

Serving their customers.

Up on a platter.

Another one bit the dust:

Georgian Bank, Atlanta, Georgia

A professor from the University of Maryland who used to trade securities distills the snake oil.

A nugget:

And when Americans understand them, they’ll understand why demanding that executives from bailed-out financial institutions forfeit their bonuses won’t do much more than make people feel better. The real culprit is a lack of regulation in the “shadow market” where these instruments are traded.

Follow the link to see the analysis. It’s worth the three minutes.

Aside: When you cut through the Wall Street/financial press double-talk, this stuff ain’t rocket science. That’s why they use the double-talk.

Mark Twain once said, “A cat who sits on a hot stove lid will never sit on a hot stove lid again. Then, again, he’ll never sit on a cold stove lid.”

Cats are smarter than Wall Street Bankers:

A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., credit-default swaps have lost their stigma for disaster and are contributing to the growing confidence in the credit markets.

I love a parade.

Brickwell Community Bank, Woodbury, Minnesota

Corus Bank, N.A., Chicago, Illinois.

Venture Bank, Lacey, Washington

Prework: Read this (I read the story yesterday; John Cole captures the gist).

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