Free Republic

SunTrust Banks Inc. is shuttering its fraud-response call center group in Orlando and shedding more than 100 jobs, the bank confirmed Wednesday. Atlanta-based SunTrust, the largest bank in Central Florida, handed out pink slips to 105 employees on Tuesday. The effective layoff date is Oct. 31, according to documents filed with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. "Difficult decisions must be made to increase operational efficiencies and decrease expenses to better position the company for the future," SunTrust told employees in the layoff notice. The bank posted a $400 million profit on revenue of $2.2 billion in the second quarter,...

Word has leaked that JPMorgan Chase and possibly four other banks have been hacked. Details are scarce at this point, but the FBI and other government agencies are involved in the investigation. The hack allegedly took place earlier in August and hackers have siphoned off huge amounts of sensitive data from Chase, including checking and savings account information. Even more concerning, sources say that the attack goes "far beyond the capabilities of ordinary hackers." Given the timing, some security experts are speculating it was the work of high-level Russian hackers. According to an inside source, there has been no increase...

The National Organization for Marriage is calling for a public response to an employee survey conducted internally by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank. Workers at the financial institution leaked information on the so-called confidential survey, which asked in part if they identified as LGBT and whether they were an ally of the LGBT community (see earlier story). Joe Grabowski, with the National Organization for Marriage, tells OneNewsNow that this survey was intrusive into the private beliefs of the employees. “It's a very invasive question,” he says. “And one could certainly imagine - especially in the wake of things like the forced...

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo) is sponsoring H.R. 4986, the End Operation Choke Point Act of 2014. The bill aims to stem Department of Justice abuse of legitimate businesses. Under Operation Choke Point the DOJ working in concert with the FTC, FDIC, OCC, CFPB, and FBI has been intimidating banks in order to deny these financial resources to targeted commercial operations. While DOJ claims it is merely combating criminal activity, legal, but pariah businesses like firearms vending, marijuana dispensaries and check cashing firms have frequently been shut off from the banking system. The Administration opposes the bill. “Even though some businesses...

The recent exposé of the employee survey that asked probing questions about employee support for the “LGBT community” has focused attention on something that the typical depositor might not be aware of, and that is the massive time and attention JP Morgan Chase lavishes on the LGBT issue. Four years ago JP Morgan Chase told a local businessman that he had to remove a Christmas tree he donated to the lobby of a branch bank in Southlake, Texas. The reason given was that some found the Christmas decoration offensive. The order to remove was not made locally. It came from...

How would you feel if your boss came into your office one day and asked if you are supportive of the “LGBT community”?Maybe you are sympathetic to gays who face discrimination but you do not support the overall agenda. Maybe you are a faithful Catholic who accepts the teaching of the Church on homosexuality, that it is disordered and if acted upon, mortally sinful. Maybe you are simply bone weary of the LGBTs jamming their message into your face and the faces of your children all day long.And there is the man who holds your job in his hands...

It broke Ruth Freeborn’s heart to give up her U.S. citizenship that fateful day last year. Unfortunately for the Oklahoma native, though, it was either that, or her family. Ruth’s Canadian husband of 33 years, who earns all of the middle-class family’s income, “simply could not go along with this situation,” she explained. “To find myself suddenly not able to live, bank, save or to keep peace in my marriage while being American at the same time was shocking at first and deeply disturbing to me.” Ruth wrote “what must have been” hundreds of letters to U.S. senators and officials,...

Of all the purposes for which you might put U.S. taxpayer dollars at risk, helping wealthy petro-states borrow millions to buy Boeing jets would not rank among the most urgent. Yet that is what the Export-Import Bank does: In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im backed $8.3 billion in aircraft and related sales, including a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai — a typical transaction for an agency that has, over the years, earned the sobriquet “Bank of Boeing,” though it does also support Caterpillar and General Electric, among others. Now Ex-Im suddenly faces extinction: Its charter expires...

The banking industry likes superfluous language. There's "quantitative finance" for example, which (given that finance isalready a quantitative subject) is a bit like saying "aerial flight" or "wet swimming". And then there's "forward guidance". What, as opposed to backward guidance? I mean, what other type of guidance is there? Last summer the Bank of England (BoE) decided it wanted to import the U.S. Federal Reserve's forward guidance policy. In short this went along the lines of "we'll link future moves in the base rate to other external market indicators, so that as these other indicators move then so will base...

In the six years since the financial crisis, the financial services world has seen all kinds of new institutions take over lending deals and clients that were once the domain of traditional banks. There has also been a parallel transformation: the mutation of bankers into shadow bankers, writes Patrick Jenkins in London. The bosses of many shadow banks – hedge funds, private equity and debt funds, tax-efficient “business development companies” and peer-to-peer lenders – seem increasingly to have been drawn from the upper ranks of the big traditional lenders. Many bankers have become disillusioned with the old ways of doing...

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Some leading central banks have become major players on world equity markets in a development that could potentially contribute to overheated asset prices. The buildup of central-banking interest in equities is one of the unexpected consequences of the last few years’ fall in interest rates, which has depressed the returns on central banks’ foreign exchange reserves and driven them to find alternative investment targets. In the years since the financial crisis, central banks have leapt to the forefront of public policy making. They have taken responsibility for lowering interest rates, for maintaining stability of financial institutions, and...

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent move to adopt what is described as “negative interest rates” to guard against deflation should lift stock prices, spur businesses to invest and help to aid lagging economic growth on the continent. With the U.S. Federal Reserve scaling back on its easy-money policies as the American economy recovers, the ECB seems focused on adopting some of the same methods that helped the United States. However, such policies are artificial ways to fuel the economy and encourage businesses to take on additional debt that may need to be paid off at much higher interest rates...

The Bank of International Settlements Even if Putin and Obama fail to realize the obvious, they are playing for the same team in a script that has been written for them to play out, the script will culminate in World War III. The grand master controlling the world’s central banks needs World War III to happen. They need a war to unify the planet, socially, politically, economically and religiously. We are soon to learn the meaning of the popular NWO phrase, “Out of chaos comes order”.The Death of the Dollar Is the Motivating Force Behind WW III Russia is...

We just reported about how the European Central Bank has instituted negative interest rates for member banks. This could soon spread to the US and also to consumer accounts. If so, you would find money taken out of your bank account each quarter unless you spend it. The idea is that if low rates are not yet persuading you to spend, then why not punish you even more for saving? To make this more effective, there would also be a push for all electronic money to keep you from stashing any away from the confiscation agents. Ken Rogoff, leading Harvard...

It is a rare occurrence for conversations about contemporary art to happen outside of the insular circles of the art world. Contemporary art, by and large, exists as a bubble. So it should come as no great surprise that other “bubbles” are the only thing that may collide with contemporary art. Like, for instance, the elite insider world of high finance that purchases much contemporary art at auction. Last week, one such collision came to light when Credit Suisse was criminally convicted for assisting tax evasion and further revealed what more and more people realize: art can be quite the...

TEHRAN, Iran – A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam, the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported. Authorities put Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, the station reported. The report said the execution came after Iran's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. Khosravi's lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, was quoted by news website khabaronline.ir as saying that his client was put to death without any notice.

TARP was the absolute height of crony capitalism. Many of the big banks should have gone down, but in the midst of a “Blackberry panic” – as David Stockman puts it – the masters of the masters of the universe lost sight of reality and the nature of markets. Yes, Goldman Sachs would have gone down. But this would have been a GOOD THING. The blood which should have filled the the streets of Downtown Manhattan would have washed the unsustainable leverage clean from the system (for a while.) Giants are meant to fall. It would have been good for...

<p>So the international sanctions aren’t working—don’t worry! If 1,000 years of Russian screw-ups are anything to go by, it won’t be long before Vladimir Putin brings himself down.</p> <p>Now that we’ve failed to use Russia’s corrupt and degenerating economy, subservience to the international banking system, and vulnerability to falling energy prices to pop Vladimir Putin like a zit, we’re going to have sit on our NATO, E.U., and OSCE duffs and take the long view of Russian imperialism.</p>

Colorado lawmakers approved the first financial system for the marijuana industry Wednesday, a network of uninsured cooperatives designed to give pot businesses a way to access basic banking services. The plan seeks to move the marijuana industry away from its cash-only roots. Banks routinely reject pot businesses for even basic services such as checking accounts because they fear running afoul of federal law, which considers marijuana and its proceeds illegal. The result: Pot shop owners deal in large amounts of cash, which makes them targets for criminals. Or they try to find ways around the problem, like drenching their proceeds...

Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it. Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included...