Posts tagged as:

bank bailout

Fannie and Freddie Still Hurting Big Time

by Moe Bedard

On Dec. 24, Treasury said there would be no limit to the taxpayer money it was willing to deploy over the next three years to keep the two companies afloat, doing away with the previous limit of $200 billion per company. So far, the government has handed the two companies a total of about $111 [...]

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More trouble coming for commercial banks

by Moe Bedard

On Tuesday, Citigroup posted a $7.6-billion loss for the last three months of 2009, the banking giant’s first unprofitable quarter since 2008. Similar bad news is expected today when Bank of America Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp report their earnings.

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Wall Street Gets Bonuses and Main Street Goes Homeless

by Moe Bedard

Reality about the economy differs depending on whether “you talk to somebody that is in line for a huge cash bonus at a Wall Street firm and a small business on Main Street that’s trying to get a loan,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.

President Obama, he said, continues to get “visibly angry” when [...]

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Laundered Drug Money Saved Many Banks Says UN Crime Chief

by Moe Bedard

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations‘ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid [...]

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Failed Banks Not Being Held Accountable

by Moe Bedard

Regulators have closed 124 banks this year, the most since 1992, amid loan losses stemming from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The failures pushed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s insurance fund, used to pay customers for deposits of up to $250,000 when a bank fails, into an $8.2 billion deficit as of [...]

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California Banks Began to Implode

by Moe Bedard

Rod Brown, president of the California Bankers Association, said that despite this novel and helpful move, more bank failures probably lie ahead.
“At best we are only halfway through this thing,” he said.
Anderson said his firm has a ranking system that considers 29 out of California’s 297 banks in danger of failure over the next year. [...]

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Job Losses May Trigger 2nd Banking Crisis

by Moe Bedard

The unemployment rate now stands at 10.2%, yet stocks are at a 2009 high. The bulls will tell you not to worry; the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. True as that may be, Charlie Gasparino author of The Sellout, has a word of warning: the jobs data may be a leading indicator when it [...]

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Wall Street outrage continues

by Moe Bedard

PRESIDENT OBAMA is far too absent of outrage over Wall Street’s continued abuses. As a candidate, he railed against its “greed and irresponsibility.’’ He had more to say in his first month in the White House, after finding out that Wall Street firms were still paying $18.4 billion in bonuses despite bringing America to its [...]

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Banks in deep trouble

by Moe Bedard

But it’s not a simple case of flourishing banks versus ailing workers: banks that are actually in the business of lending, as opposed to trading, are still in trouble. Most notably, Citigroup and Bank of America, which silenced talk of nationalization earlier this year by claiming that they had returned to profitability, are now — [...]

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Banks get billions to assist homeowners who don’t get help

by Moe Bedard

Several companies in the Treasury program have been cited by judges or regulators for having engaged in improper behavior with their customers.
They include Select Portfolio Servicing Inc., a Utah-based company formerly known as Fairbanks Capital Corp.; Countrywide Home Loans Inc., now a unit of Bank of America Corp.; Carrington Mortgage Services LLC, based in California; [...]

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