Free Republic

German conservative Manfred Weber, who is running to take over the European Union’s top job next year, said on Monday that turning the European bailout fund (ESM) into a European Monetary Fund (EMF) should be a priority. […] “The political picture behind that is that in the last eurozone crisis, we asked for the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) help. Barack Obama was the president then, so partnership was possible. In future crises, which we can’t exclude happening, I as a European don’t want to be dependent on the White House.” …

Bank to Pay Total Penalties of more than $1.3 Billion as part of Resolution with Federal and State Prosecutors and Regulators Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, James D. Robnett, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”), and Mark Bialek, Inspector General, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“IG-FRB/CFPB”), announced criminal charges against Société Générale S.A. (“SG” or the “Bank”) consisting of a one-count felony information charging SG with conspiring to violate...

[N]o elected official in the country has more aggressively sought to limit free speech rights than Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.). Now he will have to answer for it in court. ... In May this column described how Mr. Cuomo was using the state’s financial regulatory agency to intimidate insurance companies, banks and other firms into turning down business with the NRA. The gun-rights group sued Mr. Cuomo after he ordered the state’s Department of Financial Services to tell the firms it oversees “to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association and other similar organizations. Upon...

President Trump only has a brief, lame duck congress ability to protect the nation from a Democrat-caused catastrophe. Here are suggestions for what he might do.

Members who have dependents usually have the option of living on-base in the military family housing for free, or off-base and receive a monthly housing allowance. Members who are assigned to locations where dependents are not allowed to travel at government expense (such as basic training, and some unaccompanied overseas assignments) can live in the barracks for free, and still continue to receive the housing allowance (for the location of their dependents), in order to provide a household for their family members. At some bases, members may not have a choice. When I was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base,...

ZURICH (Reuters) - The era of mystery-cloaked numbered Swiss bank accounts has officially come to a close as Switzerland, the world’s biggest center for managing offshore wealth, began automatically sharing client data with tax authorities in dozens of other countries. The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) said on Friday it had for the first time exchanged financial account data at the end of September under global standards that aim to crack down on tax cheats. Bank secrecy still exists in some areas — Swiss authorities cannot automatically see what citizens have in their domestic bank accounts, for example — but gone...

If you have a bank account with any kind of phone or online access, read carefully: Over the weekend, someone was able to call into TD Bank and impersonate me. They were able to change my contact information and sign up for P2P transfers using Zelle. I was locked out of my account and started watching alert messages pop into email as my checking account was drained. I suspect that this compromise involved data from the Experian breach allowing a thief to impersonate me. That, and dubious security at TD, left me $3,000.00 lighter. I strongly suggest that everyone contact...

Wells Fargo executives know that everyone hates them. In the last two years, the bank has launched three separate marketing campaigns hoping to clean up its public image, only to see each effort thwarted by fresh, catastrophic scandals ― like wrongly repossessing 27,000 cars and foreclosing on 400 families for no reason. The bank’s latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dedicates more than 2,000 words to “Additional Efforts To Rebuild Trust,” listing “automobile lending,” “mortgage interest rate lock extensions,” “consumer deposit account freezing/closing,” “certain activities within wealth and investment management,” “foreign exchange business,” “fiduciary and custody account...

A Texas bank employee accused of being an accomplice to a violent armed robbery appeared in court Wednesday to face charges. Shelby Wyse, 25, was arrested and charged with aggravated robbery on Tuesday for her alleged part in a brazen daytime attack on a woman carrying $75,000 in Houston. The mother-of-one appeared before a judge Wednesday, wearing a Whitney Houston tank top with her hair scraped up in a top knot. Court documents state that security footage captures Wyse watching the woman while she conducted her business at the bank. She then allegedly sent a text message to her boyfriend...

South Africa's state-owned Land Bank said on Monday a plan to allow the state to seize land without compensation could trigger defaults that could cost the government 41 billion rand ($2.8 billion) if the bank's rights as a creditor are not protected. Land Bank is a specialist bank providing financial services to the commercial farming sector and other agricultural businesses. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Aug. 1 that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is forging ahead with plans to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation, as whites still own most of South Africa's land...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

Do you really earn less working for a European than for a U.S. bank in London? Popular opinion would have it that you do. But popular opinion may be wrong: our analysis suggests that if the European investment bank you work for is either Credit Suisse or UBS, you'll be paid on a par with people at U.S. houses. - Or at least, this appears to have been the case for last year. Both UBS and Credit Suisse issued UK specific remuneration reports for 2017. They're not new, but they are buried on the Swiss banks' websites and we've only...

The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users. Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase JPM +0.25% & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. C +0.20% and U.S. Bancorp USB +0.40% to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter. Facebook...

Deutsche Bank is hiring nearly 800 new university graduates globally in 2018, its second highest number ever and 25% more than last year. The German lender is bringing more analysts in corporate finance than in sales and trading. The hiring comes as Deutsche surprised investors last week with a higher-than-expected profit for the second quarter under new CEO Christian Sewing....

If liberals can’t silence self-defense advocates or pass the gun control laws that they want, they will keep you from using your credit cards to buy guns or accessories. They also will prevent firearm makers from getting financing. At first this was a matter of government policy, but now it is coming about by political pressure on private companies. In 2013, the Obama administration initiated Operation Choke Point, which utilized the banking industry to “choke off” the ability of certain “fraudulent” businesses in “high-risk” sectors to operate by cutting off their access to financial services. Many in the gun industry...

President Trump on Thursday called for an investigation into allegations that the Obama administration tried to give Iran access to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions. "The Obama Administration is now accused of trying to give Iran secret access to the financial system of the United States. This is totally illegal," Trump tweeted.

International financial institutions get a lot of heat for terror state ties. But this is a case where Obama Inc. tried to get them to do the wrong thing. While they did the right thing. The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access — albeit briefly — to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so. Yet another Obama dirty deal with Iran that we're just learning about now. The question is how many more are there? And...

Bank robberies aren’t as exciting as they used to be when they were the stuff of Ocean’s Eleven style, or the coarser Bonnie and Clyde. No more black balaclavas or dead president masks. No more guns, no more physical threats. This is the age of the cyber thief, and Mexico’s recent $110-million bank heist didn’t even require a criminal to touch the money at all. With a push of a button it was gone--almost. Gone, too, is the excitement of getting caught up in a bank robbery as dramatized on television. But the lack of physical excitement also means that...

As I listened to President Trump take a victory lap after signing the bill that reversed a good bit of the Dodd- Frank regulations, he said something that struck a chord. What he pointed out was that these rules were so onerous, that only the big banks had the resources to comply with the law, and the small banks did not, so they began to fold. All because of government regulation. The losers were consumers who had less choice because of reduced competition, forcing them to pay higher prices for fewer services. Does this not sound just like health care...

In the fight against terrorist financing, drug trafficking, money-laundering and tax evasion, Australia has moved to ban the use of cash in any transactions over $10,000 by next year, moving the Down Under that much closer to becoming a digital currency society. In a move lauded by Treasurer Scott Morrison as “bad news for criminal gangs, terrorists, and those who just trying to cheat on their tax …”, the government is eyeing the surveillance potential of large transactions made by checks or credit cards connected to banks and hoping to cut down on crime in the process. The ban will...