Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 23, 2023 ~ As the chart above indicates, Friday was not a good day to own regional bank stocks. The percentage declines are just for the one day of trading on Friday — not the year-to-date percentage losses. After the bank runs this past spring at regional banks brought on the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history, things had quieted down in recent months. Then, along came earnings announcements last week, showing renewed struggles among the regional banks. One of the big losers for the week was Zions Bancorp. Its shares plunged 9.7 percent on Thursday and another 7.07 percent on Friday. The bank posted poor year-over-year comparisons on net interest income as it experienced rising expenses to compete for deposits. Another plunging bank stock on Friday was Regions Financial. The bank is facing continuing pressure on its net interest income. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2023 ~ Bank of America is the second largest bank by assets in the United States, topped in assets by only JPMorgan Chase. Both mega banks have seen a steady decline in deposits since the first quarter of 2022. But the decline in deposits at Bank of America represents just 65 percent of the deposit outflows that have occurred at JPMorgan Chase in the past seven quarters. (Bank of America, as the chart above shows, did report a small uptick in deposits in the current quarter.) At the end of the first quarter of 2022, Bank of America held $2.046 trillion in deposits. According to the 8-K filing the bank made with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, as of September 30, 2023 Bank of America’s deposits had declined to $1.885 trillion, a shrinkage of $161 billion. In the same span of time, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2023 ~ On Monday, Michael Barr, the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, addressed a contentious issue in a speech before the American Bankers Association’s annual convention in Nashville. The topic was why federal banking regulators have proposed higher capital levels for the largest U.S. banks, those with assets over $100 billion. As we reported on September 20, there has been aggressive pushback on the proposal from large banks, their lobbyists and their trade associations. (Community banks are not impacted by the proposal.) During his speech, Barr put a staggering dollar figure on the destruction to the U.S. economy that could materialize from another major financial crisis. Barr said this: “Research suggests the costs of a financial crisis are sizable. While estimates vary widely, the cumulative loss in economic activity is consistently estimated to lie above 20 percent of annual GDP—and in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2023 ~ Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a “two-fisted money grab from banks.” Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase. In a Tweet, Eisinger said: “This is corruption, but isn’t called that because it’s so quotidian.” Now there is the appearance that a quid pro quo is coming full circle. According to a press release posted on JPMorgan Chase’s website, “it has been designated by the United States Treasury Department under a financial agency agreement to provide account validation services for federal government agencies” in order to ensure “Treasury’s commitment to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 9, 2023 ~ It took eight years of research to compile a data set of annual balance sheets of more than 11,000 commercial banks dating back to 1870 in 17 advanced economies. And in every country, the study arrived at the same finding: concentrating the banking system in the hands of five or less giant banks leads to financial instability and more severe financial crises. The bank balance sheets of the following countries were examined: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The 150-year banking study is titled: “Survival of the Biggest: Large Banks and Financial Crises.” Its authors are Matthew Baron of Cornell University; Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Sciences; and Kaspar Zimmermann of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE. Other … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 5, 2023 ~ As evidenced by the speech that the FDIC Chair, Martin Gruenberg, delivered at a conference yesterday, the FDIC is very much aware that both the level of uninsured deposits and the concentration of those uninsured deposits among a handful of mega banks is a serious problem for the U.S. banking system. Gruenberg didn’t name names, but we will do that in this article. Gruenberg pointed out in his speech that year-end data for the three banks that failed this past spring indicated that anywhere from 90 percent to 70 percent of their deposits were uninsured. (During a banking panic, uninsured deposits are typically those that head for the exits at the fastest clip.) But those three failed banks (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank) were minnows compared to the asset-size of the banking whales which now account for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2023 ~ Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of the serially-charged criminal trading operations of JPMorgan Chase, which thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, is also allowed to own the largest federally-insured bank in the United States and use its trillions of dollars in mom and pop deposits to gamble in derivatives. Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley; served in the administrations of Presidents Ford and Carter and as Labor Secretary under Clinton; is the author of 18 books, including bestsellers The Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism, and Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. Reich received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Jamie Dimon made the mistake of coming into the radar of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2023 ~ The Fed’s problem and the U.S. Treasury’s problem just became the problem of every American who has their retirement savings stuffed in the stock market via 401(k) plans or direct holdings. As the chart above shows in crisp terms, stocks do not like yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rising to a level that is competitive with the return on stocks – especially since the principal on the Treasury note is guaranteed at maturity while the principal in the stock market is guaranteed to take one’s stomach on a roller coaster ride. Last evening, the 10-year U.S. Treasury note had spiked to a yield of 4.682 percent, its highest yield since 2007. As of early this morning, its yield had spiked even higher, to 4.738 percent, making a 5 percent handle increasingly possible. In response to the competition from Treasury … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 21, 2023 ~ On July 27, the Federal Reserve, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a proposal to require higher capital levels at banks with $100 billion or more in assets – those that demonstrated quite clearly this past spring that they could spread systemic contagion throughout the U.S. banking system. Community banks will not be impacted at all by the new proposals according to the regulators. The three federal bank regulators provided a very generous public comment period of 120 days on the proposal. (Submit your own comment here.) The large banks had to only begin transitioning to the new rules on July 1, 2025, with full compliance not due for an absurd five years – on July 1, 2028. On September 12, the banking cartel made their anger known in a 7-page letter that assaulted the proposal from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2023 ~ We’re very sorry to have to tell you this, but if you’re not watching Senate Banking or House Financial Services Committee hearings when the topic is about increasing bank capital or any new regulations to make the U.S. banking system less prone to blowing up, you are likely seriously underestimating how corruption has become the new normal in the United States of America. The big banks’ trade associations and law firms that pay millions of dollars each year to registered lobbyists to bend Congress to their will are now dominating the witness list at these hearings. The right-wing Republican Senators that are funded by the banks and Wall Street then read from a script written by the lobbyists to ask their toady questions, pretending there is actually a give-and-take in these hearings. Take, for example, the hearing held on September 14 by … Continue reading →