About those [Stress] Test Results
Peterr had a great post this morning reading some troubling tea leaves at the bottom of Citi’s and Bank of America’s tea cups.
My, the little things you notice when you peruse the job listings at the FDIC website. There are a lot of them to scroll through, but a couple of them caught my eye.
[snip]
Further down the list of positions comes a posting for two Senior Large Financial Institution Specialists, one in the New York office and the other in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hmmm . . . large institutions, New York and Charlotte?
Can you say "Citibank" and "B of A"? Sure you can.
Speaking of New York, they are also looking for a new Chief, Examination Support and Risk Analysis Section who would be based in either New York or DC. Again, from the major duties section of the posting, the first three are these:
Serves as technical advisor on a broad range of risk management issues particularly regarding the analysis and supervision of large, complex financial institutions.
Reviews and evaluates studies, reports, and proposals prepared by staff members, financial organizations and other government agencies as these relate to large, complex financial institutions.
Directs the monitoring and supervision of large, complex financial institutions to protect the deposit insurance fund.
I’d be getting a little nervous right about now, if I had a corner office at Citibank and saw these two job postings. And if I noticed that the FDIC is also looking for two more of those Senior Large Financial Institution Specialists in their DC office, I’d be getting more than a little nervous. (As if I didn’t already have some banking nightmares to deal with.)
All in all, it looks to me like somebody thinks the FDIC needs some senior folks to deal with eating Very Big Banks — and to judge by the closing dates on these job postings and this little teaser from the Wall Street Journal, they think they need them fast.
The teaser he linked to describes the problem of what to do with the results of the stress tests investigating–among others–BoA and Citi.
Top federal bank regulators plan to meet early this week to discuss how to analyze the results of stress tests being conducted on the country’s 19 largest banks, people familiar with the matter said.
Only, it seems like those bank regulators have decided to punt, at least until we get past earnings season.
The U.S. Treasury Department is planning to delay the release of any completed bank "stress test" results until after the first-quarter earnings season to avoid complicating stock market reaction, a source familiar with Treasury’s discussions said Tuesday.
The Treasury is still talking about how results of the regulatory stress tests on the 19 largest U.S. banks will be released, and may disclose them as summary results that are not institution-specific, the source said.
Gosh. They got together. Looked at the results. Started to hire Senior Large Financial Institution Specialists in both Citi’s and BoA’s home towns.
And then started talking about "summary results" that are "not institution-specific" and decided to put off their announcements (which may be finished before the end of the month) until after earnings season is over.
Just so you don’t learn how broke these banks are in such a way that will crash the stock market.
I’m guessing if Citi or BoA were HQed in Detroit, they’d be making final prepations for bankruptcy around about now.
But don’t worry.
There’s no double standard. I promise.
I wonder what they call their alternate “free market” universe for banksters?
PenniesMegabucks from heaven?It’s certainly not the “free market” universe we live or Detroit lives in.
Shorter Bank Regulators: “What the public doesn’t know won’t hurt…ahmmm…us?…the banks?…yeah, that should do it!”
Great work, EW & Peterr! Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to release the results so there is a soft landing instead of a crash?
Actually, I think the market KNOWS that Wall Street is full of hi jinks, and the stock market won’t really start its ascent out of the pit until it is clear that the web of fraud is being cleaned out. Only then will trust be rebuilt. They know now that you can’t really trust the banksters.
Bob in HI
Fixed it for ya’.
MD,
Actually, I don’t think so. Geithner can hide the putrescence from public view, but the people with the big money won’t be fooled. And as long as the hedge funds are allowed to operate freely, so that the big money guys can bet on systems failure, nobody’s going to have confidence in the system.
The big money guys know a house of cards when they see it.
Bob in HI
I’m inclined to agree with you.
But FWIW, can I still keep my screen name?
Peterr exceeded my tea leaf reading by miles on this one (as on other topics), but I’ve sorta fallen into the habit of using this screen name.
Hoping Peterr remains Peterr.
And I’ll just keep puttering away… somehow, I’d sort of hate to change to myOpia or blindedByDeception. It’s all about my ego… (*sigh...*)
keep the name
we know it ain’t really “Tea”
but, what the hell, we’ll let you slide on that
(wink)
Damn.
I hate being exposed as such a fraud.
Bummer…
I wish I shared your optimism, but alas, I do not.
My thinking tends to be more reflective, and yes, cynical. The nature of the beast, so to speak, is merely biding its time for the regulators and us to close our eyes again so that they may begin once again to pick our pockets and fleece us clean.
“Free Market” capitalism emphasizes “Free” first and foremost. Rules be damned, full speed ahead.
This has been the way it has always operated throughout human history.
I see little leadership from our political representatives to make any but mostly cosmetic changes.
Yes but…those same big money guys all want to get right back into that very same card game.
A modification of that old Roman Coliseum command of “Let the games begin” echoes throughout today’s financial community: “Let the games continue!”
I agree that THOSE guys want to get right back in the game. Addictions are hard to break, and it’s worked for them.
But at this point, it’s kind of turning into a shark-on-shark enterprise.
Us minnows have basically found any rock to hide under, taking our pennies with us.
The main reason the sharks are getting our money at this point is because the government is handing it over in the form of TARP.
You think Jon Stewart’s audience is still madly investing? I doubt it.
You think the 70-year old mom he spoke about to Jim Cramer is still ‘investing’? I doubt it.
People don’t like getting screwed, and they tend to remember who screwed them.
It’s not simply the assets at those banks that are toxic; their reputations are toxic as well.
I don’t need to be Einstein to figure out that any jackass who leverages at 30:1 is a corrupt tool, and neither do my neighbors. Those ratios are just not all that complicated; it doesn’t require a genius to figure out some (or all) of those banks have no prayer in hell of being solvent.
I woke up this morning just furious with Blanche Lincoln. If Walmart were able to hold slaves, it would. Plantation mentality in a DEMOCRAT in 2009???
I just figured she’s the newest Blue Light Special of the US Senate.
Was I mistook?
… Or was that K-Mart thing…?
If so, I’ll just imagine Blanche as the US Senate’s official greeter: “welcome citizens, today on Aisle 20, we have Arlen Specter Super-Special Centrist Dolls, yours now for only $20…”
Yeah. Step right up and get these specials. Chase credit cards accepted for donations. Get ‘em before they commit to any legislation!
Gotta keep chase around to launder all that money
http://www.fool.com/news/assoc…..nukes.aspx
The 118-count indictment charges Li Fang Wei, 37, and his China-based company LIMMT, identified years ago as fronts for Iran’s illegal nuclear acquisition efforts, with falsifying business records and conspiracy to gain access to U.S. banks
The prosecutor said American banks were deceived by Li and had no part in helping him carry out the illicit transactions. He credited the New York banks with helping in the investigation and he thanked the compliance departments of The Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank N.A., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wachovia Bank/Wells Fargo N.A., Bank of America N.A., and Standard Chartered Bank.
LIMMT is headquartered in Dalian, China
This just reeks of Cheney
I saw that earlier today and thought, “Whoa. Just how many economic entities does it require to make a financial transaction these days…?”
There must surely be money laundering outfits, shell companies, and oil contracts somewhere near that mess. Creepy.
after skimming through the indictment
http://manhattanda.org/whatsne…..0FINAL.pdf
it’s hard to ignore how most if not all banks are moving monies through accounts that are almost impossible to keep track of.Ever changing aliases and beneficiaries,Through a multitude of banks(Sweden,London,US,Arab)require endless evaluations of valid(or invalid) entities.Bottom line is it all has to be converted into dollars.Any bank could be facilitating these transactions and have no way of knowing.if you look at the OFAC(office of foreign asset control) site
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices…..ac/sdn/and see the list of SDN(specially designated nationals,by country)
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices…..trylst.txt
you can se that even though you’ve been put on the list all you have to do is change your name.Al Haramain has 50? different aliases.
“In order to deceive and bypass these OFAC filters the sanctioned entities and SDNs must falsify, or caused to be falsified, the originator and/or beneficiary information in the wire transfers. In other words, by omitting or falsifying data regarding their role as the true originators or beneficiaries, the sanctioned entities and SDNs are able to send and receive wire transfers that would otherwise be blocked or rejected by the OFAC filters. This conduct falsifies the records of the U.S. clearing banks”
Maybe Spitzer was designated an SDN.
The SDN list is just the ones they want you to be aware of
Makes you wonder about the OTHER LIST
Yup. The expression, “feature, not a bug” does come to mind pretty quickly, doesn’t it?
And the more puzzle pieces I have, the more it sure looks as if they took out Spitzer just so they could go after the final grab — my logic goes like this: if whatever Spitzer had been working on had become public last spring, the American public would no way, no how have tolerated the TARP emergency bailout, at least not to AIG.
Because if Spitzer had been heard, we’d all have seen AIG as one big giant money laundering, gambling fraud outfit. So someone(s) took Spitzer out because clearly by one year ago they must have known they were going to need to be bailed out.
Of course, Cheney ‘couldn’t have seen it coming’.
But someone else certainly did, and needed Spitzer out of the way.
At least, that’s what I’ve learned from watching movies; I’m sure that real life works similarly…
Unfortunately, Spitzer took “something” out [of his pants] and did himself in. Not saying there wasn’t some help, somewhere, in providing the “bait,” but . . .
Clinton, Spitzer, why can’t these guys learn that as long as they’re in “the public eye,” they’ve got to take some drugs to stifle their urges.
Couldn’t see it coming, my ass. I am just a little old lady living in the burbs in the central valley of cali. I saw it coming. They all saw it coming. And they waited until the last hours of the Bushco admin to pull the biggest bank robbery of them all. Who knew it would drag on so long.
Thanks! I guessed that Bair and Bowman, at FIDC and OTS respectively, were staffing up! Glad to see your little follow up here, Marcy! I can’t imagine how long it is going to take, but watch for receivership to get played up as nationalization EEK! YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY on the FOX boobz.
I wonder how long this shit’s going to last from Murdoch.
This is bloody murder fomented by a small group of madmen, aided by Bachmann and her ilk. stoopids
BMaz,
I think you and I had an exchange about the fact that a county “State’s Attorney” would be the investigator (the prosecutor if it came to that) in the case of Burris’s potential perjury. In Illinois almost all prosecutions are indeed handled by these county elected officials.
So imagine my surprise to read this:
Attorney General Lisa Madigan today announced the indictment of a Chicago-area businessman and his construction company for fraudulently obtaining public funds reserved for minority businesses in construction contracts with City of Chicago agencies.
A Cook County grand jury returned the indictment today against Robert Blum, 56, of New Lenox, Ill., and Castle Construction Co., based in Markham, Ill., on 10 counts of fraudulently obtaining public moneys reserved for disadvantaged business enterprises, one count of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud. Blum is the owner and CEO of Castle Construction.
“Castle Construction never would have received these public contracts without employing deceptive practices, and because of that, this company prevented other legitimate businesses from securing contracts intended to help provide business growth opportunities for minority-owned businesses,” Madigan said.
The indictment alleges that Blum and Castle Construction fraudulently obtained two construction contracts worth more than $18 million and allegedly devised a scheme to misrepresent and conceal how much of the public funds actually went to minority-owned businesses, a condition required by both contracts. […]
Public Integrity Bureau Deputy Chief Mary Bucaro and Special Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Bunge are handling the case for Madigan’s office.
(from capitol fax quoting a Madigan press release.)
I’m not sure what the deciding factor would be that made this a case for the Attorney General. There are a few categories of crimes handled by statewide grand juries, but this came from a Cook County grand jury.
I worked with Mary Bucaro on vote fraud cases when she was at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
Troubling in some ways maybe, but I for one am glad to see that they’re at least looking.
The Treasury is still talking about how results of the regulatory stress tests on the 19 largest U.S. banks will be released, and may disclose them as summary results that are not institution-specific, the source said.
Remember how they had an election last year in Zimbabwe, and then Mugabe tried as hard as he could not to reveal the results? “Oh, we were just wondering …”
Well the question is whether these hires are doing clean-up…or are at the top of the batting order. Sure BankAmerica is in Charlotte…but Wachovia and Merrill Lynch were also HQ’d there. So it could mean they need somewhere there to deal with those messes.
Wait…that could mean that they are concerned with the groups that bought Wachovia and Merrill….which points to>>>>
Apparently BoA needs to raise another $36.6 billion to meet the standards, per Bloomberg. I thought that they were paying off the govt. by the end of the year. Guess not. Surprise, surprise..
If you haven’t already done so, take all your money out of these huge banks and put it into the local credit union !
The Warren Congressional Oversight Committee report (No. 5) reveals that Geithner’s dubious “Stress Tests” rely on self-reporting of asset/liability figures from the 19 biggest banks. They are using the same formula used by the risk analysts to calculate risk in the collaterialized debt obligation and credit default swaps casinos, plugging in estimates for future unemployment and housing prices figures.
Nice to give the banks a gold-embossed invitation to commit even more fraud upon American investors, pension funds and taxpayers.
It seems Geithner will do anything to avoid actually examining samples of the tapes for the actual loans underlying the “toxic” assets, as James Galbraith has prudently demanded.
God forbid that we should have some real numbers by which to calculate the solvency or insolvency of our banking industry.
Warren’s videoed summary of her report, as posted on dailykos, was absolutely masterful:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..ort-Is-Out
We need Warren as head of the Treasury. Unlike Geithner, I doubt she is in bed with Summers, Bernacke or any of the hedge fund/big bank boys.
I would very much like to see this point brought to Elizabeth Warren’s attention, and addressed in her Committee’s next report.