This pisses me off so much: The Fight For WaMu Documents. It is an email from Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC, to Jason Cave, also at the FDIC, with the subject line WAMU. It is so sensitive that it cannot be seen by the press. Just what is the FDIC hiding? And the OTS, they were far more direct: they simply told the Puget Sound Business Journal that their FOIA request was "denied in full".All during the boom years of the 90s and 2000s, did the OTS or FDIC ever stand up to anyone, for either law or principal? I doubt it. But now they are smug and arrogant enough to send shit like this to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Beyond the insolence of our government agencies there is a very serious charge being made here: that government regulators gave WaMu to J.P. Morgan Chase ("Just the assets please, we don't want the liabilities."). They did this to keep JPM solvent. "Kyle Krol", in comments, alleges that JPM committed felonies in the process (click the link and go down). Who knows if there is any truth here, or if this is just a vindictive lawsuit? If our government is permitted to do this sort of concealment we will never know.
When us mere citizens write a check or swipe a debit card the transaction is a matter of record. And if we are indicted for some crime, or if the government just chooses to audit us (even at random), all our financial transactions may be seen. But the financial dealings of major too big to fail banks – they are far too sensitive for public scrutiny. Suppose the bank is charged with wrongdoing? No one will be permitted to see anything. If the government sides with the bank, and even conspired in the crime, what hope would the plaintiff ever have?
Pretty Boy Floyd and Jesse James were thought to be good at robbing banks in their day. They had no idea what could be done if you got the federal government to back you up.
3 comments:
Must probe these as well…
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/387205-ppy/35365-first-bank-of-idaho-fbop-san-joaquin-bank-premature-fdic-seizures-and-waste-of-insurance-fund
“Notice the similarities among San Joaquin Bank, FBOP, and First Bank of Idaho?
SAN JOAQUIN BANK/ COST TO FDIC: $103 MILLION
fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09185.html
” Bakersfield and Kern County have lost an excellent institution: San Joaquin Bank. As a community, we are left with numerous questions about this closure. The main question: ‘How could this happen?’
Shutting down a successful local business bank does not strike me as being in our community’s best interest. It is all the more puzzling because the bank, in a heroic effort, raised the capital needed to meet the FDIC’s formula for liquidity.”
bakersfield.com/opinion/letters/x2990760…
” Elation over the last-minute rescue of San Joaquin Bank halted with the ring of a cell phone at 3:11 p.m. on Oct. 16… Even among those closest to the situation, the decision to shut down the bank came as something of a surprise. They had been told that the banking commissioner had extended a deadline that officially passed the night before, on Oct. 15, and that if the $27 million goal could be met by the end of the next business day, San Joaquin would be spared… New investments topped the $27 million mark that Friday afternoon.”
finreg21.com/news/san-joaquin-banks-fina…
“ San Joaquin Bank’s failure is especially disappointing in light of suggestions that it need not have happened. The bank was said to have secured the $27 million in capital that regulators demanded it nail down in order the stave off closure, only to face the axe anyway.”
bakersfield.com/opinion/editorials/x1675…
*imho*
FBOP/ COST TO FDIC: $2.5 BILLION
fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr09195.html
Nine banks, part of FBOP Corp, were seized and sold to U.S. Bancorp. Unlike most other troubled financial institutions, the banking operation failed not because of poor and reckless management but primarily because of its investments in FNM and FRE. Due to rule changes it was no longer eligible for the TARP assistance originally promised. Its plan to re-capitalize itself with private funding was not accepted. The least cost solution for the FDIC at the time of seizure was probably sharing the $2.5 billion loss, but we would never know the “real least cost solution” if FBOP got more time or its re-capitalization proposal was accepted.
“The largest privately held banking group in the nation, the best community bank operation around, had been taken over… FBOP Corp. was felled by its investments in quasi-governmental Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The common banking industry practice of investing short-term assets, 30- or 60-day money in Fannie and Freddie, lost FBOP the majority of its capital base virtually overnight and allowed the government to claim the bank was seriously undercapitalized…
And why wouldn’t the FDIC give the bank the extra week they requested to raise the funds… Why are taxpayer needs better served by putting us potentially on the hook for $2.5 billon, rather than by giving the bank another week?”
wednesdayjournalonline.com/main.asp
“Michael Kelly says bank holding company had been promised TARP funds, but rule change left it scrambling to raise private investments… FBOP was working with private investors to invest up to $750 million of new capital into the banks… we submitted a proposal to the regulators, but it has not been approved. Regulators picked U.S. Bancorp to take over FBOP’s banks.”
chicagotribune.com/business/chi-tue-fbop…
Our current FDIC chairwoman, Ms. Sheila Bair, got even better with this one, invoking an old rule to gift USB 2 extra banks that didn’t even fail. I wonder why WMBfsb, with allegedly $17 billion in cash, was not allowed to help its sister bank Wamu remain operative until TARP passed.
messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_W/threadview
http://www.mediafire.com/
“Park National Bank didn’t fail. It was ambushed… Park National Bank – days from closing on the $600 million in private capital that the FDIC demanded be raised – is dead. Simultaneously, the FDIC is handing over to another bank a reported $2.5 billion to take on Park National’s assets.”
wednesdayjournalonline.com/main.asp
“When Bad Banks Sink Good Ones… The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is allowed under a 1989 law to assess the costs of disposing of a failed bank that is part of a holding company to other banks with the same owner. The agency has used the mechanism just six times.”
online.wsj.com/article/SB125720151735123867.html
FIRST BANK OF IDAHO/ COST TO FDIC: $191.2 MILLION
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/pr0906...
*imho*
First Bank of Idaho had a June 30, 2009 deadline to raise its capital level but on April 24 OTS appointed FDIC as the receiver. On the same day FDIC seized the bank and sold it to U.S. Bancorp. Apparently FDIC had already found a buyer in secret just like it did with Wamu, therefore ignoring the deadline and the quick transaction. On May 4 a bank board member Nancy Schauer argued against this action as being the least cost solution for FDIC and on May 9 Idaho state lawmakers demanded answers to such broken promises and reckless actions.
April 24, 2009
“First Bank of Idaho in Ketchum was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver… U.S. Bancorp… [assumes] First Bank of Idaho’s deposits, excluding $112.8 million in brokered deposits. U.S. Bank agreed to buy $17.8 million of the failed bank’s assets, or less than 4 percent.”
bloomberg.com/apps…
May 4, 2009
“‘The FDIC says they will lose $191 million because of what has happened but if they’d waited a few weeks it never had to happen, ‘ said Schauer… Now the losses are incalculable.”
newwest.net/city/a…
May 9, 2009
“U.S. Reps. Mike Simpson and Walt Minnick sent letters Friday to the heads of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Thrift Supervision, asking for information about the decision to close the First Bank of Idaho… OTS gave the bank until June 30 to raise $10 million and bring its capital level to 12 percent. But regulators moved to shut down the bank before that June deadline, shocking bank executives who contend they had investors lined up to give the bank a cash infusion and clear millions in bad loans… On April 24, the OTS appointed the FDIC receiver of the bank, and more than 60 FDIC officials seized it. US Bank officials moved in that same day.”
idahostatesman.com…”
*imho
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