Free Republic

If you plan to deposit $10,000 or more into your checking account, there are a few things you should consider first. By law, banks have to report deposits that exceed a certain amount. Not only that, but many bank accounts come with maximum deposit restrictions. You may also be subject to certain fees when making such a large deposit. If you frequently make large deposits, you should also watch out for any potential scams or fraudulent activity. But even if this is a one-time thing, it’s still important to know about these factors and how they might affect you. Banks...

While The Who Sang “The Kid’s Are Alright” ,the same can’t be said of banks. It has been nine months since the spectacular and sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. After witnessing three of the four largest bank failures in U.S. history in 2023, the attention of the media and the markets has turned elsewhere. Banking crisis? It is as though it never happened. Having fallen by some 40 percent in March, the NASDAQ Bank Index has recovered to within 15 percent of its high from February. In the last few months, nearly all markets have gone on a bull...

The song “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne comes to mind when analyzing the state of American banking, especially regional banks. Yesterday we found out that inflows to money-market funds continue to be huge ($290BN in six weeks), and more importantly, regional banks’ usage of The Fed’s BTFP bailout facility surged to a new record high (even as regional banks surged… Source: Bloomberg And so, with that shitshow in mind, we await the glorious manipulation of The Fed’s bank deposits data to reinforce that equity confidence. On a seasonally-adjusted basis, banks saw a $53.7BN deposit outflow… Source: Bloomberg However, on...

Bidenomics’ new themesong, “I’ve youv’e got the money, honey, I’ve got the time.” Otherwise, sod off. Speaking of Bidenomics, US mortgage purchase demand just declined to the lowest level in 28 years. Mortgage applications decreased 2.9 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending September 1, 2023. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 2.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 5 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance...

A surge in borrowing costs is making home purchases more expensive with little relief in sight. Courtesy of The Federal Reserve rate hikes to repress inflation … caused by excessive monetary stimulus and Federal spending. But REAL home price growth (Case-Shiller National HPI YoY – Core CPI YoY) has been declining as The Fed helped jack up mortgage rates above 7%. REAL home price growth was last reported as -5.8% YoY. The source of funding for mortgage lending is bank deposits. But bank deposit growth remains negative, along with M2 Money growth. What has Bidenomics and The Fed brought us?...

On Wednesday, March 8 of this year, the holding company for the federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced it was winding down the bank. It had little choice but to do so. It was experiencing a bank run and had incinerated its reputation by focusing on deposits from crypto companies, including those majority-owned by indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. According to testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg, before the Senate Banking Committee on March 28, “in the fourth quarter of 2022, Silvergate Bank experienced an outflow of deposits from digital asset customers that, combined with...

Yes, the banking system under green zealots and spendiholics Biden, Pelosi and Schumer have helped drive inflation to 40 years highs leading The Fed to counterattack and raise interest rates and slow M2 Money supply. The result? As Bank of America analysts said. Fed tightening ‘always breaks something’. And in this case it is regional and community banks. Or as BofA’s Harnett said, “The Fed Hiked Until It Broke The Regional Banks”. Despite the attempts from The Fed and Treasury Secretary Janet “The Evil Hobbit” Yellen to mollify depositors, bank deposits contine to sink. And they are sinking faster at...

Shares of First Republic fell sharply and hit a record low Tuesday, as investors questioned how the bank would stabilize itself after losing about 40% of its deposits during the first quarter. First Republic’s stock fell more than 40% on Tuesday, extending its year-to-date losses beyond 90%. It hit a record intraday low at $8.27 per share.

Big US financial groups Charles Schwab, State Street and M&T suffered almost $60bn in combined bank deposit outflows in the first quarter as customers continued to move their money in search of higher returns. The deposit flight has been turbocharged by the collapse last month of Silicon Valley Bank and two other US lenders, with cash moving out of bank accounts at a pace not seen since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In a fresh sign of the threat to traditional banks, Apple and Goldman Sachs on Monday announced the launch of a new savings account in the...

A trillion dollars is a lot of money. If you stacked a billion dollar bills on top of one another, the pile would be 67.9 miles high, but if you stacked a trillion dollar bills on top of one another the pile would be 67,866 miles high. And if you lined up a trillion dollar bills end to end, the line of dollar bills would be a staggering 96,906,656 miles long. That is longer than the distance from the Earth to the Sun. A trillion dollars is such a vast amount of money that it is truly difficult to comprehend,...

Let’s back up here a goldarn minute. “Made whole” was the phrase of the week on Monday.In an extraordinary action to restore confidence in America’s banking system, the Biden administration on Sunday guaranteed that customers of the failed Silicon Valley Bank will have access to all their money starting Monday.In a related action, the government shut down Signature Bank, a regional bank that was teetering on the brink of collapse in recent days. Signature’s customers will receive a similar deal, ensuring that even uninsured deposits will be returned to them Monday.And wasn’t it just, like, three days ago that myself...

WASHINGTON — Plans announced Sunday to fully reimburse deposits made in the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank and the shuttered Signature Bank will rely on Wall Street and large financial institutions — not taxpayers — to foot the bill, Treasury officials said. “For the banks that were put into receivership, the FDIC will use funds from the Deposit Insurance Fund to ensure that all of its depositors are made whole,” said a senior Treasury Department official, who spoke to reporters Sunday about the plan on the condition of anonymity.

It hasn’t been a good day for the banking industry. As our Senior Editor Joe Cunningham reported, Silicon Valley Bank was taken over by bank regulators. The 16th largest bank in the nation, and once a darling of tech industry, its downfall could be directly connected to the woes, layoffs, and setbacks in that very industry.Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a financial institution that focused primarily on investing in tech start-ups, has been taken over and shut down by federal regulators in one of biggest financial failures in history, and the biggest since the Global Financial Crisis over a decade ago.The...

The US has an inflation problem. Both headline and core inflation YoY remain high compared to the previous 40 years. And The Federal Reserve is resolute in trying to curb inflation to 2%. But as The Fed counterattacks inflation by raising their target rate, we are seeing a problem forming at the nation’s commercial banks. The growth in deposits YoY is now -0.6%. Commercial bank holdings of Treasuries and Agency MBS are declining as well. Agency MBS holdings are down -4.6% YoY and Treasuries and Agency holdings are down 0.0%. How about M2 Money growth and M2 velocity? M2 Money...

Everything is NOT beautiful with the US economy. Another crack in the dam (US economy) is buyer traffic for new homes. They are now down -64% since last year (YoY). ... Of course, The Federal Reserve is removing its massive monetary stimulus. BUT commercial bank deposits have declined the most since 1973.

Banks in Europe are doing the unthinkable…They’re turning away large cash deposits. I’m not kidding…Deutsche Bank, one of Germany’s top lenders, is effectively turning away many deposits of 100,000 euros or more. And if it does accept your deposit, then it will charge you a 0.5% annual fee to keep your money in the bank.You’re paying the bank to hold your cash. And at 100,000 euros, you’re losing 500 euros a year in negative interest.If this sounds a bit crazy… well, it is.Today, I’ll explain why it’s happening…We’ve gotten used to near-zero interest rates at major banks since the global...

HSBC has become one of the biggest global banks to say it will begin charging clients on deposits in a basket of European currencies The decision underlies the extraordinary measures banks are taking to prevent their profit margins being crushed in the record low-interest rate environment. HSBC has written to other banks to warn it will start charging them for deposits in euros, Swiss francs, Danish krone and Swedish krona — all currencies of countries that have negative interest rates — at its UK, German and Hong Kong operations from this summer. It is the first UK bank to announce...

The idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticised by Tony Abbott at the time. Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget. The Government is heading for a fight with the banking industry, which has warned it will have to pass the cost back onto customers. Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government's Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details

In what seems to be a retreat from its Operation Choke Point initiative, the FDIC has announced new regulatory guidance that instructs banks to judge their relationships with their customers on a case-by-case basis, rather than refusing to provide banking services to entire categories of industries. From the Press Release: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a Financial Institution Letter today encouraging supervised institutions to take a risk-based approach in assessing individual customer relationships, rather than declining to provide banking services to entire categories of customers without regard to the risks presented by an individual customer or the financial...

Despite all the fear-mongering by Nea Demokratia (ND), Syriza's victory over the incumbent is dramatically larger than expected (exit polls indicate a potential 12 point margin vs 7 point spreads in the run-up). However, as JPMorgan details, the fear-mongery was very evident in bank deposit runs as proxied outflows surge EUR8 billion last week - more than all of December and the rest of January combined...Via JPMorgan Flows & LiquidityGreek deposit outflows rise sharply this week The monthly Bank of Greece balance sheet data for the month of December revealed a significant increase in Greek bank ECB borrowing which...