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A large Spanish bank has won the bidding for Austin-based Guaranty Financial Group, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. Federal regulators who have essentially been running Guaranty in recent months have chosen Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria as the buyer. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News both said that regulators had chosen BBVA, citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is expected to make the announcement Friday. Under the expected scenario, the FDIC will seize Guaranty, then sell most or all of it to BBVA. Guaranty’s financial condition has been deteriorating for...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) -- U.S. bank regulators waited too long to address problems at a Duluth, Ga.-based bank that failed last year and could cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated $207 million, government auditors said Monday. The Office of Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a report that the agency's supervision of Haven Trust Bank was "not effective in identifying and addressing problems early enough." "By the time supervisory actions were taken against the bank, failure was all but inevitable," the IG's office said in the report. Haven Trust failed last December.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is taking Colonial BancGroup Inc (CNB.N) into receivership and will sell the struggling lender's branches and deposits to BB&T Corp (BBT.N), Dow Jones said, citing a person familiar with the situation

Rising U.S. stock prices — particularly following a 50 percent decline — say nothing about the health of the U.S. economy or the prospects for a recovery, says Euro Pacific CEO Peter Schiff. "In fact, relative to the meteoric rise of foreign stock markets over the past six months, U.S. stocks are standing still." "If anything, it is the strength in overseas markets that is dragging U.S. stocks along for the ride." There is an inexplicable but widely held belief that stock market movements are predictive of economic conditions, Schiff writes at GoldSeek.com.

NEW YORK — Regulators on Friday shut down two banks in Florida, bringing to 71 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year under the weight of the weak economy and rising loan losses. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks: First State Bank of Sarasota, Fla., and Venice, Fla.-based Community National Bank of Sarasota County. First State Bank had total assets of $463 million and deposits totaling $387 million. Community National Bank had $97 million of assets and $93 million in deposits.

"According to your many editorials on the subject, I'm one of the deadbeat borrowers because I've applied for not one, but two, loan modifications. I can't handle my debt so I'm a deadbeat, right? Wrong...

Whatever person first uttered the words “ignorance is bliss” was either a graduate of the John Wayne Bobbitt School for dating and Career Advancement or they had a reserved seat in the front row of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. While a lot of things can be said about the lives of Mr. Bobbitt and Reverend Wright, the word “bliss” is rarely, if ever, applied to them. In short, ignorance is far from bliss. At times it can downright dangerous.

How did we get here? Here is a detailed analysis as I see it today and have seen it for the last nearly seven years from inside the mortgage industry. At the end of 1999, Alan Greenspan first began raising the Prime Rate. Many have speculated as to his motivation, however there is no doubt the result, he popped the internet bubble. By the time the damage was done roughly three trillion dollars had been lost in the stock market by the end of 2000. This jarring economic event was followed by the jarring economic events of 9/11 and the...

Five banks were closed on Friday, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, bringing the national total number of bank failures to 69 for 2009.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Guaranty Bank is hardly a household name. But the Austin, Texas-based thrift's looming failure is shaping up as a big headache for bank supervisors -- not to mention a black eye for Carl Icahn and others in the smart money set. Guaranty (GFG) could be soon seized by the government in what would be the biggest bank failure in a year that has already had 64 of them. Last week, the bank warned investors to expect a federal takeover after regulators forced a writedown of its risky mortgage investments and a bid to raise new capital...

China has emerged as India's largest trading partner, replacing US in 2008-09. Apart from increasing trade engagement with the neighbouring country and weak demand for foreign goods in the US, which is reeling under recession contributed to this. ==snip== bilateral trade engagement between India and China stood at Rs 1,63,202 crore (nearly $ 36 billion) in April to February 2008-09, an increase of nearly 7% over Rs 1,52,713 crore in the year ago period. In the same period under consideration, bilateral trade between India and the US dipped 7.5% and stood at Rs 1,55,353 crore (approximately $ 34 billion).

Transparency at the central bank is a serious question. It deserves a serious answer. The Federal Reserve Board's independence is a bit like the judiciary's independence. Absolutely vital for the institution's proper functioning, it nevertheless depends on Congress and the president to respect decisions with which they disagree. In such cases, the best protection for either the Supreme Court or the Fed is to stay strictly within its legally prescribed authority and to act according to principled criteria: legal ones for the justices, technical economic ones for the central bank. Which brings us to the proposed Federal Reserve Transparency Act,...

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday said he opposed legislation moving on Capitol Hill that would allow the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to audit the central bank's monetary policy goals. "We are more than happy to work with the GAO and open to giving them broad authority to look at various aspects of our operations, including our responses to the financial crisis, but we are worried that an audit of monetary policy would result in a reduction of the independence of the Fed," Bernanke told lawmakers at a hearing on regulatory reform on...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Bank holding company Guaranty Financial Group Inc. said it is "probable it will not be able to continue as a going concern" as it restated results that include an additional $1.45 billion in write-downs. The moves, disclosed in a securities filing Thursday, set the stage for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to take over operations of the company, including more than 160 branches in Texas and California. With about $15 billion in assets, Guaranty could become the biggest federally insured financial firm to fail this year. In May, the banking operations of BankUnited FSB in Coral Gables,...

U.S. regulators closed seven small banks on Friday, a pace matching a one-day total seen earlier in July and bringing the number of failures so far this year to 64. Six of the banks were in Georgia and were subsidiaries of Security Bank Corp, having a total of 20 branches, $2.8 billion in assets and about $2.4 billion in deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said. State Bank and Trust Co of Pinehurst, Georgia, agreed to assume all of the deposits at the six banks, whose branches will reopen under State Bank's name. State Bank will also purchase $2.4 billion...

If his hearings this week before the House and Senate made one thing clear, it is that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has lost the confidence of Congress, and likely also that of the American public. Were Bernanke’s only problem a loss of congressional confidence, he could overcome it. However, the erosion of public trust in the Fed has been the result of a long string of policy failures, which have overshadowed the few successes. Foremost among these failures is the Fed’s prominent role in helping to inflate the housing bubble. While Bernanke was correct in identifying the “global savings glut”...

The events of the last year have produced a flurry of legislation so complex, and debated and passed so quickly, that most of the citizenry (not to mention the members of congress) have no idea what the government has passed and how much we are spending. Enter Neil Barofsky. Barofsky is an economist who also happens to be the special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In his report to Congress yesterday, he outlined that the cost allocated to all of the programs passed to deal with the economy, including those by the Federal Reserve that did...

For months now, I've kept up a steady drumbeat regarding the risks to life insurance companies due to their large commercial real estate holdings.

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday fended off congressional skepticism about expanding the Fed's duties to police big financial companies given the central bank's failure to catch problems that led to the financial crisis. Bernanke also faced some grilling from the House Financial Services Committee about taxpayer bailouts of financial companies, slow moving efforts to curb home foreclosures and concerns about the Fed's track record in protecting consumers from abusive practices from lenders, credit card companies and other financial service providers. "The Fed has made some big mistakes," said the panel's highest-ranking Republican, Spencer Bachus of Alabama....

We've become slightly famous for accurately predicting the demise of several iconic America companies, including the original AT&T, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac...

Two in California, one in Georgia and one in South Dakota - these FDIC closures bring the total number of failed banks in 2009 to 57. BY CATHERINE CLIFFORD NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- State regulators shut down four banks Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said. The bank were: First Piedmont Bank, based in Winder, Ga.; BankFirst, based in Sioux Falls, S.D.; Temecula Valley Bank of Temecula, Calif.; and Vineyard Bank of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Friday's actions bring the total number of closings for 2009 to 57. . . . . . Friday's failures will cost the FDIC fund nearly...

For some the spectacle of Goldman Sachs' profits triggers awe; for others, many others, it's triggering an intense spate of ire. On Comedy Central's Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked Rep. Barney Frank, "What are these Goldman Sachs guys going to do next, dip their [private parts] in gold?" Rolling Stone charges that Goldman Sachs created the dot-com, housing and commodity bubbles. Other headlines scream "Government Sachs" about the high posts in government held formerly by ex-Goldman Sachs bigwigs Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, and currently by New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley....

If you're falling behind on your mortgage payments, think twice before turning to Uncle Sam for help...

Congressman Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207, calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, has attracted 270 cosponsors in less than five months. The Republican congressman's bill has received strong bipartican support, and approximately 100 of the bill's cosponsors are Democrats. Support for H.R. 1207 has frightened some of the Fed’s champions in the academic world, Fed officials themselves, and, of course, many of the Fed's friends in the financial world. There are obviously some who don’t want the American people to know what the Fed has been doing ever since it was launched in 1913. Secrecy, of course, is completely...

Congressman and two-time presidential candidate Ron Paul tells Newsmax the economic stimulus plan is a "total failure," and he's pushing a bill requiring the Federal Reserve to disclose its dealings so Americans can find out who the "culprits" are behind the financial meltdown. The Texas Republican also said the U.S. is on course to "destroy the dollar," the healthcare reform plan is "dangerous" and could bankrupt the nation — and he is fighting against those who "would socialize the country."

The survival of one of the nation’s largest commercial lenders, the CIT Group, was thrown into doubt late Wednesday after federal officials rebuffed pleas to rescue the struggling company a second time. Unless a buyer emerges for CIT — a prospect that seems unlikely — the century-old lender could founder, even after it received a $2.33 billion taxpayer-financed bailout in December. The plight of CIT, which provides loans to about a million small and midsize companies, particularly in the sagging retail sector, poses a crucial test of the Obama administration’s attempts to stabilize the nation’s financial industry.

One year after bank's failure, depositors fight on. BY ERIKA CHAVEZ Dozens of IndyMac Federal Bank customers who lost uninsured deposits after the bank's sudden failure last year rallied Monday to draw attention to their continuing plight. Members of the group, which organized online and numbers 250 people throughout California, gathered in front of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's West Coast satellite office in Irvine, braving the heat to make their voices heard. The goal: to persuade FDIC officials to reimburse their lost money and let consumers know that their savings might not be safe, despite the fact that the...

In America – formerly the home of free enterprise – the government now owns the banking system, AIG, and General Motors...

Last week I was very pleased that hearings were held on the independence of the Federal Reserve system. My bill HR 1207, known as the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, was discussed at length, as well as the general question of whether or not the Federal Reserve should continue to operate independently. The public is demanding transparency in government like never before. A majority of the House has cosponsored HR 1207. Yet, Senator Jim DeMint’s heroic efforts to attach it to another piece of legislation elicited intense opposition by the Senate leadership. The hearings on Capitol Hill provided us with a...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Concerns about the creditworthiness of CIT Group Inc. (CIT) are seeping into broader markets after the commercial lender Friday confirmed that the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has yet to approve its application to issue government-backed debt. The worries about the lender are touching markets from stocks to Treasurys, underscoring how broader credit concerns may be resurfacing after a period of relative calm. Shares of CIT were off nearly 30% Friday before closing down 18%, while most CIT bonds fell, indicating worries about the lender's ability to meet its obligations in the long run. Treasury prices, meanwhile,...

IndyMac died a year ago Saturday, the first major thrift to fail in the financial crisis. Its burial, marked by confusion, chaos, and a relatively sweet deal for a group of private equity titans, is unlikely to happen in the same manner today. The aftermath of IndyMac, since renamed OneWest Bank, is telling, and provides a stark illustration of how much things have changed in the course of a year.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Thermopolis, Wyo.-based Bank of Wyoming was closed by regulators Friday, the 53rd U.S. bank failure of 2009 as the credit crisis continues to claim victims.

More ammo for the Goldman conspiracy theorists...

Soaring U.S. unemployment and a shrinking economy drove delinquencies on credit card debt and home equity loans to all-time highs in the first quarter as a record number of cash-strapped consumers fell behind on their bills. Delinquencies on the value of all card debt soared to a record 6.60 percent from 5.52 percent in the fourth quarter as more cardholders relied on plastic to meet day-to-day expenses, the American Bankers Association said. Late payments on home equity loans rose to 3.52 percent from 3.03 percent, and on home equity lines of credit climbed to 1.89 percent from 1.46 percent. A...

Bank of America will accept California IOUs, but it won’t credit depositor accounts for at least a week. The fine print was included in an interview in Monday’s American Banker with a BofA spokeswoman.

MACON, Ga. — H. Averett Walker used hot money to turn Security Bank from a sleepy Southern lender into a regional powerhouse. Darrell D. Pittard used hot money to jump-start his brand-new MagnetBank, allowing it to lend hundreds of millions of dollars even though it did not have a single drive-up window or even a customer with a checking account. It is a formula being replicated at banks across the United States. Rather than simply wooing local customers, they have turned to out-of-state brokers who deliver billions of dollars in bulk deposits, widely known as “hot money,” from investors nationwide....

ATLANTA (AP) - Colin Daymude was out of work last year after his business failed and eagerly filed his taxes in mid-January, figuring he'd get his refund sooner. He was wrong. It took the 44-year-old entrepreneur more than six months to get his $1,300 check—money that he needed to pay living expenses while he worked a few side gigs. Tax day—April 15—has long since come and gone, but sharp budget cuts and falling revenues have forced many states to delay income tax returns for months—and left taxpayers longing for their money. "I'm just trying to get my money back," said...

When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. "It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit," the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable. But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before...

7 more banks fail as FDIC seeks stronger rules for buyers of failed banks. BY STEPHEN MANNING and DAVID PITT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six Illinois banks and one bank in Texas were shuttered Thursday as government regulators proposed new rules for private equity firms seeking to take over failed banks. That brought the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 52. That's more than double the 25 which failed in all of 2008 and the three closed in 2007. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of all seven. The total cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund from...

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality. Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some sweet pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter] Read More: Architecture, Building falls over, Shanghai, Apartment, China, Dianpu river, fail, buildings, collapse

NEW YORK (AP) - Regulators on Friday shut down five small banks, boosting to 45 the number of failures this year of federally insured banks. More are expected to succumb in the prolonged recession. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the failed banks: Community Bank of West Georgia, based in Villa Rica, Ga.; Neighborhood Community Bank, located in Newnan, Ga.; Horizon Bank in Pine City, Minn.; MetroPacific Bank in Irvine, Calif.; and Mirae Bank in Los Angeles. Community Bank of West Georgia had $199.4 million in assets and $182.5 million in deposits as of May 15. Neighborhood...

Mahindra says it plans to start sending two- and four-door versions of a truck — here, it is called simply the Pik-Up — to the United States by year-end. Its distribution partner is Global Vehicles U.S.A., an Atlanta-based importer. The second act is to come next year with imports of a version of the Scorpio that I tested, modified for American tastes and standards. snip Mahindra’s American strategy is to offer high value and good mileage from efficient diesel engines. snip For people willing to take a look, the Mahindra should stand out, with quirky looks, a tough-truck résumé and...

GIVEN that is was designed to be the world’s cheapest car, should it matter whether the Tata Nano is any fun to drive? After all, base models start in India at $2,200 including taxes and fees — less than a quarter of the sticker price of the least expensive new cars in the United States. snip The rear wheels could even be coaxed into a sports car-style slide. I found the Nano hugely entertaining, snip Cheap though it is, I did not find the Nano to be so cheap that it squeaked. Nor did I hear any rattles on the...

Combine Japanese cultural tendencies toward formality, politesse, and indirection with the usual central banker's love of opacity and econo-jargon, and you'd expect that a meeting with the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan would be a one-way trip into a cloud of vagueness. But in a meeting Monday, Kiyohiko Nishimura, Yale-trained economist, former Tokyo University professor and deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, gave one of the most lucid and useful explications of the credit crisis and its aftermath that I've heard– and I've heard a lot of them. And even more surprisingly, it was pretty optimistic. A...

Tax lobbyists and policy wonks believe a national sales tax is looming, though they say it’s extremely unlikely to be tied to already controversial healthcare reform legislation. Talk is heating up because of the U.S. budget situation. Many observers believe there simply isn’t enough money coming in under the existing tax structure to pay for programs advocated by both parties. The U.S. is the world’s exception in that it does not have a national sales tax, which is known around the world as a value-added tax, or VAT. Conservative activist Grover Norquist is using the talk to enlarge his anti-VAT...

Last week Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill. In an affront to all those who thought they voted for a peace candidate, the current president will be sending another $106 billion we don’t have to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a hint of a plan to bring our troops home. Many of my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration seem to have changed their tune. I maintain that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional...

Because of the magnitude of the recent downturn, experts say some of the statistics that are widely used to track the economy are now red herrings—misleading, at best, when it comes to predicting a rebound. Here are three indicators that could lead investors astray. What Housing Glut? Housing inventory measures the supply of unsold homes on the market. Right now it’s high—a 10-month supply of homes, up from the average of about five—and conventional wisdom says the housing market won’t recover until it declines. This time around, however, waiting for “normal” could cost you. In fact, an improving economy might...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama proposed new "rules of the road" for the nation's financial system Wednesday, ... Obama blamed the crisis on "a culture of irresponsibility" that he said had taken root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street, .. regulations crafted to deal with the depression of the 1930s were "overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy." The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve to oversee the entire financial system and would also create a new consumer protection agency ... In remarks prepared for delivery later in...

In the late fall, when the economic collapse began to accelerate, anti-Semitism began to come out of the closet. One widely circulated conspiracy theory suggests that "$400 billion in funds was secretly transferred to Israeli banks" just prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and other major investment banks. Launched on an anti-Semitic Web site sponsored by a Washington, DC-based Holocaust denial publication, the false rumor has ricocheted across the Internet and around the world, appearing on numerous Web sites and comment boards with few questioning its veracity or citing its origins (ADL) You wouldn't think that theories like that...

National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers said yesterday that the government's emergency involvement in the financial system would be temporary and that the Obama administration is committed to free-market principles. The administration has been criticized by some lawmakers and bankers for all but nationalizing major corporations such as Chrysler and Citigroup. Some have gone as far as to accuse the White House of promoting a "socialist" approach. Summers, one of the most influential voices on economic matters within the White House, responded to critics by saying the initiatives to rescue the financial system were out of "necessity not choice."...