Huh, 4 closings this Friday. After a lull at the beginning of the year, we’ve had a bit of a spike.
Still, it’s better than the past two years.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
And here is the detail, since it is early in the year:
The one thing that I liked, a task force to investigate bank/mortgage fraud appears to be an attempt to undermine any meaningful review of bank and mortgage practices:
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been celebrated as the progressive Great White Hope. But the danger of assuming leadership is that that individual becomes a target both of attacks and of seduction. And while I’d like to think better of Schneiderman, an announcement earlier this evening has strong hallmarks of Schneiderman falling prey to the combined pressures and blandishments of the Administration and its allies.
………
So get this: this is a committee that will “investigate.” The co-chair, Lanny Breuer, along with DoJ chief Eric Holder, hail from white shoe Washington law firm Covington & Burling, which has deep ties to the financial services industry. Even if they did not work directly for clients in the mortgage business, they come from a firm known for its deep political and regulatory connections (for instance: Gene Ludwig, the Covington partner I engaged for some complicated regulatory work when I was at Sumitomo Bank, later became head of the OCC). We’ve written at length on how the OCC is such a shameless tout for the banking industry that it cannot properly be called a regulator. Similarly, the SEC has been virtually absent from the mortgage beat, no doubt because its enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, was general counsel to the fixed income department at Deutsche Bank. That area included the trading operation under Greg Lippmann who we have described as Patient Zero of so called mezz CDOs, or to the layperson, toxic mortgage paper that kept the subprime bubble going well beyond its sell date. And we don’t need to say much about the DoJ. It has been missing in action during this entire Administration.
………
It’s clear what the Administration is getting from getting Schneiderman aligned with them. It is much less clear why Schneiderman is signing up. He can investigate and prosecute NOW. He has subpoena powers, staff, and the Martin Act. He doesn’t need to join a Federal committee to get permission to do his job. And this is true for ALL the others agencies represented on this committee. They have investigative and enforcement powers they have chosen not to use. So we are supposed to believe that a group, ex Schneiderman, that has been remarkably complacent, will suddenly get religion on the mortgage front because they are all in a room and Schneiderman is a co-chair?
See also here.
So, this isn’t an attempt to stop law breaking, it’s yet another attempt to cover up law breaking by co-opting people who do want to pursue corruption and law breaking.
It’s like his appointment of Elizabeth Warren to set up the CFPB all over again.
Tim Geithner has pretty much said that he won’t serve in Obama’s next term:
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, the last remaining member of the Obama administration’s original economic team, said he doesn’t expect the president to ask him to stay in office if re-elected.
“He’s not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident,” Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury.”
Geithner, 50, has led President Barack Obama’s efforts to pull the U.S. economy out of the worst recession since World War II, including overseeing bailouts of automakers General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, which have since emerged from bankruptcy. Before joining the administration in 2009, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, playing a key role in the government’s rescue packages for banks including Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC)
Well, after completely f%$#ing the economy, the financial system, and the Democratic Party, through your relentless ass kissing of Wall Street, I guess that your work is done.
It should be noted though, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
I would expect Republicans’ head to explode, because they will see this as “support” for Obama.
The Fed’s Open Market Committee is saying that it expects rates to remain at near zero until at least late 2014.
The big news is that they have announced an explicit inflation target, 2%, for the first time ever.
While this is a refreshing step towards Fed transparency, we are in a debt overhang and a liquidity trap, and we should targeting a higher inflation rate, as this devalues debt and gives greater effect to low interest rates.
To my mind, they should be targeting 6-8%, but I’d take 4%.
Full Fed statement after the break.
Press Release
Release Date: January 25, 2012
For immediate release
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in December suggests that the economy has been expanding moderately, notwithstanding some slowing in global growth. While indicators point to some further improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending has continued to advance, but growth in business fixed investment has slowed, and the housing sector remains depressed. Inflation has been subdued in recent months, and longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.
Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee expects economic growth over coming quarters to be modest and consequently anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate. Strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook. The Committee also anticipates that over coming quarters, inflation will run at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee’s dual mandate.
To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with the dual mandate, the Committee expects to maintain a highly accommodative stance for monetary policy. In particular, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that economic conditions–including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run–are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through late 2014.
The Committee also decided to continue its program to extend the average maturity of its holdings of securities as announced in September. The Committee is maintaining its existing policies of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Dennis P. Lockhart; Sandra Pianalto; Sarah Bloom Raskin; Daniel K. Tarullo; John C. Williams; and Janet L. Yellen. Voting against the action was Jeffrey M. Lacker, who preferred to omit the description of the time period over which economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate.
2012 Monetary Policy Releases
We now have the first bank closings of the year by the FDIC.
It’s a pretty busy week, 3 closings, but the last time that banks were closed was December 23, 4 weeks ago, so overall, it’s been pretty sparse, even with the holiday doldrums.
So far, it looks OK, but it’s not enough data to make any sort of projections.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
And here is the detail, since it is early in the year:
The Obama administration has come out against the most draconian measures in the rent seeking anti-piracy bills in the House and Senate:
The Obama administration won’t back legislation to combat online piracy if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet, three White House technology officials said.
Their statement, posted yesterday on the White House website, was a response to online petitions on legislative proposals to combat online piracy. The movie and music industries support such measures as a means of cracking down on theft.
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet,” Aneesh Chopra, Victoria Espinel and Howard Schmidt wrote in a blog post.
The statement marks the administration’s most significant foray into a fight between content creators and Internet companies that has been playing out in Congress. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Jan. 24 on starting debate on an anti-piracy bill.
The first thing to note is that this is a very tepid condemnation.
They didn’t make a Friday night release of this blog post, it was around noon on a Saturday when it was competing with the NFL playoffs, and Obama himself has not made a comment here.
That being said, I think that this is the first time that the Obama administration has come out against rent seekers as versus the general public.
I think that the Obama administration has made a tactical decision that they will get plenty of money for the campaign, and so they it isn’t necessary at this time to sh%$ on a motivated and tech savvy part of the electorate.
Dean Baker on the fact that the people who lauded Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan upon his retirement in 2006 still have lucrative jobs working in senior management at the Federal Reserve:
BTW, as noted in the article, many of the people at these Fed meetings are still in top policy making positions. This shows that the U.S. economy still produces good-paying jobs for people without skills.
H/t Atrios.
But I’d approve of anything that had the effect of f%$#ing the airlines:
Starting in late January, the Obama administration will force airlines to be more transparent about the full cost of tickets they often disguise in ads touting cheap fares. Low-price airlines Southwest, Spirit, and Allegiant are going to court to stop the rules, arguing that they violate corporate free speech rights.
But consumer advocates say the changes are a positive development for travelers who have been swindled by airlines for too long:
………
This is common sense regulation, and as to the argument business have a free speech right to defraud consumers, talk to the cat.
Well, there are no bank failures so far this year, but there was a credit union taken into conservatorship
And here are the credit union closings:
No picture yet, because the graph is only FDIC closures.
Because he is a thoroughly dishonest ratf%$#, and the tell on this is that he refuses to use email:
As Eric Falkenstein observes:
People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.
If his behavior as MF Global bankruptcy trustee, where he is refusing to turn over information to regulators about where customer account money went, (He’s making a bogus claim that the evidence of theft is covered by attorney client privilige) is an indication, he’s going to be a little boy rapist’s best friend at Penn State, where he is in charge of the coverup investigation.
Between his incompetence and his corrupt hackery, it’s a wonder that anyone hires him. It’s like hiring John Dillinger to be in charge of your bank’s security. Bernie Madoff has more credibility.
They have given up on attempting to regulate the massive overuse of antibiotics in livestock:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled a Scrooge move just before Christmas. The agency published an entry in the Federal Register declaring that it will end its attempt at mandatory restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The agency isn’t advertising the shift, though: This news would have remained a secret if not for Maryn McKenna’s Superbug blog over at Wired. McKenna, who specializes in writing about antibiotics and their link to pathogens, caught the Federal Register notice.
This is a sorry end to a process that began in 1977 (!), but McKenna created an excellent timeline that traces the history of the issue back to the 1950s. In 2009, the Obama administration breathed new life into a moribund process because the top two Obama appointees at the FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her then-deputy Joshua Sharfstein, strongly supported restricting antibiotic use in agriculture.
But despite Hamburg and Sharfstein’s many supportive statements, the FDA has only produced a draft set of “voluntary” guidelines. And, with this latest announcement, it looks like that’s as far as they’re willing to go.
The depressing thing, in addition to the fact that this practice creates “superbugs” that kill people, is that we know how much this would cost the consumer, based on the Danish experience, and it’s less than 10¢ a pound.
By way of putting this into perspective, antibiotics used at sub-therapeutic levels in feed accounts for 80% of all antibiotic use in the US.
Our feedlots are a petri dish for MRSA, antibiotic resistant E. Coli, etc.
It’s just that, at least until November 2, Barack Obama is more scared of the Occupy movement than he is of the Republicans, hence his recess appointments today:
President Obama kicked off the election year aggressively, picking a fight with congressional Republicans by sidestepping the Senate to fill the top job at the government’s newly created consumer protection bureau.
He also filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, which referees labor-management controversies — a priority of his allies in labor unions.
The appointments Wednesday, which had been stalled in the Senate, came as Obama moved to make confronting Congress a central part of his strategy for reelection. His job approval rating remains low, but Congress’ standing is even lower — “as unpopular as Ebola virus” — as one administration aide recently put it. In a confrontation between the two, the president will have the upper hand, White House aides say.
Actually, the NLRB appointments might be more significant, because the Republicans had shut down the board for lack of quorum.
I don’t expect the CFPB doing much, because Obama was dragged into the entire idea kicking and screaming, and his closest financial regulation adviser, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, hates it, and with Elizabeth Warren effectively neutered by virtue of her running for Senate, which pretty much requires her to be in lock step with the Obama administration, I expect to see a remarkably passive posture from Richard Cordray.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Barack Obama will do the right thing, once he believes that he has no alternative.
So there is nothing to worry about with the wife of head of the Swiss National Bank shorting the SFr just days before it’s devaluation by her husband:
My kind of story in the Swiss papers today. I love it when big shot central bankers get their dirty laundry made public.Kashya, the wife of Philipp Hildebrand (head of the Swiss National Bank) sold Swiss Francs just a few days before the Swiss National Bank initiated exchange controls and devalued the Franc. The timing of the transactions was nearly perfect. The suggestion is that “pillow talk” between husband and wife lead to the trades.
Don’t expect heads to roll over this transgression. There has been a complete review by Swiss authorities and the conclusion is that there were no insider trading violations by the wife. That’s not to say that trades did not happen.
Apparently, Kashya Hildebrand bought ~$500,000 when she shorted the CHF. This relatively small transaction netted the Hildebrand family only ~$50,000 in less than one month. Being that the amount is so small, the conclusion is that nothing nefarious has taken place. ………….
Seriously, if I stole $50,000, I’d be in jail, with a prosecutor asking for a big chunk of bail money, but because this is one of the bankster elite, it’s no harm, no foul.
I’m, really beginning to think that we don’t need to just prosecute the financiers, but we need to go after the corrupt regulators, including the central bankers, as well.
To quote Sigourney Weaver, “I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
H/t Atrios.
92 FDIC insured institutions, and 12 credit unions.
A lot less than what I expected at the beginning of the year.
Here is the graph pr0n with the 2010 numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Bloomberg has released the bailout secured from Federal reserve as a result of their successful FOIA litigation:
Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form.
To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled “1a Fed Data Roadmap.”
The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history.
What is revealed here, in the short form, is that the lending window was at below market rates, as opposed to the, “penalty over normal market rates,” claimed by the Fed.
Additionally, on a quick look at the article, the lending, and the backstopping, where what amounted to loan guarantees were provided as a sort of a back door subsidy to allow banks to borrow at lower rates, it appears that this totaled more than ten trillion ($10,000,000,000,000.00) dollars, or something in excess of ½ the GDP of the United States of America.
It should also be noted that this is only the stuff that Bloomberg managed to pry from the Fed’s fingers, and I’m certain that we will see this number grow as more rocks are turned over.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
And the the FDIC is taking another week off
And we have credit union closings:
It does appear that things are bottoming out.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
Well, we had a three week hiatus on bank closings, but we’ve seen some action again.
This breather does mean that this will be the first time since 2008, (25 closings) we will have less than 100 bank closings.
Of course, if you want to be a pissant about this, you could add in the credit union closings, which would take us into 3 figures, but I’m not quite that much of a pissant.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Vice President of the Portuguese Socialist Party has been taped saying that default is a preferable alternative to dismantling the social safety net:
“We have an atomic bomb that we can use in the face of the Germans and the French: this atomic bomb is simply that we won’t pay,” said Pedro Nuno Santos, vice-president of the Socialist Party in the parliament.
“Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions, because recession itself is what is stopping us complying with the (EU-IMF Troika) accord. We should make the legs of the German bankers tremble,” he said.
Angela Merkel and the rest of the sanctimonious “Good Germans” can natter all they want about responsibility, but if one of the debtor nations says, “f%$#k you, we’re defaulting,” it’s game over for the German banking sector and their economy.
What the “Technocrats” and “Very Serious People” don’t realize is that their demands are going to make this scenario happen sooner, rather than later.
There is a saying, “If you owe the bank $1,000.00, the bank owns you, if you owe the bank $1,000,000.00, you own the bank.”
Because, this is America, where the rich and powerful are above the law.
However, it appears that the CFTC is saying that they know where all the customer money went.
I should note that Corzine is claiming that he has no idea where all the client funds went, which, if true, means that he is in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley, which should still qualify for the bracelets … Or it would, if we were a nation of laws, instead of a nation of men …
They didn’t do much.
The FOMC Statement does show that they are expecting “moderate growth,” and one can infer that they are scared sh%$less about the Euro and what is going on in Europe.
Pretty much, not much.
