Category: regulation

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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There were no failures last week, and I missed the one that happened on the 3rd, but we are definitely seeing a slowdown, which is a good thing

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Atlantic Bank and Trust, Charleston, SC (on June3rd )
  2. McIntosh State Bank, Jackson, GA
  3. First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay, Tampa, FL

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

2 Years Too Late, Timmeh

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So, the US Treasury is finally taking action against banks who have not engaged in HAMP in good faith:

As the nation’s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation’s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners.

As part of a new assessment of mortgage servicers, Treasury officials said they would withhold incentive payments for the three banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — until the problems are resolved. At that point, those payments would be made, a Treasury spokeswoman said.

In May, the three banks received $24 million in incentives as part of the modification program.

The Treasury Department has previously withheld payments from mortgage servicers, but Thursday’s action focused on some of the biggest players in the program. Called the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, it is voluntary for mortgage servicers. Nearly all of the nation’s largest banks have signed contracts to participate.

Only, as Yves Smith observes, this is not accountability, it’s accountability theater, from the folks who so f%$#ed up HANP so badly that, “HAMP was so clearly a disaster that Treasury Department officials didn’t try very hard to defend it in a meeting with bloggers that I [Yves Smith] participated in last August. The best they could do was claim that it helped the housing market by spreading out foreclosures over a long time period,” so in this bit of atmospherics, the banks still get their money, they just won’t get it today.

Someone must have informed Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner that even if Barack Obama would never fire him,* if the voters fire Obama, he’s still out of job.

*This fact that Geithner is unfirable makes a pretty argument against a 2nd Obama term.†
†We now have revelations that Larry Summers was more on the ball than he.

Why the Recess Appointment Exists

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Because when some narcissistic sociopath gets a bee in his bonnet and blocks a Nobel prize winner in economics from a seat on the Federal Reserve:

The decision by a noted economist Monday to end a 14-month wait for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is renewing concerns among some Democrats about the fighting spirit of the Obama administration.

The candidate, Peter A. Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize laureate for his work on labor markets, cited Republican opposition in asking the White House to withdraw his nomination.

But Democratic leadership did not press for a vote on the nomination, and Congressional aides said that the White House invested relatively little energy in fighting for Mr. Diamond. Moreover, they said that the administration had not submitted nominations for vacancies atop several of the federal agencies charged with overhauling and improving financial regulation in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

“There’s a deep feeling of frustration,” said one Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “No one wants to insult the administration or put them in a position that’s uncomfortable for them or worse for them. So you’re just sitting around waiting for them to take the lead.”

The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said on Monday that the White House did everything it could to push the nomination, and he lamented the “partisan obstructionism” that had prevented approval of Mr. Diamond.

(emphasis mine)

Yes, “partisan obstructionism”, and the fact that your boss is a hopeless clueless chump.

Or maybe he really does not want meaningful regulation, and so he’s leaving seats empty, so that Geithner can continue to run things for the benefit of the banksters.

Your call, but I am leaning toward door number 2.

Giving into hostage takers just encourages more hostage taking.

BTW, you can read Diamond’s take on all of this here.

The Term Here is Credible Allegations of Fraud

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Pass the popcorn

On the recall front in Wisconsin, Judge John Markson ruled that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) can have an extension to review irregularities in the petition process against the Democratic senators.

What this means is that the allegations of fraud by Rebublicans have enough merit to warrant an investigation, while the allegations of irregularities by Democrats do not:

A Dane County judge has granted the Government Accountability Board’s request for additional time to finish its review of the recall petitions filed against Dems Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch.

The GAB now has until June 10 — next Friday — to certify those elections and has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to review the petitions.

Judge John Markson denied a request from Republicans to delay the recall elections of Republican senators that have already been certified until the Dem reviews are completed.

Markson also specified that today’s original deadline for the GAB to certify those recalls remains in effect, setting up recall elections for six GOP senators for July 12.

If approved and certified next week, the three Dem recalls would take place July 19.

Markson said the GAB had shown good cause to extend the deadline, noting the unprecedented level of recall activity along with the passage of voter ID legislation and completing a statewide Supreme Court recount.

Part of the reason for the need for additional time is that the Republicans did not get half again as many signatures as was necessary.

The Republicans are desperate to have all the elections at once, because they want to make sure that the Dem get out the vote is diluted across additional districts.

I am amused, but I figure that the reactionary corrupt f%$#s on the Wisconsin Supreme Court who hold a 4-3 majority will find a way to mess with this.

Now the New York Times is Calling it a Coverup

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Click for full size

Round up the Usual Suspects

Specifically, they note that in the matter of indicted trader Fabrice Tourre, it appears that he is being singled out as a scape goat, while the SEC is studiously ignoring the fact that he was acting in pretty much the same way as everyone else at Goldman Sachs:

Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies.

At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.

How Mr. Tourre alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government’s investigations have been into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage crisis.

The tell here is the fact that he was set up by Goldman, and the SEC, as a patsie is the fact that he was told that he had to use a Goldman Sachs lawyer to represent himself:

In April 2010, when the S.E.C. filed its case against the bank and Mr. Tourre, the young banker told friends that he believed Goldman had been chosen to be the commission’s “case study,” according to several who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. The friends also said they were concerned that Mr. Tourre’s dependence on Goldman for advice and legal counsel was not in his best interest.

In September 2009, for instance, Mr. Tourre told friends he thought he had to use a lawyer from a list of lawyers at three firms that Goldman gave him.

Robert Follie, a lawyer in Paris, said Mr. Tourre told him he was not authorized to use lawyers other than those Goldman selected. Mr. Follie said he cautioned Mr. Tourre that his interests might diverge from Goldman’s, so he should consider hiring his own counsel.

“As a practitioner, I mentioned to him that I felt the risk in the long run was that the lawyer who was acting for him might end up in a near conflict-of-interest situation,” Mr. Follie, whose daughter is friends with Mr. Tourre, said in an interview last December.

After the S.E.C. case was filed in summer 2010, Mr. Follie wondered how Mr. Tourre had wound up as the only defendant. “I felt that somewhere down the line, he must have done or not done the proper things to get out of this. I was personally wondering if he had sufficient representation disassociated from Goldman,” he said.

Mr. van Praag, the Goldman spokesman, said the bank did not impose lawyers on its workers and had not done so on Mr. Tourre. He said that “ultimately the decision is for the individual and counsel to determine whether they are right for each other.”

Well, Mr. van Praag, if that is in fact your real name, I am sure that Goldman management worked scrupulously to ensure that there was no paper trail of them instructing Tourre to take a lawyer who worked for them instead of him, but that is a far cry from what any honest employer would do.

Recall Elections Against 6 Wisconsin State Senators a Go

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So the final three recall drives against Republicans have been approved, but the Government Accountability Board (GAB) is asking for an extension to rule on the drives against 3 Democratic senators:

GAB announced on Friday that it would need to delay consideration of petitions against Democratic Sens. Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie, Jim Holperin of Conover and Dave Hansen of Green Bay because election staff needed more time to review the Democratic challenges to the petitions. Staff Counsel Shane Falk said staff worked significant overtime during the holiday weekend to complete their review of the Darling petition before focusing on the petitions targeting Democrats, which had more complex legal issues.

The translation here is that the allegations of fraud made by the Republicans about the volunteer recall petitions targeting them were laughable, but the allegations made against the mostly-out-of-state for profit signature collectors are credible.

Additionally, the margins for the drives are different, which makes the impact of any irregularities less significant, because, after all, a for profit firm won’t collect a single more signature than is necessary.

What this means is that, absent a court ruling, the Republican and the Democratic (if any) recall elections, at least the 1st round, would be on different dates if the GAB gets permission from the judges.

Of course, the final ruling may very well be from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a Republican majority, so all bets are off.

This is Called Coopting a Threat

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It appears that the Democratic party is trying to encourage Elizabeth Warren to run for Senate in Massachusetts:

Officials in the Democratic Party are wooing Elizabeth Warren to run for the Senate against the Massachusetts Republican Scott P. Brown rather than have her continue to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Ms. Warren has become a lightning rod for controversy over the new agency, which she conceived and is helping create. Consumer groups and some Democrats have demanded her appointment as its first director. A group of 44 Senate Republicans, with applause from the financial industry, has promised to block any nominee.

In seeking to enlist Ms. Warren for a different campaign, Democrats are taking aim at two birds. They can lay the groundwork for a potential compromise over a different candidate to lead the new agency and, they hope, they can increase their chances of reclaiming Mr. Brown’s seat by sending against him a woman who has won considerable acclaim and popularity among liberals for taking on the financial industry.

This is not about having a viable Senate candidate, though she would probably be a credible challenge to Scott Brown, but about removing here from any position of influence in financial regulation.

Warren is not the choice of either the Democratic Party or the Obama administration, are about as interested in her having real authority over the excesses of  Wall Street and the big banks as they are over investigating torture and abuse of power by Bush and His Evil Minions™.

If she wins, she won’t have any influence in the boys club that is the Senate, and my money would be on her not even getting a seat on the banking committee.

They want to give her a shiny hat to shut her up.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Atlantic Southern Bank, Macon, GA
  2. First Georgia Banking Company, Macon, GA
  3. Summit Bank, Burlington, WA

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Hmong American Federal Credit Union, St. Paul, MN

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

I really can’t find a pattern here, but it seems to be better than 2010, and worse than 2009.

2 Years???? 2 F%$#ing Years?!?!?!?

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Yep, it’s that misbegotten bastard child of Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and Barack Obama*, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, HAMP, where the Treasury has finally decided to require a single point of contact for homeowners participating in the program:

Mortgage servicers must provide a single relationship manager to borrowers being evaluated for a Home Affordable Modification Program trial by Sept. 1, according to guidance released by the Treasury Department Wednesday.

The guideline is required of the 20 largest servicers participating in HAMP, and it is one of the largest adjustments to the program since its inception in March 2009. Since then, more than 670,000 borrowers received a permanent loan modification, and more than 1.8 million trials have been extended.

“Over the past two years, two of the biggest complaints we received from borrowers were servicers are losing documents and they can’t connect with anybody who can actually track them down. Every time they call they can’t get a hold of someone with access to their case,” Laurie Maggiano, director of policy at the Treasury’s homeownership preservation office, said in an interview with HousingWire Wednesday.

The relationship manager must be an employee of the bank and cannot be a contractor. This manager will be assigned when the servicer makes successful contact with the delinquent borrower. The borrower must meet the initial criteria of the program, such as owner-occupancy and a 31% debt-to-income ratio.

The program has been in place for about 2 years, and since day 1, the complaints have been about no one being a point of contact, meaning that you had repeatedly lost paperwork, changing conditions, dual tracking, where when you were talking with one bankster, another was in the process of foreclosing, etc.

People have been screaming about this.

The press has been screaming about this.

Congress has been screaming about this.

But nothing was done until the 2012 election loomed, because, after all, this was not a program to help people, it was a program to cheat people, and help the banks.

*Who knew that bad programs were conceived by three beings?  For the rest of nature, it’s either parthenogenesis (Amoeba, lobbyists) or some sort of sexual reproduction involving only two participants. There are echos here of the Asimov novel The Gods Themselves.

Yep, The Revolving Door is Shut down

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4 Months after approving the Comcast-NBC merger, outgoing Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker will go to work for them as a lobbyist:

Washington’s revolving door is spinning again this week, with Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker’s announcement that she is resigning to become a lobbyist for Comcast.

Baker’s last day on the commission will be June 3, a few weeks before the end of her term, and just over four months after she voted to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal.
Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, shown at a hearing on Capitol Hill in March, is resigning to become a lobbyist for Comcast.
Enlarge Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, shown at a hearing on Capitol Hill in March, is resigning to become a lobbyist for Comcast.
Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, shown at a hearing on Capitol Hill in March, is resigning to become a lobbyist for Comcast.

Back in 2009, when the merger was proposed, Baker said on C-SPAN that the commission shouldn’t try to regulate too much.

“You shouldn’t attach conditions that are extraneous to the actual deal in front of you,” she said at the time.

And when the vote came last January, Baker complained that some extraneous conditions were there. She said that FCC rulings were too regulatory and could discourage job-creating investment. Still, she voted with the 4-1 majority for the merger.

An important point to make here is that she is not a Bush retread finishing out a term.  She was appointed by Barack Obama.

She pretty much had to be a ‘Phant, the law requires that no more than 3 members of the 5 member commission belong to the same party, but she was hip deep in Bush policy and deregulation, and she is the daughter of the smarmiest bastard ever to hit Washington, DC, James Baker.

In a sane Washington, DC, Comcast would let her go now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, but I think that sane Washington, DC is an oxymoron.

Schadenfraude Alert

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It looks like a lot of big anonymous donors to political advcocy groups are facing a tough choice, pay a 35% gift tax, or contest the rules in open court, where your anonymous donations to Karl Rove will become a matter of public record:

The Internal Revenue Service appears to have begun to enforce a tax on gifts to the non-profit organizations that were a key vehicle for anonymous politics in the last five years and had promised to play a large role in the presidential cycle, a move which could reshape the place of money in politics in 2012.

“It appears that the IRS Estate and Gift Tax team has also started paying attention to 501(c)(4) organizations,” a Los Angeles tax lawyer who has followed the issue closely, Ofer Lion, wrote in a memo to clients today.

Gifts to other political organizations are not taxable under federal law, and lawyers informally say many donors do not typically pay the gift tax — which may run as high as 35%, mirroring income tax rates — for contributions to 501(c)4s.

The IRS focus would only apply to quite large donors: the first $13,000 annually are exempt. The rest of the contributions, however, reduce a donor’s lifetime tax exemption, which stands currently at $5 million but stands to drop to $1 million in 2013, a fact which would mean a donor’s heirs lose substantially more to estate taxes, including potentially a “clawback” of money that’s already been given away back into the taxable estate.

………

“[C]ontributors wishing to remain anonymous may feel the need to pay sizable gift tax assessments rather than challenge the tax in open court, and on the public record,” Lion wrote.

My heart bleeds borscht for the Koch suckers who now face Morton’s Fork.

A New Firefox (and Chrome) Add On That I Highly Recommend…

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It’s called MAFIAA Fire (note: it is listed as Experimental on Mozilla.org.)

MAFIAA stands for the Music and Film Industry Association of America, and it redirects from sites that have been seized under conditions of dubious legality by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

I probably never would never have heard of it, except for the fact that the Department of Homeland Security demanded that Mozilla.org pull the plug in:

The Department of Homeland Security has requested that Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser, remove an add-on that allows web surfers to access websites whose domain names were seized by the government for copyright infringement, Mozilla’s lawyer said Thursday.

But Mozilla did not remove the MafiaaFire add-on, and instead has demanded the government explain why it should. Two weeks have passed, and the government has not responded to Mozilla’s questions, including whether the government considers the add-on unlawful and whether Mozilla is “legally obligated” to remove it. The DHS has also not provided the organization with a court order requiring its removal, the lawyer said.

“One of the fundamental issues here is under what conditions do intermediaries accede to government requests that have a censorship effect and which may threaten the open internet,” Harvey Anderson, Mozilla’s lawyer, wrote Thursday on his blog.

The net result of this is that the total number of downloads has gone from 6433 when Wired wrote the article to 38,560 as I am writing this.

As JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS observes, this is a classic example of the Streisand effect.

I’m adding this to my Firefox Extension links (below blogroll on right hand column).

I don’t really have a need to install it, I’ve yet to run into one of the redirected sites, but it’s worth whatever small amount of attention that I can give them.

I’ve listed their developers’ reasons for this software after the break:

Why?

Well, in one word: fairness – and balance of power.

A little while back the scumbag anti-piracy organizations like the RIAA and MPAA (Also known as the Music and Film Industry Association of America – (jokeingly known as the) MAFIAA)  ran to the American government whining like they usually do and got ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) involved with taking down websites – local AND foreign websites, completely overriding the laws and rights of non US / foreign citizens who owned these sites.

These anti-piracy (MAFIAA) companies submitted a wish list of sites that they did not like and ICE (like good lapdogs) started to seize those domains.
(At this point I would like to mention (in fairness) that we are in no way affiliated with the below sites)
Some of the seized domains were perfectly legal, like TorrentFinder.com which only had links to other sites and RojaDirecta.com which was declared to be a legal site in Spain – twice!

“Not all bad men wear masks”
Looking at court documents it becomes obvious that ICE does not do any diligent footwork but takes the music and film industries word as the gospel truth, or are downright sloppy at best.
The best example of how sloppy and mad with power ICE is can be is found in how they took down 84,000 sites for 3 days  in a “mistake”.  These innocent sites were run by small businesses, mom and pop garage startups etc and for 3 days had a big official splash page displayed to all visitors that it had been taken down due to child porn.

It’s hard to bounce back from something like that and it’s a safe bet to assume a lot of businesses / people went belly up because of being wrongly accused of peddling child porn (something the music industry loves, by the way).
To make matters worse there is currently a law being drafted (called COICO) that will make such types of domain name seizures easier.

Enough is enough.

There is a time to bitch and moan and there is a time to take action – the time to be taking action has been long overdue.

Governments around the world are either censoring for the entertainment companie’s never ending woes or using that as an excuse to slowly get more control over the internet for their own agendas – and trampling over our rights in the process.

Before it was “think of the children”, then came “the terrorists win” and now its “piracy”. While there were few genuine exceptions it’s mostly bogeymen, unicorns and leprechauns or the music industries 75 trillion US dollars in losses due to one companies p2p software.

Our right to privacy should outweigh any outdated business model, unfortunately average Joe cannot afford a $10,000 plate dinner to speak to his representatives so his voice is drowned out by the vultures who can pay and get a politician’s ear for “business”.

And While They Were Going After bin Laden, They Found Time to Kiss Up To The Banks…

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This awful policy is driven by a desire for campaign donations.

The New York Times has an editorial excoriating the Obama administration for deregulating foreign currency swaps:

A loophole in the law — which the bankers and their friends, including the administration, fought for — allows the Treasury secretary to exempt the instruments. The arguments in favor of exemption, beyond a desire to please the banks, were always unconvincing. They still are. The Treasury Department has asserted that the exempted market is not as risky as other derivatives markets, and therefore does not need full regulation.

That claim has been disputed by research, but even if it were true, it would be a weak argument. For instruments to be relatively safer than the derivatives that blew up in the crisis, necessitating huge bailouts, hardly makes them safe. Worse, dealers could probably find ways to manipulate the exempted transactions so as to hedge and speculate in ways that the law is intended to regulate.

……

The department has also said that because the market works well today, new rules could actually increase instability. That is perhaps the worst argument of all. It validates the antiregulatory ethos that led to the crisis and still threatens to block reform.

The Treasury’s plan will be open for comment for 30 days. Count us opposed.

(emphasis mine)

There can be a fine line between regulatory capture and corruption, and I am not sure on which side this falls.

In a way, this is worse than Bush and His Evil Minions™, because W was (correctly) perceived as a radical, but the actions of “Team Geithner” now firmly entrenched this thinking on both sides of the aisle.

H/t Paul Krugman for the graph pr0n.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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It’s odd, we’ve had alternating weeks of feast and famon.

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. First National Bank of Central Florida, Winter Park, FL
  2. Cortez Community Bank, Cortez, FL
  3. First Choice Community Bank, Dallas, GA
  4. The Park Avenue Bank, Valdosta, GA
  5. Community Central Bank, Mount Clemens, MI

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Utah Central Credit Union, Salt Lake City, UT

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Economics Update

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It’s Jobless Thursday, and initial claim hit a 3 month high, 429 K, with the 4-week moving average rising, though continuing and extended claims fell.

The numbers have been disappointing, which is not surprising, since the economy grew at an anemic 1.8% annual rate in the 1st quarter.

The problem is that too many people in power (see Geithner, Timothy, for one) think that the economy is recovering fine because the banksters are making lots of money, so they are concerned about the deficit and inflation, as evidenced by this story with its hand wringing about inflation rising, but even though it’s still well under the 2% (I would argue for 6% right now) that the Fed says that we need.

BTW, if you want to read it, here is the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee statement for you to read.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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Remember when I said last week that things seemed to be slowing down?

Well, not so much:

  1. Bartow County Bank, Cartersville, GA
  2. New Horizons Bank, East Ellijay, GA
  3. Nexity Bank, Birmingham, AL
  4. Superior Bank, Birmingham, AL
  5. Rosemount National Bank, Rosemont, MN
  6. Heritage Banking Group, Carthage, MS

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

It’s still better than last year at this time, but this was a very busy week.

And Now the New York Times Condemns the Sellout

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Notwithstanding their coverage of the foreclosure crisis, and the malfeasance of the mortgage services, which has largely focused on the hardships of the well to do (unsurprising given the nature of the New York City real estate market), the editorial board understands that there has been fraud and bad behavior all around and they understand that proposed settlements are sellouts to the big banks that service mortgages:

Americans know that banks have mistreated borrowers in many ways in foreclosure cases. Among other things, they habitually filed false court documents. There were investigations. We’ve been waiting for federal and state regulators to crack down.

Prepare for a disappointment. As early as this week, federal bank regulators and the nation’s big banks are expected to close a deal that is supposed to address and correct the scandalous abuses. If these agreements are anything like the draft agreement recently published by the American Banker — and we believe they will be — they will be a wrist slap, at best. At worst, they are an attempt to preclude other efforts to hold banks accountable. They are unlikely to ease the foreclosure crisis.

………

But the gist of the terms is that from now on, banks — without admitting or denying wrongdoing — must abide by existing laws and current contracts. To clear up past violations, they are required to hire independent consultants to check a sample of recent foreclosures for evidence of improper evictions and impermissible fees.

The consultants will be chosen and paid by the banks, which will decide how the reviews are conducted. Regulators will only approve the banks’ self-imposed practices. It is hard to imagine rigorous reviews, but if the consultants turn up problems, the banks are required to reimburse affected borrowers and investors as “appropriate.” It is apparently up to the banks to decide what is appropriate.

While it appears that the OCC, which has a history of acting on behalf of the finance industry rather than the public,has been at the core of the most egregious giveaways, it is also clear that the most of the machinery of the federal government, at least those portions directed by Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, are doing their level best to ensure that there are no real consequences to what in a sane regulatory environment would be felonies involving people being sentenced to extended stays in “Club Fed”.

Instead, it increasingly appears that the Feds will be negotiating a sweetheart deal that will include provisions to make actions by the state attorneys general, and possible private torts difficult, if not impossible.

It’s nice that the “paper of record” has finally noticed this.  People like Yves Smith have been screaming about this for months.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! (on Saturday)

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Western Springs National Bank and Trust, Western Springs, IL
  2. Nevada Commerce Bank, Las Vegas, NV

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Mission San Francisco Federal Credit Union, San Francisco, CA

Full NCUA list

 
Well, things seem to be slowing down, which is a good sign.

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):