Free Republic

Larry and Linda Gray were surprised to get the letters from their bank asking for additional information about their financial affairs. They were offended when they saw what information was requested. So, they went to see their local BofA branch, toting the letter with them. The Assistant Manager Lucas Flood said he had not ever seen a letter like this, but after he made a few phone calls, he told the Grays that yes, it was legitimate. The accompanying letter explains, "Due to the prominent nature of your occupation or position held currently or in the past, we now require...

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

Here comes Wal-Bank. After years of thwarted efforts to break into banking, Walmart is making its biggest foray yet into everyday financial services. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is teaming up with Green Dot, known for its prepaid payment cards, to supply checking accounts to almost anyone over 18 who passes an identification check. Daniel Eckert, senior vice president at Walmart, said on Tuesday that the accounts would be available nationwide by the end of October. The accounts are intended to be low-cost alternatives to traditional bank checking accounts, with no fees for overdrafts or bounced checks and no minimum...

While many economists and market watchers have failed to notice, we have entered a new chapter in the short and checkered history of central banking. This paradigm shift, as yet unaddressed in the textbooks, changes the basic policy tools that have traditionally defined the sphere of macroeconomic decision-making. The job of a central banker is supposed to be the calibration of interest rates to achieve the optimal rate of growth for any particular economic environment. It is hoped that successful decisions, which involve perfectly timed moves to raise rates when the economy overheats and lower them when it cools, would...

For folks who are trying to ignite inflation, this sure isn’t working out very well. It’s been hoped by the country’s central bankers that the massive quantitative easing program along with near-zero interest rates will touch off a wave of inflation that if not exactly the same thing as boom times, will at least give the appearance of a strengthening economy. However, month after month inflation in the goods that the Fed cares about seems muted. Now this month we had the horrid news that official inflation numbers are falling not rising.

A credit-based financial economy (as opposed to pure cash) depends on an ever-expanding outstanding level of credit for its survival. Without additional credit, interest on previously issued liabilities cannot be paid absent the sale of existing assets, which in turn would lead to a vicious cycle of debt deflation, recession and ultimately depression. It is this expansion of private and public market credit which the Fed and the BOE have successfully engineered over the past five years, while their contemporaries (the ECB and BOJ) have until now failed, at least in terms of stimulating economic growth.

Extortion: Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder's record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America. Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation's largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.

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...