By Lynn Thomasson and Margaret Brennan
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Meredith Whitney, the analyst who predicted that Citigroup Inc. would cut its dividend last year, said the number of U.S. bank failures will quadruple as lenders struggle with bad loans.
“There will be over 300 bank closures,” Whitney said in an interview with Bloomberg Television from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The small-business owner on Main Street continues to see liquidity come away.”
Unemployment has risen to the highest since the early 1980s and Americans are falling behind on mortgage payments at a record pace, forcing regulators to seize 77 lenders in 2009, the most in 17 years. Colonial BancGroup Inc. was closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and taken over by BB&T Corp. on Aug. 14 in the biggest failure since Washington Mutual Inc. collapsed in 2008....
The plan is to let more USA banks fail. What happened? The jerks on Wall Street, like AIG and Goldman Sachs get their asses in a sling, get a free pass on USA Treasury dollars and then proceed to let every other bank attempting to tread water to fail. Like. What the ?Z!#*(! is that?
Hoenig Stirs Debate on Bank Failures as Fed Forum Convenes (click here)
By Scott Lanman
Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The host for central bankers attending the Federal Reserve conference this weekend to discuss the financial crisis is a regional Fed chief who’s making waves with his proposal for letting big U.S. banks fail.
Thomas Hoenig, the Kansas City Fed president, will welcome Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and dozens of other central bankers to the annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, starting today. Hoenig said he hopes the gathering will serve as a model for handling crises in the future.
Bernanke has urged Congress to back part of Hoenig’s proposal for dealing with faltering big banks, which would wipe out shareholder equity in any that receive government aid. The Treasury Department’s so-called resolution authority plan, while likely to result in stockholder losses, doesn’t require it....
When the hell is someone going to dump Bernanke !?!?!?!!
You know the guy.
The one that said putting $1 trillion US into the 'cash stream' would give everyone all the tools they would need.
THAT GUY !
NewsWatch
Aug 15, 2009, 9:00 a.m. EST
Colonial becomes biggest bank failure of 2009 (click here)
BB&T takes over after FDIC shuts Alabama lender at cost of $2.8 billion
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Colonial BancGroup Inc. has become the largest bank failure this year as the 2009 toll of financial institutions approaches 80.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized the struggling Alabama-based lender Friday and sold it to BB&T Corp.
Late Friday, the FDIC announced four other banks had been closed: Community Bank of Nevada and its Arizona subsidiary, Community Bank of Arizona; Union Bank, Gilbert, Ariz; and Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, Pittsburgh.
The Colonial BancGroup deal will knock roughly $2.8 billion off a pool of money, known as the Deposit Insurance Fund, which the FDIC maintains to guarantee bank customer deposits.
BB&T /quotes/comstock/13*!bbt/quotes/nls/bbt (BBT 28.10, +0.32, +1.15%) agreed to assume all of Colonial's deposits, which totaled about $20 billion at the end of June, the FDIC said. Depositors of Colonial will automatically become depositors of BB&T and customers can continue accessing their money by writing checks or using ATMs and debit cards, the regulator stressed....
This is the BEST part.
Ready?
Bank Failures in the United States (click here)
Aug 20, 2009 - 05:02 PM
By: Global_Research
Bob Chapman writes: We had a bank go on Thursday and now we have a continuation of the Friday Night FDIC Financial Follies. Federal and state regulators closed two small Arizona banks Friday evening, but depositors won't feel any pain....
...Much to their dismay, Americans learned last year that they ‘owned’ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, meet their cousin, Ginnie Mae or the Government National Mortgage Association, which will soon join them as a trillion-dollar packager of subprime mortgages. Taxpayers own Ginnie too. Only last week, Ginnie announced that it issued a monthly record of $43 billion in mortgage-backed securities in June. Ginnie Mae President Joseph Murin sounded almost giddy as he cheered this ‘phenomenal growth.’ Ginnie Mae’s mortgage exposure is expected to top $1 trillion by the end of next year—or far more than double the dollar amount of 2007. Ginnie’s mission is to bundle, guarantee and then sell mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which is Uncle Sam’s home mortgage shop. Ginnie’s growth is a by-product of the FHA’s spectacular growth. The FHA now insures $560 billion of mortgages—quadruple the amount in 2006. Among the FHA, Ginnie, Fannie and Freddie, nearly nine of every 10 new mortgages in America now carry a federal taxpayer guarantee....
Maybe it wasn't clear enough, so, I'll mention it again.
...nearly nine of every 10 new mortgages in America now carry a federal taxpayer guarantee....
Just because Bubba Bernanke says things are looking up, doesn't mean it is. It's just that everyone else is too blasted scared to argue with him.
