Elohim 'elohiym Hebrew: (אֱלֹהִים m. "God" Dan 11:38;Hab 1:11) is a word that expresses concepts of divinity. It consists of the Hebrew word Eloah (Hebrew: אֱלוֹהַּ 'elowahh "God") with a plural suffix.
Showing posts with label Bank of America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bank of America. Show all posts
Mary Bottari on December 21, 2011
On Monday, Bank of America (BofA) stocks briefly traded for under $5. Yes, you could buy a share of BofA for less than the noxious debit card fee they tried to force down your throat.
BofA is massive, with assets equivalent to 15 percent of U.S. GDP. So why is it trading for the price of a latte?
Because Wall Street’s dirty little secret is that BofA is a zombie bank. Now the reek is getting too strong to ignore.
The Most Dangerous Bank In America?
In 2008-2009, BofA publicly took $45 billion in TARP bailout funds and secretly took another $91 billion in emergency Federal Reserve loans. According to Bloomberg News, it made $1.5 billion in profits off of those loans. Yet, several analysts predict that BofA is woefully short of capital reserves.
A recent study by NYU’s Stern School of Business ranks BofA as the most systemically risky firm in the United States. These analysts use public information and focus on the capital shortfall that would be experienced by the bank in the event of another crisis. BofA’s weak condition means it is in a position to “create or extend” such a crisis.
As if this were not enough, recent news reports indicate that BofA is trying to move $22 trillion in derivatives out of its Merrill Lynch subsidiary into its FDIC-insured bank. The Fed favors the move (naturally). The FDIC, which provides insurance to depositors if a bank fails, does not.
In this pile of derivatives could be all sorts of problems, including bad European debt, the same kind of debt that brought down Jon Corzine’s derivatives firm, MF Global. Taxpayers don’t backstop MF Global. We do backstop BofA through the FDIC and the Fed.
The young man stands on the edge of his porch
The days were short and the father was gone
There was no one in the town and no one in the field
This dusty barren land had given all it could yield
I’ve been kicked off my land at the age of sixteen
And I have no idea where else my heart could have been
I placed all my trust at the foot of this hill
And now I am sure my heart can never be still
So collect your courage and collect your horse
And pray you never feel this same kind of remorse
The song from Mumford & Sons called Dust Bowl Dance is as pertinent to today as it was in describing the Great Depression. I was taken by the lyrics and the rage in the song. The setting for the song is the Dust Bowl of the 1930′s in the US Midwest. Picture the Joads in Grapes of Wrath. As I listened to the song again this morning I was struck by the similarities between the time period described in the song and our present situation.
The lyrics by Marcus Mumford tell the story of a young man who’s lost everything. His family is either dead or forced off their land. My interpretation of the lyrics is that the bank has foreclosed on his farm after their crops failed during the dust bowl. I picture a Mr. Potter like character who held the mortgages on all the farms and houses in a small community. The evil banker didn’t care that families had lived on this land for decades, raising their families along with the crops. These hard working farmers had done nothing wrong. They were victims of circumstances. But bankers didn’t care about ruining lives. The family farmers didn’t participate in the Roaring 20′s, borrow on margin to invest in stocks, or reap ungodly profits. The farmers were victims of land speculators and bad weather. The only son in the song took the law into his own hand and shot the evil banker. He was ready to do his time, because his act was righteous payback.
Eighty years ago the last Fourth Turning was also in its infancy. They generally last 15 to 20 years. The catalyst for the last Fourth Turning was the great stock market crash of 1929. The 1920s “boom” enriched only a fraction of the American people. Earnings for farmers and industrial workers stagnated or fell. Farmers were barely getting by during the roaring 20s. Only the Wall Street crowd was getting rich. The economic growth of the 1920s did not reach most Americans: 60% of American families earned less than the amount necessary to support their basic needs ($2,500 was considered enough to support a family’s basic needs). The agricultural sector was similarly stagnant: farm prices dropped after World War I when Europe again began to feed itself and new grain exports from South American further depressed prices. The lack of purchasing power of rural people and farmers resulted in declines in consumer purchasing in those areas, as well as increased defaults on debt. Rural, urban, and suburban consumers began to increase their personal debts through mortgages, car loans, and installment plans to buy consumer goods, such as radios.
The ever-growing price for stocks was, in part, the result of greater wealth concentration within the investor class. Eventually the Wall Street stock exchange began to take on a dangerous aura of invincibility, leading investors to ignore less optimistic indicators in the economy. Over-investment and speculating (gambling) in stocks further inflated their prices, contributing to the illusion of a robust economy.
The crucial point came in the 1920s when banks began to loan money to stock-buyers since stocks were the hottest commodity in the marketplace. Wall Street banks encouraged Wall Street investors to use the stocks themselves as collateral. When stocks dropped in value, and investors could not repay the banks, the banks were left holding near-worthless collateral. Banks went broke, pulling productive businesses down with them as they called in loans and foreclosed mortgages in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. The Federal Reserve was responsible for regulating the banks. They were responsible for the easy money policies during the 1920s. The biggest financial institutions in the country included: Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan & Co., Chase National Bank, and Wells Fargo. Sound familiar?
The Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve and their owners, the biggest Wall Street banks, aiding and abetting reckless speculation, greed and extreme risk taking with mountains of debt. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The income inequality in the U.S. reached an all-time peak in 1928. It stayed at a high level until World War II. The glory years of the American Empire were from 1941 through 1979, when the middle class was growing, and the income distribution in the country was fair and equitable, as our manufacturing based economy raised all boats. Full Article
Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners.
The practice continues nearly a year after the companies were caught cutting corners in the robo-signing scandal and about six months after the industry began negotiating a settlement with state attorneys general investigating loan-servicing abuses.
Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.
Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist.
Many banks are missing the original papers from when they securitized the mortgages, in some cases as long ago as 2005 and 2006, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. They and some industry members say the related mortgage assignments, showing transfers from one lender to another, should have been completed and filed with document custodians at the time of transfer.
"It's one thing to not have the documents you're supposed to have even though you told investors and the SEC you had them," says Lynn E. Szymoniak, a plaintiff's lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. "But they're making up new documents."
The banks argue that creating such documents is a routine business practice that simply "memorializes" actions that should have occurred years before. Some courts have endorsed that view, but others, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, have found that this amounts to a lack of sufficient evidence and renders foreclosures invalid.
According to a document submitted in a Florida court by Bank of America Corp., bank assistant vice president Sandra Juarez signed a mortgage assignment on July 29 of this year that purported to transfer ownership of a mortgage from New Century Mortgage Corp. to a trustee, Deutsche Bank. Two problems with that: New Century, a subprime lender, went bankrupt in 2007; and the Deutsche Bank trust that purported to hold the loan was created for a securitization completed in 2006 — about five years before Juarez signed it over to the trust. (Bank of America, as the servicer of the loan, was seeking to foreclose on behalf of the trust and its bondholders.)
