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NEW YORK Eric Lichtblau, one of two New York Times' reporters who broke today's story of a secret government monitoring of private banking records - which the Bush Administration sought to block - said the White House arguments to halt the story were not as strong as those that had kept a previous report on secret wiretapping out of the paper for a year. "They were similar in terms of the objections raised not to publish," Lichtblau told E&P today. "That the bad guys knew we were listening to them, but they don't know exactly how." But he said the...

Sorry if this doesn't follow some arcane rule of proper Freeper-ism, but does anyone else have a Bank of America account and can they log onto it? We just discovered here at work that we cannot access the company account on line and several employees cannot access the web site or mobile site. With all of the Sony crap going on, I am a little sensitive to stuff like this.

The world's major central banks are scrambling to work through the implications of the near halving of the price of oil in the second half of 2014, and they are coming up with very different conclusions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, policymakers looking at robust economic recoveries such as in the United States and Britain are focused on the likely boost to growth and consumption from markedly lower energy prices and the later upward impact that should have on inflation. But for the European Central Bank, battling to revive a moribund economy, the worry is whether cheap oil could tip the euro zone...

Senior FDIC officials must be held accountable for banking regulators’ “unethical” and “illegal” actions against legitimate businesses that are out of favor with the Obama administration, a congressman with a background in banking said today. In a letter to Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., says he wants a full review of all FDIC employees involved in Operation Choke Point. Luetkemeyer, a rising member of the House Financial Services Committee, names five officials as “implicated in this unsavory affair,” and adds that “to allow these individuals to go without penalty would be unjust.”...

The Department of Treasury is seeking to order survival kits for all of its employees who oversee the federal banking system, according to a new solicitation. The emergency supplies would be for every employee at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which conducts on-site reviews of banks throughout the country. The survival kit includes everything from water purification tablets to solar blankets. The government is willing to spend up to $200,000 on the kits, according to the solicitation released on Dec. 4. The survival kits must come in a fanny-pack or backpack that can fit all of...

A banker has died after becoming impaled on railings after falling 60ft from the window of a luxury penthouse in central London, which is next door to John Lennon's former home. ...Metropolitan Police said the man's death was not being treated as suspicious but confirmed enquiries were being carried out into the circumstances surrounding his death.

Tack disappeared on November 5th... Impeccable. Sporty. Cared for. Successful. Just some qualifications that are attributed to the 52-year-old from the Belgian Geert Tack Haaltert.  Geert Tack worked as a private banker for ING and managed portfolios of wealthy clients. The Belgian had a lot of respect in the financial world and was known as an up and top professional. His sudden disappearance was also smashed like a bomb. "If Tack himself was having trouble he has managed to keep it well hidden", say colleagues. Nobody then could have guessed that the man would not return on Wednesday, November 5th to his...

Tyler Durden11/29/2014 A week ago, when we reported that in a stunning move, the "Dutch Central Bank Secretly Withdrew 122 Tons Of Gold From The New York Fed", and when looking at the NY Fed's monthly reports of gold deposits by foreign entities, we observed that "we can see that while the 5 tons outflow in 2013 was most likely Germany, the recent surge in gold repatriation from Liberty 33 was the Netherlands. That said, only 77.5 tons of NY deposits gold has been officially repatriated through September, which means the October update, when it comes out, will be a...

This weekend the G20 nations will convene in Brisbane, Australia to conclude a week of Asian festivities that began in Beijing for the developed countries and major economies. And on Sunday, the biggest deal of the week will be made as the G20 will formally announce new banking rules that are expected to send shock waves to anyone holding a checking, savings, or money market account in a financial institution. On Nov. 16, the G20 will implement a new policy that makes bank deposits on par with paper investments, subjecting account holders to declines that one might experience from holding...

CCP “contagion” fears spark derivatives debate 13 November, 2014 Written by Elliott Holley Controversy over the handling of derivatives dominated talk at the Mondo Visione Exchange Forum this week, where panellists contested the value of interoperability and whether CCP contagion might bring down the financial system. “Regulators should absolutely not allow interoperability for derivatives,” said Philip Simons, head of OTC derivatives business at Eurex Clearing. “It creates systemic risk. If one clearing house goes down, it would result in contagion as it would bring down all the others. CCPs are phenomenally under-capitalised. They could easily fall over.” Simons added that...

A few months ago I got online to pay on a new account I have at U.S. Bank.  I pay a certain amount every  month, like everyone does on installment loans.  U.S. Bank has a full-featured consumer website; I mean it’s got all the bells and whistles.  That’s what you’d expect from a bank with $19.6 billion in revenue (2013); the fifth largest bank in America, with assets of $353 billion.  U.S. Bank is bigger than American Express, SunTrust, and ScottTrade, combined. So I was surprised when I only saw the option to pay online, a single payment at a...

There was a time, not really all that long ago, when the local banker was a pillar of the community. A good relationship with him (and it was always a him) was essential to every business owner. Not only that, every potential homeowner had to trek down to his office in hopes of getting a mortgage. Countless workers walked into the branch every week to cash their paychecks, make deposits to a Christmas Club account and more. That world doesn’t exist anymore.... As the reality begins to sink in, the big banks will use their political clout to try and...

Most people ask for a raise in the privacy of their boss's office. But one gutsy Wells Fargo employee emailed the CEO directly — and copied some 200,000 other Wells Fargo workers on the note. On Tuesday, the Charlotte Observer reported that Tyrel Oates, who it says works in an Oregon office of Wells Fargo processing requests from customers trying to stop debt-collection calls, sent such an email to CEO John Stumpf. His plea was not just to get a raise for himself. His proposal to Stumpf? Use the company's profits to give every employee a raise of $10,000. According...

The hackers are thought to be operating from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said. Some American officials speculate that the breach was intended to send a message to Wall Street and the United States about the vulnerability of the digital network of one of the world’s most important banking institutions. “It could be in retaliation for the sanctions” placed on Russia, one senior official briefed on the intelligence said. “But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell...

There are a lot of solid reasons why federal programs like the Export-Import (EX-IM) Bank, should be terminated. I cover the majority of those reasons in the report I just filed on Communities Digital News. http://www.commdiginews.com/business-2/moral-hazard-at-the-export-import-bank-private-gain-vs-social-risk-26916/ Issues like questions of proper management, potential for fraud related to insider influence, unintended consequences of disruption of domestic markets, risk related to the volatility of the world economy, are all among them. Those are legitimate concerns and have demonstrated themselves to be problems. Above them all, and foremost is the essential consideration of legitimacy. The Ex-Im bank was spawned in illicit circumstances. Most...

A top Boeing official criticized Congress on Tuesday for failing to pass a long-term reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. He also argued that an extension of the Bank’s charter until next summer leaves supporters in a worse position than they were in before. “Mostly far-right political consultants, think tanks and congressmen banded together in a fit of ideological road rage to kill the bank,” Boeing senior vice president Timothy Keating said in prepared remarks at an aerospace conference in Everett, Wash. “The temporary extension recently enacted in many respects leaves us worse off than before,” Keating continued. “The extension is...

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...