And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
Busy week. 4 Banks.
Right not, this is in a path for 101 bank closures, but my guess is that it will be just under 100, because they don’t want to break 3 figures.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Yeah, I missed them last week.
Here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
It looks like the total for this year will be somewhere around 100, which is awful, but better than 2010.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
It seems like ir was just earlier this evening, I was wondering what political calculus could be driving numerous states Attorneys General to walk away from the so-called “50 State Deal” on “Robosigning”. (Wait, it was just earlier this evening)
Well, now we know why. The New York Times just described the recent transition of New York AG Schneiderman from a very (for New York, anyway) low key Attorney General to Political superstar:
The other day, in his office down on Wall Street, Eric T. Schneiderman owned up to an awkward truth.
Until fairly recently, he acknowledged, if you had asked the average passer-by to name New York’s attorney general, you might have gotten a mystified “Huh?” or the answer that it was Andrew M. Cuomo (the governor who used to have the job) or Eliot Spitzer (the disgraced former governor who had it before that), rather than the correct response: Mr. Schneiderman.
In the eight months since he has assumed the office, the emphatically unglamorous Mr. Schneiderman has maintained a low profile for the state’s top law-enforcement officer, charting a busy but anonymous course between Spitzerian aggression and Cuomoesque charm. Even his own press aide, Danny Kanner, recently confessed that, before this summer, his own parents did not know who Mr. Schneiderman was. “And I’m their kid; I work for the guy,” Mr. Kanner said.
But then came August, when Mr. Schneiderman, 56, rejected a proposed nationwide settlement releasing some of the country’s biggest banks from a lawsuit brought by the states claiming misconduct in the mortgage markets. Almost overnight, he found his own name mentioned in a series of laudatory articles in publications as varied as Rolling Stone, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Web site Gawker.
Adding fuel to the profile-raising fire were the phone calls Mr. Schneiderman received this summer from officials in the Obama administration who pressured him to smarten up and join his counterparts in other states in settling the case. There were reports that a Federal Reserve official, Kathryn S. Wylde, had harangued him in public for his stubbornness (at the funeral for Hugh L. Carey, the former New York governor, no less). At the end of August, an unrepentant Mr. Schneiderman was kicked off the executive committee of attorneys general in charge of the case by its leader, Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa.
The cynic in me wonders if perhaps the fact that the flood of adoring correspondence was accompanied by, “Small tsunami of campaign donations,” might have something to do with the increasing numbers of Attorneys General who are balking at signing an agreement exchanging a token payment for immunity for the banksters.
The SEC has ruled that Congressmen, their staffers, and executive branch members are free to commit insider trading with impunity:
When you buy and sell stocks based on secrets you learned at the office, it could be insider trading.
But when a United States Senator does it, it’s probably perfectly legal.
That’s because the SEC has largely determined that trading stocks based on advance knowledge of action in Congress is not insider trading.
If anything, it’s “outsider” trading — buying and selling shares based on knowledge of an outside force that’s about to hit a company’s share value.
Think of it like a trader who sees a satellite image of a hurricane bearing down on an oil rig — and shorts the oil company’s stock in expectation of the damage.
Except in the case of Capitol Hill, the members of Congress can be both the trader and the hurricane — buying and selling shares in expectation of the effect that their own action has on the company’s stock price.
Some critics say that’s probably going on a lot on Capitol Hill — although they don’t have any direct proof.
“It’s really quite outrageous,” said Craig Holman, the legislative representative for Public Citizen. “If you just take a look at the statistics, members of Congress are either geniuses when it comes to stock trading or they are in fact trading off of some of this insider information.”
A pair of recent academic studies found that House members beat the market in their personal stock trading by about 6 percent, and Senators beat the market by about 10 percent.
Just when you thought that Washington could not get any more corrupt.
Martin Wolf notes that banks current business model is predicated on a 15% return on equity, and this is fundamentally unsustainable:
According to a FT article last week, Lloyds’ bank has a target return on equity of 14.5 per cent. Banks like to argue that this is the level of return on equity they need to earn, in order to gain funding from the markets. Naturally, remuneration is linked to achieving such objectives. The question, however, is whether such objectives make any sense. The brief answer is: no.
Forget banks, for the moment. What would you say if someone offered you an investment with a promised real return of close to 15 per cent? You might say: “How much can I buy?” Alternatively, you might say: “What is the catch?” Sensible people must take the latter view. If you thought that you were being offered a reliable real return at such an exalted level, you would buy as much as you could. This must be particularly true now when real returns on the bonds of relatively safe governments are close to zero.
So what is the catch? The obvious answer has to be that the real return in question is extremely risky, because it is volatile and offers a significant chance of total wipe-out.
Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that these cannot be sustainable safe returns in economies growing at 2 per cent a year, for such a large and well-established industry. At a 15 per cent real return, the value of cumulative retained earnings would double in five years and increase 16-fold in 20 years. Pretty soon, bank equity would be the only real asset in the world!
He notes that at some point in the late 1970s, probably starting during the Carter era deregulation of the banks,* their return on equity diverged significantly from the overall rate of growth of the economy, and the way that they did this was by the same way that anyone increases return, by increasing risk.
They increased risk by both increasing risk inherent in each individual investment, and they did so by becoming even far more leveraged, raising the risk that even small setbacks would leave them illiquid or insolvent.
This doesn’t matter to the banks, because they are back stopped by government deposit insurance, so they are, in essence, gambling with the taxpayer’s money.
We need banking to be dull again.
In any case, go read the whole post, particularly the bit where he figures that the additional cost of capital from this is just 15 basis points. (0.15%)
*Yes, the last generation’s Barack Obama was the one who initiated the dismantling of the depression era banking regulations, and who stood idly by as the savings and loans went insane. Reagan was worse, but Carter got the ball rolling.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
So, after a week with no bank closings, we now had two.
The pace is clearly slower than last year, but I’m not sure if the pace of bad loans is slowing, or if we are simply running out of banks.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Elizabeth Warren has officially declared her run for the Senate.
I understand why she feels the need to run, but I am pessimistic.
First, whatever you say about Republican Scott Brown, he is a very good campaigner, second, the Dems are rooting for her to lose almost as much as the Republicans are, because they can then argue that people don’t want real consumer protections.
And if she wins, she ends up in the Senate, where she would enter a seniority driven and hidebound old boys club that would do their level best to keep her away from any meaningful voice on finance.
I wish her luck, but it’s a lose-lose for her us.
Well, at least she’s better than Brown, who’s a smarmy right wing ratf%$#.
Her campaign web page is here.
I didn’t do anything over the past two weeks, because 2 weeks ago, there were none, and last week, I was busy getting ready for the SCA event, but there were 2 failures on the 2nd, and 1 this past Friday.
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):
It looks like it’s going to be a lot less than 2011, but it’s still gonna be a really bad year.
The Department of Justice has filed papers to prevent the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile:
The US government is attempting to block the $39bn (£24bn) takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T on antitrust grounds.The department of justice (DoJ) filed court papers in Washington on Wednesday in an attempt to halt the merger, claiming that it would “lessen competition substantially” in the telecoms market and harm consumers. AT&T said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the intervention.“AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market,” the DOJ said in its filing, which was first reported by Bloomberg.The multibillion-dollar merger, announced in March, would create the largest mobile provider in the US with 130 million customers, and reduce the number of players in the market to three.
This is not surprising, except perhaps to AT&T, who greased a lot of palms lobbied extensively for support of this deal.
After all, not only is T-Mobile aggressively competing on price, but between it and AT&T, the two cmpanies control something like 90% of the GSM cell network in the US, which, unlike Sprint and Verizon’s competing CDMA, works everywhere in the world,* which means that if you wanted to use your phone internationally, then you would have only one choice.
The Death Star is saying that they will “Vigorously Contest” the filing, but considering the fact that on their own paperwork it was shown to be 10 times as expensive to buy T-Mobile as it would be to upgrade their network to 4G:
So just to recap what you’re reading here, if AT&T doesn’t buy T-Mobile and spends $3.8 billion instead of $39 billion then they will be able to cover 97% of Americans in 4 years less time. What’s the deal? AT&T continues to downplay this memo, hopefully it’s enough for some of the Attorney Generals on the fence to start asking the important questions.
Fundamentally the business plan for the incumbents is the same as it ever was, finding ways to leverage their natural monopolies to extract maximum rent from the general public.
Finally, as much as it pains me to say this, props to Obama and Holder for engaging in some real antitrust actions.
*God bless the international standards averse USA, where we use the English system of measurements, and CDMA, for no good reason at all.
New York Times Columnist Joe Nocera, who writes that by enforcing the law against illegal retaliation against unions, the Democrats are anti-job.
This is about the Boeing case, where Boeing executives publicly bragged about moving an assembly line to South Carolina specifically because of legal labor actions taken by the union.
Somehow or other, all the “Very Serious People” out there stem to feel that blatant law breaking by large corporations must be tolerated, because they count more than the rest of us.
We are getting leaks that the Obama administration is going full bore to prevent New York State Attorney General from doing a thorough and diligent investigation of the banksters mortgage fraud:
Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.
In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.
Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.
But Mr. Donovan and others in the administration have been contacting not only Mr. Schneiderman but his allies, including consumer groups and advocates for borrowers, seeking help to secure the attorney general’s participation in the deal, these people said. One recipient described the calls from Mr. Donovan, but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
So, not only are they pressuring Schneiderman, but they are trying to gin up an AstroTurf response to further intimidate him.
I’m with what Yves Smith said, “It is high time to describe the Obama Administration by its proper name: corrupt.” (emphasis mine)
What’s more, he’s also catching flack from the in the person of Kathryn Wylde, Deputy Chair of the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve, who accosted him at a memorial service
Representatives for the four big banks declined to comment. Mr. Schneiderman has also come under criticism for objecting to a settlement proposed by Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America that would cover 530 mortgage-backed securities containing Countrywide Financial loans that investors say were mischaracterized when they were sold.
The deal would require Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion to investors holding the securities; the unpaid principal amount of the mortgages remaining in the pools totals $174 billion. Lawyers representing 22 institutional investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, BlackRock and Pimco, contended that the deal was favorable.
This month, Mr. Schneiderman sued to block that deal, which had been negotiated by Bank of New York Mellon as trustee for the holders of the securities. The lawsuit contends that the deal could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses” experienced by investors and that it had been negotiated without the knowledge of all of the holders of the securities.
The lawsuit angered Bank of New York Mellon, and as Mr. Schneiderman was leaving the memorial service last week for Hugh Carey, the former New York governor who died Aug. 7, an attendee said Mr. Schneiderman became embroiled in a contentious conversation with Kathryn S. Wylde, a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public. Ms. Wylde, who has criticized Mr. Schneiderman for bringing the lawsuit, is also chief executive of the Partnership for New York City. The New York Fed has supported the proposed $8.5 billion settlement.
Other investors in the Countrywide mortgage pools who were not part of the settlement talks between Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America have called the terms inadequate.
Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”
(emphasis mine)
Defrauding investors and home buyers is defensible?
I’m with Barry Ritholtz, who has called for Wylds’s resignation:
If the Times report is accurate, and the quote below [it;s the last paragraph above quote] represents Ms. Wylde’s comments, than that position is a laughable mockery, and Ms. Wylde should resign effective immediately.
…………
But what is surprising is the utterly inappropriate behavior of Kathryn S. Wylde. She is not only a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but occupies the seat supposedly reserved for the representing the public.
If the Times report is accurate, and the quote below represents Ms. Wylde’s comments, than that position is a laughable mockery, and Ms. Wylde should resign effective immediately.
(emphasis mine)
In any case, if you want to contact the AG and tell him not to back off, you can call (800) 771-7755 or at (212) 416-8000) or use his e-mail form.
This is particularly recommended.
BTW, if you live in Delaware, you might want to drop a dime on Beau Biden, the VP’s son, and Delaware’s AG, who has joined with Schneiderman in opposing the BoA deal.
If the Fed and the Obama administration are dead set on any sort of meaningful reform or accountability for the banks, then we need back up the State Attorneys General to pursue the banksters.
[on edit]
The AGs or Massachusetts and Nevada are also balking on the settlement offer, and considering that Nevada has probably the worst foreclosure problems in the nation, it makes any settlement even more problematic.
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2T in Loans
The “T” stands for Trillion, and we need to bring back Madame Guillotine.
Something odd on the FDIC failed bank page, do you notice it?
Do you see it? Public Savings Bank, of Huntingdon Valley, PA was closed yesterday, a Thursday.
The only other time I remember the FDIC closing a bank on a not-Friday, it was when senior bank executives were facing a criminal indictment as well.
That’s my guess anyway. These non-Friday closings tend to be associated with breaking news of some sort of criminality.
In any case, here are the bank failures, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
But as a part of the joint announcement by Sarkosy and Merkel on greater EU integration to fix the current series of debt crises they have proposed to impliment a Tobin tax on financial transactions:
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and German chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced the dramatic proposals after a two-hour mini-summit. They also called for the imposition of tighter restrictions on member country’s deficits and announced a synchronising of the tax policies of their own two countries. Sarkozy has also secured the support of Merkel for a Tobin tax – a financial tax on all international transactions – to raise funds to ease the crisis engulfing the European economy.
The amount of money generated by a Tobin tax would actually be smaller than generally anticipated, because much of the financial activity is pure short speculation, where extremely short term bets with payoffs of a fraction of a percent, create profits for doing nothing.
The banks suggest that such a tax is a bad idea because it would discourage such activity, but I consider it to be an even more valuable feature than any potential revenue raised.
Much of the unproductive rent seeking that occurs in our economy is an artifact of just such a behavior.
So, to paraphrase this xkcd cartoon, Mission F%$#ing Accomplished:
Of course, in reality, it’s just smoke and mirrors: The Tobin Tax proposal is just a way to sell their idea for a European balanced budget amendment, and at the end of the day, the Tobin Tax will go away, and the Banksters will get what they want, because that’s how the game is played.
Mark Thoma has a good analysis of the tax, and you can also check out the Wiki page.
In Illinois, the state Department of Revenue regularly certifies non-profits, with the idea making sure that they behave in a not-for-profit manner, as opposed to accumulating mountains of cash and overpaying their executives.
Well they have now denied tax exemptions to three hospitals, and are reviewing 15 more because they are abrogating their responsibility to serve their communities:
The Illinois Department of Revenue has denied property tax exemptions to three hospitals and is reviewing applications from 15 others, officials said Tuesday, signaling that the state plans to get tough on nonprofit hospitals it believes operate more like businesses than charities.
At stake are millions of dollars in tax revenues that the hospitals could contribute to cities, parks and schools by paying taxes.
Northwestern Memorial’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, Edward Hospital in Naperville and Decatur Memorial Hospital in Decatur were informed of the decisions Tuesday morning, Revenue Department officials told The Associated Press.
They follow last year’s Illinois Supreme Court ruling that found a central Illinois hospital wasn’t doing enough free or discounted treatment of the poor to qualify for an exemption, obligating it to pay $1.2 million in local property tax payments per year.
The hospitals have 60 days to ask an administrative law judge to review the decisions. In Illinois, property taxes are collected by county governments, and the Department of Revenue decides which institutions are eligible for tax exemptions.
This is actually something bears on my personal past, not from the hospital angle, but from the undeserving non-profit angle.
A little over 20 years (!) ago, I incorporated a not-for profit tax exempt corporation as a 501(c)3 that puts on Science Fiction conventions, which in that case meant that I represented it as an educational organization. While technically legal, I’ve always felt that the organization was more properly a 501(c)7, a social organization.
I filled out the forms, and chased them through the state and federal bureaucracies. And it was all technically legal, and I did not materially misrepresent anything in the applications
That being said, even at the time, I felt that this was an undeserving use of this status.
I was aware of the differences between a (c)3 and a (c)7 at the time, but we felt that we needed the ability for people to deduct donations, and (more importantly) the postage discount available for the (c)3.
The more scrutiny that is placed on organizations that use these sorts of status as a shield (501(c)4 tend to be used as political front group, for example), the better.
There are a lot of slimy things under the rocks that are section 501 of the IRS code.
H/t Washington Monthly.
The First National Bank of Olathe in Olathe, KS, 64 for the year.
It’s a day late, and I’m feeling lazy, so no pics.
It’s a 15 minute video, and embedding is disabled, and it’s nothing that I haven’t covered before, but this just hit the main stream in a big way.
I don’t watch it, but there are lots of people who watch 60 Minutes.
I only wish that they had been a bit clearer on just how this was all fraudulent on behalf of the banks, and not just going after document mill DocX as the source of all of this.
It’s been a busy economic news day, with the Federal Reserve declaring that it will keep its benchmark interest rates low for the next two year:
The stock market staged a dramatic rebound Tuesday, recording the biggest gains after the Federal Reserve announced it would keep its ultra-low interest rate policies in place for two more years.
The surge ended a wild day of trading in which the Dow Jones industrial average dipped in and out of negative territory four times, giving back hundreds of points in early gains before finishing the session up 429 points. That represented a nearly 4 percent rise, the largest increase in two years.
Investors seemed uncertain about what to make of the announcement by the Fed’s main policymaking board, which for the first time set a firm date for maintaining its near-zero target for short-term interest rates. This move could provide businesses and consumers with greater certainty about the availability of low-cost borrowing as they consider making investments or major purchases, such as homes or autos.
At the same time, the Fed declined to make any significant new efforts to bolster the nation’s flagging recovery. A rare dissent by three of the policy committee members to the interest rate decision signaled that it could prove hard for the central bank to take more dramatic steps in the coming months to lift the economy and prop up the financial system.
When one considers the fact that the interest is effectively 0%, this is not a ringing endorsement of where the economy is going, and the markets were hoping for more. (Full Fed Statement below the fold)
Why are the markets expecting more, perhaps because productivity fell for the 2nd straight quarter, and small business optimism for the 5th straight month.
Between Democrats who believe in the austerity fairy, and Republicans who are deliberately tanking the economy for political advantage, the Fed is all we have to fix things.
Release Date: August 9, 2011For immediate releaseInformation received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that economic growth so far this year has been considerably slower than the Committee had expected. Indicators suggest a deterioration in overall labor market conditions in recent months, and the unemployment rate has moved up. Household spending has flattened out, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector remains depressed. However, business investment in equipment and software continues to expand. Temporary factors, including the damping effect of higher food and energy prices on consumer purchasing power and spending as well as supply chain disruptions associated with the tragic events in Japan, appear to account for only some of the recent weakness in economic activity. Inflation picked up earlier in the year, mainly reflecting higher prices for some commodities and imported goods, as well as the supply chain disruptions. More recently, inflation has moderated as prices of energy and some commodities have declined from their earlier peaks. Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee now expects a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters than it did at the time of the previous meeting and anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate. Moreover, downside risks to the economic outlook have increased. The Committee also anticipates that inflation will settle, over coming quarters, at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee’s dual mandate as the effects of past energy and other commodity price increases dissipate further. However, the Committee will continue to pay close attention to the evolution of inflation and inflation expectations.To promote the ongoing economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent. The Committee 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 mid-2013. The Committee also will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate.The Committee discussed the range of policy tools available to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability. It will continue to assess the economic outlook in light of incoming information and is prepared to employ these tools as appropriate.Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Sarah Bloom Raskin; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Janet L. Yellen.Voting against the action were: Richard W. Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota, and Charles I. Plosser, who would have preferred to continue to describe economic conditions as likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period.
Standard and Poors has just downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+.
I think that Jane Hamsher and Scarecrow have nailed what is going on here. This is a shakedown by the credit ratings agencies:
On July 21, 2010 President Obama signs Dodd-Frank into law. Prior to Dodd-Frank, the courts found that credit ratings are expressions of opinion that were protected under the first amendment, subject to a demonstration of actual malice:
The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act stripped away those protections, so that CRA’s were now subject to the same expert liability as an auditor or securities analyst, and required only a “knowing” or “reckless” state of mind for liability, rather than proof of scienter. It also repealed Section 436 of the Securities Act of 1933, which granted “safe harbor” for ratings, which were part of a prospectus.
Which, for obvious reasons, made the ratings agencies extremely nervous.
In October 2010 S&P issued its first threat to downgrade US debt: “If the U.S. government maintains its current policies for the next 40 years in the face of rising health care and pension spending pressure, it is unlikely that Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services would maintain its ‘AAA’ rating on the U.S.” The report paints a target on the back of Social Security and Medicare, says nothing about the wars, the Bush tax cuts, private health care costs or the absurdity of 40 year projections.
………
It’s becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor’s has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P’s insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt.
Whatever S&P’s agenda, it has nothing to do with avoiding default risks or putting the US on sound fiscal footing. It appears to be intertwined with their attempts to absolve themselves from responsibility for their role in the 2008 financial crisis, and they are willing to manipulate not only the 2012 election but the world economy to escape the SEC’s attempts to regulate them.
It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.
Note that Dodd-Frank also lifted some statutory requirements mandating the use of ratings from accredited agencies as well, so the big 3 (S&P, Moodys, Fitch’s) have even more reason to hate the bill, and are trying to sabotage them at the rule-making stage.
Note that this was written a week ago, and a quick read of the S&P statement (first link) sounds like a hit job, some to the effect of, “That Dodd-Frank thing displeases us, it would be a shame for anything to happen to your credit rating.”
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
It’s better than the past few weeks, but still not good
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
