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Italian prosecutors have now detained the former head of the Vatican’s bank after searching his home and former office for suspected criminal behavior. Catholics and followers of the Holy See will be disappointed to learn that the Vatican’s bank appears to be embroiled in yet another financial scandal. After a number of very embarrassing episodes in recent years, the Pope pledged to comply with international standards on illicit finance and clean up the bank’s image. The European Union has an important role to play in helping the Vatican mitigate risk and come into full compliance; the Financial Action Task Force...

I don't often put stories in "breaking." I post vanities even less often. Hardly anything surprises me any longer, but I find this absolutely astounding. If you follow the financial threads or the situation in Europe, you really need to read this. Actually anyone with a bank account needs to read this. I'm going to ask the mods to leave this here, unless they really feel I'm all wet here. I don't, however, believe I am. Follow me here. BNI (Bank Network Investments) is Italy's oldest and forth largest bank. In other words, it's a biggie. Anyway, the bank went...

Time Bomb? Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt CNBC, NETNET, NET NET, EUROPE DEBT, GREEK DEBT, EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS, ECB, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK Posted By: Jeff Cox | CNBC.com Senior Writer CNBC.com | 31 May 2012 | 02:42 PM ET US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says. Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says. While that...

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Your account information will now be accessible to call center workers in the Philippines. Bank of America, which last fall announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers, is about to go on a hiring spree—overseas.America's second-largest bank is relocating its business-support operations to the Philippines, according to a high-ranking Filipino government official recently quoted in the Filipino press. The move, which includes a portion of the bank's customer service unit, comes less than three years after Bank of America received a $45 billion federal bailout.Roman Romulo, deputy majority leader of the Philippine House of Representatives, bragged to the Manila Standard...

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, former president of the Vatican Bank. Vatican City, May 25, 2012 / 10:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The President of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, has been fired from his post following a vote of no-confidence by the bank's supervisory board. “Over time this area had generated increasing worries among the members of the board and, despite repeated efforts to communicate these concerns to Professor Gotti Tedeschi, President of the Works of Religion, the situation deteriorated further,” read a communiqué issued by the Vatican May 25. “Following discussion of the issues, the board members voted unanimously in...

Trading in the securities of Spanish lender Bankia has been suspended "due to circumstances that may affect the normal share trading," stock market regulator CNMV said on Friday. Bankia will ask the state for more than 15 billion euros ($19 billion) to bail it out when its new management team presents a restructuring plan on Friday, a financial sector source said late on Thursday.

Out of nowehere, JPM announced 40 minutes ago that it would hold an unscheduled 5pm call to coincide with the release of its 10-Q. Rumors were swirling as to why. The reason is as follows: JPMORGAN SAYS CIO UNIT HAS SIGNIFICANT MARK-TO-MARKET LOSSES - "Fortress balance sheet" at least until Bruno Iskil gets done with it. JPMORGAN SAYS LOSSES ARE IN SYNTHETIC CREDIT PORTFOLIO - but, but, net is NEVER, EVER Gross. JPM WOULD NEED $971M ADDED COLLATERAL IF RATINGS CUT ONE-NOTCH JPM WOULD NEED $1.7B ADDED COLLATERAL IF RATINGS CUT 2 NOTCHES - how about three notches? JPMORGAN: MAY...

Two recent pieces of news drive home the importance of making sure that your bank respects your Second Amendment rights. Earlier this month, McMillan Group International, LLC announced that Bank Of America had severed ties with their company specifically because, in the years since they'd opened their accounts, McMillan had transitioned into a firearms manufacturing role. From a statement released by McMillan on April 19: McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years. Today Mr. Ray Fox, Senior Vice President, Market Manager, Business Banking, Global Commercial Banking came...

NEW YORK — Bank of America says it has begun a pilot program offering some of its mortgage customers who are facing foreclosure a chance to stay in their homes by becoming renters instead of owners. The "Mortgage to Lease" program, which was launched this week, will be available to fewer than 1,000 BofA customers selected by the bank in test markets in Arizona, Nevada and New York. Participants will transfer their home's title to the bank, which will then forgive the outstanding mortgage debt. In exchange, they will be able to lease their home for up to three years...

"That's crazy," the person says. "I can't believe they [Chase officials] did that." Almonte called for the bank to halt the debt sale, but was warned by Lazinbat that "she had better go along with the plan to sell the misrepresented asset," she later wrote in her employment lawsuit. Almonte says she refused Lazinbat's order and escalated her concerns to his boss, Helaire. Chase fired her on Nov. 30, 2009. Carole McGinn was not a party to discussions about the debt sale but confirms the thrust of Almonte's claims. "I know she [Almonte] was looking into things that they didn't...

Citigroup was one of four large US banks that flunked stress tests aimed at seeing how they would hold up in a new economic crisis, Federal Reserve data showed Tuesday. Three others -- Ally, Suntrust and MetLife -- also failed the tests, while 15 other large bank holding companies passed the exercise, the Fed said. As a group, though, the 19 came through strongly, said the Fed, thanks to pressure for them to boost capital over the past three years as the financial sector digs its way out of the deep 2008-2009 recession. "In fact, despite the significant projected capital...

| Share Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012 THE ZEIT GIST Threatened Goldman Japan workers unionize Financial giant butts against tough domestic labor law as it seeks to slim down workforce By JAMES MCCROSTIE The past year has been anything but business as usual for the financial industry. Faced with a frosty economic climate, financial service companies have been busy chopping dead wood. Last year, 200,000 financial service jobs ended up on the cutting block worldwide. In Japan, that meant layoffs at famous firms including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Mizuho Financial Group, and the not-so-famous, such as Spanish bank Bilbao Vizcaya...

The U.S. Treasury Department disrupted a Dubai-based banking operation that Washington believes had become Tehran's primary conduit for evading international sanctions and processing its oil sales, according to people briefed on the operation. The effort was particularly sensitive because the targeted institution in the United Arab Emirates is partly owned by the local government of Dubai, a close U.S. ally. The chairman of the bank, called the Noor Islamic Bank, is the son of Dubai's ruler.

A President Dares Us Once Again. In Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s story, “Alice in Wonderland,” young Alice is wandering through that magical fantasyland when she encounters a talking egg, which confused her by sprinkling clearly-misused words into the conversation. When she called him on it, Humpty Dumpty assumed his most arrogant pose and declared "When I use a word, it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less." How dare the girl call him on his abuse of language?! If he wanted to use a word to mean something it had never meant before, and...

...in 2012, after eighty years of the Ex-Im Bank successfully and happily obeying its charter, President Obama has directed the Ex-Im Bank to violate it wholesale. Instead of only loaning to good foreign risks, he wants them to loan to American companies (in competition with American banks). Instead of only making loans attached to, and collateralized by, American export shipments of physical goods, he wants them to make start-up loans, short-term finance loans, bridge loans, that have nothing to do with export shipments (though they might help the companies become exporters, in the same way that if you give me...

Acting without any legal authority, President Obama has overridden the federal charter of the Export-Import Bank, and turned it into a competitor for domestic loan business, in utter defiance of the law. Hardly anyone has noticed or seems to care. Speaking at a Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Washington Friday, President Barack Obama announced a bold new plan to help American exporters: he would broaden the services of the Ex-Im Bank to help grow our exports. Now, that sounds good on the face of it. The Ex-Im Bank is chartered as an export-funding source with a very narrow, specific charter....

An SUV was driven up the front steps of the downtown PNC Firstside Center and hit the entrance of the building on Tuesday afternoon. Sources told Channel 4 Action News that, as the driver of the Hyundai Santa Fe fled the crash scene, he claimed to be with Occupy Pittsburgh and said there might be an explosive device inside the vehicle. "He came down here and he stopped at the stop sign, and then he went straight up into the building. He didn't go fast," witness Ashley Corek said. "And then he got up and walked out, and then went...

One of the two people killed on a slippery road in Superior was facing prison time after pleading guilty in federal court to charges in a widespread identity theft ring. Forty-one-year-old Frances Jones was a passenger in an SUV that collided with another vehicle last Friday. The driver of the SUV, 49-year-old Harry Wilson, was also killed. The U.S. Attorney's Office says 12 people were indicted in the plot that defrauded banks and retail businesses, primarily in the Midwest, of more than $2 million. Jones faced up to 32 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit...

On Jan. 23, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun L.S. Donovan met in Chicago with several Democratic state attorneys general (AGs) in an attempt to strong-arm them into signing up for an administration-backed agreement to settle the “robo-signing” scandal. Wall Street would pay what sounds like a large fine ($25 billion), and in exchange, the state AGs would relieve the bankers of all legal liabilities related to the fraudulent mortgage-lending practices that led directly to the 2008 financial meltdown and a 30 percent drop in U.S. home prices. The fraudulent practices of the mortgage servicers have injected...