Friday, April 15, 2011
Banks who got bailed out for bad loans and fraud get no jail time
US banks to settle on financial crisis penalties: report
NEW YORK — Several major US banks are close to an agreement with the Wall Street regulator to settle fraud allegations related to the "toxic" mortgages behind the 2008 financial crisis, a report said Friday.
An initial agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could be settled next week, the Wall Street Journal said, citing sources close to the case, noting penalties would likely vary for different institutions.
Among the banks in negotiations with the SEC are JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch (Bank of America) and UBS.
Few of the settlements are likely to top the $550-million penalty imposed on the Goldman Sachs Group in 2010 over allegations it misled investors over a mortgage investment program, the Journal said.
The financial crisis that stemmed from trillions of dollars in risky mortgages promoted by the top Wall Street firms has engulfed the globe and cost millions of jobs in the years since.
That mortgage bubble grew, burst and infected banks' balance sheets thanks to the magnifying effect of complex financial derivatives, noted an official US report issued earlier this year.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, after reviewing millions of pages of documents and interviewing around 700 witnesses, concluded in January that bankers, lawmakers, regulators and irresponsible borrowers all helped plunge the world into financial panic.
"This financial crisis was avoidable. The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire," the report said.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
German Banks Plan on Screwing with the US Banking Rules
German Banks Plan on Screwing with the US Banking Rules
FRANKFURT, Apr 13 - Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, plans to restructure its US operations to sidestep new regulations that could have forced it to raise billions in new capital, a report said Wednesday.
FRANKFURT, Apr 13 - Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, plans to restructure its US operations to sidestep new regulations that could have forced it to raise billions in new capital, a report said Wednesday.
Why we are broke.
The Banking Act of 1933 was a law that established theFederal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation.[1] It is most commonly known as the Glass–Steagall Act, after its legislative sponsors,Carter Glass and Henry B. Steagall.
Some provisions of the Act, such as Regulation Q, which allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts, were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. [2][3]
The repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between Wall Street investment banks and depository banks. There is debate as to what role the repeal may have played in the Financial crisis of 2007–2010.
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