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Showing posts with label BAC securites fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BAC securites fraud. Show all posts

Thursday, November 3, 2011

$16 TRILLION – Fed bails out the world, 0% interest, and no payback!

$16 TRILLION – Fed bails out the world, 0% interest, and no payback!

Senator Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont
Editor’s Note – The fact that the Federal Reserve is neither “Federal” nor a “Reserve,” and also not part of the official Federal Government is now clear to most of the world, and certainly to the concerned citizenry of the USA, finally. What is not known, but bandied about on the internet for quite some time is: “Where did the money go?”
What seemed like an absolutely outrageous sum, one that even the most ardent conspiracy theorist would be hard pressed to swallow, now appears to be vetted thoroughly, especially since it appears on Senator Bernie Sanders’ web site, as posted below. Remember, Sanders is an avowed Socialist! The thought now must occur to the concerned, not just SUA, and as we all should be, is the reason that the Congress is not dealing with this question.
Beyond what is printed/posted by Sanders, look below at what the GAO report means. The next question, one we have repeatedly posted, is a true understanding of what these numbers mean, and why these astronomical sums are not part of our daily media feed and ‘well of the House’ discussion.
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The Fed Audit

From the Sanders web site:
What a billion in $100 bills looks like.
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”
Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.
The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.
In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. “No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed’s board of directors or be employed by the Fed,” he said.
What a trillion in $100 bills looks like. (Notice the same scale man lower left)
The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.
A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. “The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street.”
To read the GAO report, click here.
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What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 (TRILLION) had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland . From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs. To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is only $14.5 trillion.
The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is only $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world. In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.
“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you-are-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” Bernie Sanders(I-VT)
When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self-identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.
Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and super corporations like Halloween candy.
If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses can be stopped with five dollars worth of bullets. Regardless of whether this money is fiat money (money printed with nothing of value to back it), if it is a currency forced on society and the world, with enforcement by the Fed, IRS, the U.S. military, et al, which it is the acts of the Federal Reserve are, in essence, the transfer of greater wealth to the rich insider banks and corporations, while the rest of the world grows poorer, and as the value of this funny money grows less and less in purchasing power. These insider banks, etc., then, exchange this funny money for gold and silver, the real wealth of the world, which, then, reinflates the world with more and more devaluing federal reserve notes. This, then, creates hyper-inflation, increasing the cost of all resources and commodities, while gold and silver climb to never-seen-before levels of value.
This is how the Federal Reserve insiders steal the wealth of the world and why the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. It’s the world’s largest Ponzi scheme! The Federal Reserve is nothing but a front for a small group of families who run a white collar criminal Ponzi scheme.
This criminal institution should be seized by the U.S. Treasury department and all assets frozen, and returned to the coffers of the U.S. Treasury in order to settle the U.S. debt and help begin to balance the U.S. deficit. All banks (listed below) should be forced to return the money received by the Federal Reserve. All families in ownership of the Fed and their agents should be located, caught, tried and jailed for grand larceny and treason against the people of the U.S.A. All government agents who protect and help facilitate this criminal organization should be fired from the positions and similarly tried and jailed for grand larceny and treason. Meanwhile, Congress should return our country to its original monetary system and, again, do its duty to regulate the coining of the currency of America as per the U.S. Constitution.
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows:
  • Citigroup: $2.5 trillion($2,500,000,000,000)
  • Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
  • Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
  • Bank of America : $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
  • Barclays PLC ( United Kingdom ): $868 billion* ($868,000,000,000)
  • Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
  • Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
  • Royal Bank of Scotland ( UK ): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
  • JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
  • Deutsche Bank ( Germany ): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
  • UBS ( Switzerland ): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
  • Credit Suisse ( Switzerland ): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
  • Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
  • Bank of Scotland ( United Kingdom ): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
  • BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

AIG Sues Bank of America over fraudulent mortgages that were supposedly backing the securities

AIG sues Bank of America over mortgages
Dow Jones Newswires

09 Aug 2011
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American International Group sued Bank of America yesterday in an effort to recover more than $10bn it lost on mortgage investments, and separately filed an objection to the lender's proposed settlement with other mortgage bond investors.

AIG's lawsuit and its attempt to intervene in the much-publicised $8.5bn settlement throws another obstacle in the way of Bank of America's efforts to put its mortgage woes behind it.

The suit over the $10bn in losses alleges 'massive fraud' by Bank of America and two units it acquired, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, saying they packaged securities that were backed by 'hundreds of thousands of defective mortgages,' according to the lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court.

The suit says Bank of America and its subsidiaries inflated home appraisals, allowed borrowers to misstate their income, ignored internal warnings about shoddy underwriting and selected the riskiest mortgages for securitisation.

AIG's suit references information gathered from several confidential witnesses, including one who alleged a vice president at Bank of America said he 'didn't give a flying f---' about whether loans met the bank's underwriting standards.

AIG contends it lost more than $10bn on about 350 residential mortgage-backed securities that it initially bought between 2005 and 2007 for about $28bn from businesses that are now part of Bank of America. The size of AIG's losses makes the suit one of the largest of its kind brought by an investor since the housing bubble popped.

Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the bank's disclosures on the quality of mortgage bonds were robust enough for sophisticated investors, and called AIG 'the very definition of an informed, seasoned investor, with losses solely attributable to its own excesses and errors. We reject AIGs assertions and allegations.'

The insurer, Di Rita said, 'recklessly chased high yields and profits throughout the mortgage and structured finance markets.'

AIG spokesman Mark Herr said Bank of America was attempting 'to blame others for its own misconduct.

'Investors, no matter how sophisticated, were entitled to rely on its numerous written representations about the securities it sold,' Herr said. 'Now that it is clear that those representations were false, Bank of America must be held to account.'

The lawsuit contends Bank of America knowingly misrepresented its underwriting standards in its descriptions of the mortgage-backed securities purchased by AIG.

An analysis of 262,322 mortgages, just a fraction of the loans that were pooled in the mortgage securities AIG purchased, found 40% of the loans violated the underwriting standards described by the bank when it sold the securities, the lawsuit alleges.

Many of the mortgage bonds AIG bought and suffered losses on are still in a vehicle called Maiden Lane II that's sitting on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The vehicle also holds securities originated by banks including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and others.

In a related action, AIG filed papers yesterday in an attempt to intervene in the proposed $8.5bn settlement between Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon, which served as trustee on dozens of Bank of America mortgage securities.

The attempt to block the settlement in New York State Supreme Court comes on top of an effort by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to intervene. Like Schneiderman, AIG contends in its motion to intervene that the settlement is inadequate and rife with conflicts of interest.

In a recent securities filing, Bank of America said failure to win court approval for the settlement, or withdrawal from the agreement, 'could have a material adverse effect on our cash flows, financial condition and results of operation.'

Many of the mortgage bonds cited in AIG's lawsuit were purchased when the insurer used to have a securities lending business. The now-defunct division lent out corporate bonds and other securities owned by AIG's insurance units, in exchange for short-term cash loans from banks that AIG could invest for additional yield.

A Congressional Oversight Panel report on AIG last year noted that rather than investing that cash in low-risk, short-term securities for a modest yield, 'AIG invested in more speculative securities tied to the RMBS market.'

In 2008, when the housing market weakened and sub-prime bonds lost substantial value, AIG was holding tens of billions of dollars in mortgage bonds that it couldn't sell without incurring large losses. In the fall of that year, when banks asked for their cash back, the insurer had difficulty returning the money and had to use use federal aid to repay the banks after being bailed out.

Shares of Bank of America were down 16% to $6.86 in recent trading; shares of AIG were down 10.1% to $22.56.

-By Erik Holm and Serena Ng, 212-416-2892; erik.holm@dowjones.com

( David Benoit and Dan Fitzpatrick contributed to this article)