John Tully is one half a traditional "roll up the sleeves and dig through the facts" journalist, one half a new media political activist and blogger, and 100% his own original thing after combining the best of both worlds. I can't count the times he's tipped me off first to the story that soon came to dominate the news cycle."
By Stephen Foley in New York
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
The fiancée of Bernard Madoff’s surviving son has provided a glimpse of life in the shadow of history’s biggest fraud, revealing how Andrew Madoff has thrown himself into music and new business ventures as a whirlwind of recrimination continues to swirl around him. [Read more...]
Friday April 24, 2009
If you’ve been following the news, you know by now that Bank of America is in debt to the American taxpayer in the amount of $45 billion – the amount of TARP funds (aka “bailout money”) that they received since last year.
But it turns out that a figure that you likely haven’t heard – $199.2 billion – paints a bit more of an accurate number on how much Bank of America will most likely “borrow” from the American people.
How do we figure?
$12 Billion in TARP Funds for AIG
In addition to the $45 billion in direct TARP funds mentioned above, Bank of America has received a total of $12 billion from AIG after its own bailout, all of which is directly attributable to financing from the Federal Reserve (AIG.com)
$98.2 Billion in Asset Guarantees Against Losses
Bank of America has received a taxpayer guarantee on $118 billion worth of toxic assets. Taxpayers are on the hook for up to $98.2 billion in losses – $7.5 billion from the Treasury, $2.5 billion from the FDIC, and $88.2 billion from the Federal Reserve. (New York Times, 1/16/09)
$44 Billion in Asset Guarantees Through the FDIC’s TLGP
That’s a lot of initials, but essentially, the $44 billion is backed by new bond issuances under the Debt Guarantee Program. This is more than any other financial institution. (Barrons 4/20/09)
Sick of This?
So where does that leave Bank of America? Essentially, it leaves them in our debt. It’s time that Bank of America’s CEO, Ken Lewis, answers to the decisions that he’s made during his tenure as Chief Executive Officer. It’s just one of the many reasons why we’re calling for him to be fired next week during Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting.
If you’ve yet to sign your name to our list of now-tens of thousands of fellow taxpayers who have called for CEO Ken Lewis to go, go to TakeBackTheEconomy.org.
Bankers Eschewed Subprime Loans, Mortgage Securities; The Result — No Bank Failures
Two more U.S. banks were taken over by the government overnight. And while a number of this country’s biggest banks reported improving conditions this week, some of their accounting methods have been questioned.
One place where none of this banking drama is taking place is Canada, as CBS Evening News weekend anchor Jeff Glor reports.
Ed Clark is a plainspoken, polite and prudent Canadian bank CEO with a few simple rules: “We should never do things for our customers and clients that we don’t actually understand. If you wouldn’t put your mother-in-law in this, don’t put our clients in it.”
You may never have heard of Clark or Toronto Dominion bank (aka TD Bank), but it’s the sixth-largest bank in North America – and, in the middle of a global banking crisis, a profitable one at that.
“We will make more money in this quarter than any bank in North America,” Clark said. “So for a little Canadian bank sitting up here, yeah that feels pretty good.”
How did that come to pass?
“Basically, because we didn’t do the things that blew other banks up,” Clark said.
And neither did TD Banks’s Canadian brethren. In the last quarter of 2008, all of Canada’s major banks were profitable, collectively making $2.5 billion during a period when U.S. banks lost more than $26 billion.
In fact, since the financial crisis began, American taxpayers have provided more than $300 billion dollars to more than 450 companies. During that same period, from their government, Canadian banks have not received one penny.
One reason: Take those infamous subprime mortgages given to risky homebuyers. They crippled banks in the U.S., where at peak, 25 percent of loans were subprime. In Canada? Three percent.
“Our U.S. subsidiaries did not do any subprime lending. Nothing. Zero,” Clark said. “We just said, ‘Stay away from this stuff. We know where this is going.’”
Another villain in the financial crisis were toxic mortgage-backed securities – risky loans that were chopped up and resold in countless different ways. Many banks gobbled up the now virtually worthless investments. Ed Clark got out 4 years ago saying they were just too complex.
Clark: “As soon as you see that complexity, you say, ‘How can I possibly think I actually can guess whether this will work or not?’ And as soon as I hear that, I say, ‘Get out of it.’”
Sherry Cooper spent years at the Fed overseeing Wall Street, before moving to Bay Street, the Canadian equivalent.
“It didn’t take long for me to discover that this is an entirely different culture,” said Cooper, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal. “Canadian banks were up to their ankles in the toxic muck whereas American banks were over there heads.”
“A lot of this is about saying, ‘Here are old banking rules, and we’re prepared to give up short term profit in order to make sure we have a balance sheet that doesn’t blow up on us,’” Clark said.
One reason why Canada is the only industrialized nation in the world without a single bank failure in the current economic downturn.
