Free Republic

We Didn’t DeregulateFrom the April 5, 2010, issue of NR. When Barack Obama was running for president, he made no secret of his plan to “restore commonsense regulation” by closing up regulatory “loopholes” he blamed Republicans for opening. Deregulation of the financial industry, he argued, was a main cause of the financial crisis.Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, President Obama offered a sweeping, ambitious regulatory agenda: a total revamp of the financial industry, including reform of the process by which loans are converted into securities; more robust federal regulation of credit-rating agencies; the creation of a systemic-risk...

Hold on to your wallet: The Durbin Amendment goes into effect Saturday. The once-obscure amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill limits “interchange fees,” which banks charge to merchants for providing the service that allows stores to accept debit-card payments. The fees were cut by some 80 percent, which makes it less profitable for banks to offer debit-card services. So the banks have done the natural thing and begun to transfer the fee from merchants to their customers, with Bank of America announcing a new $5-per-month fee for debit-card users. Naturally, the amendment’s author, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) is in...

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury's bank bailout program will move into a profit for the first time on Wednesday with the expected repayment of $7.4 billion in taxpayer funds, Treasury officials said. The transfers to the Troubled Asset Relief Program will push recoveries from banks to $251 billion in repayments of capital, dividends, interest and other income. It invested $245 billion in banks during the financial crisis to help avert a U.S. financial system collapse. The officials did not identify the banks expected to repay funds. But SunTrust Banks Inc and Key Corp said on March 18...

It never ends. As part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, the Federal Reserve was tasked with capping the fees banks charge merchants for debit card transactions. This rule on fees was supposed to be finalized by April of this year and to take effect by July, but the banks and their lobbyists have been screaming bloody murder. They've also been throwing around lots of cash. See here. And it worked! Call it the glory of "bi-partisanship." According to reports, Democrat Senators, including Jon Tester of Montana, and Republic Senators, including Bob Corker of Tennessee, are now drafting legislation to...

Earlier today, the White House released a budget proposal that included trimming the mortgage interest deduction for taxpayers in the top income tax brackets. This is the first step in eliminating what many economists view as an expensive and inefficient housing subsidy. Unfortunately, many of the critics of the mortgage interest deduction focus on its immediate costs. If it were eliminated, it might bring in more than $2 trillion of new revenue for the government or—as I proposed this morning—allow up to $2 trillion of new tax cuts for the American people. Actually, I think getting rid of the housing...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's government-wide review of federal regulations will have little effect on two of the president's major regulatory victories: an overhaul of Wall Street and the health-care market, according to a White House budget official. The review focuses on old, outdated regulations so new ones written as part of the health-care and financial overhaul likely won't be affected, an official at the White House Office of Management and Budget said. Mr. Obama wants agencies to take a fresh look at old regulations to determine whether they are outdated or unnecessary. "New regulations will not be priorities for the lookback,"...

Federal limits on debit card processing fees will force banks to charge customers more for services, making accounts too expensive for as many as 5 percent of customers, JPMorgan Chase & Co's chief executive said on Friday. The rules, proposed as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, would cap the fees that merchants pay banks for processing debit card transactions at 12 cents each. That is almost 75 percent less than the average 44 cents per transaction that banks get now. U.S. banks could lose about $13 billion of their annual industry debit processing revenues because of the rules,...

Time to Move Past Debate On Dodd-Frank Law: FDIC's Bair Published: Thursday, 13 Jan 2011 | 10:32 AM ET By: Michelle Lodge CNBC.com Writer Even with the Republicans in control of the House, major changes in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law are unlikely and it's time for the country "to get on with it," Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told CNBC Thursday. “Dodd-Frank gives the regulators a lot of tools to implement them [changes], and we are doing that in a balanced way,” said Bair, speaking from the Small Business Forum in Washington DC, a co-partnership...

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Wis., plans to introduce legislation repealing the Dodd-Frank financial services law, calling it “misguided” and a “blatant abuse of power.” A key criticism by Rep. Bachmann is a provision in the law that allows the federal government to take over failing non-bank institutions, such as American International Group, according to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and a prime architect of the legislation. In a statement, Rep. Frank said another key objection to the legislation by Rep. Bachmann and her conservative supporters is the creation of the independent Consumer Financial Protection...

Banks, in an attempt to wring more revenue out of customer accounts, are conjuring up new ways to raise fees on basic products like debit cards, cash machines and checking accounts. As regulation curtailing the financial institutions from levying certain charges on consumers has mounted over the past year, banks have had to dream up new fees to replace those now trimmed by laws. Banks are considering additional fees on credit cards and checking accounts. But they also are looking at new ways to make money on cash machines and especially debit cards as regulators pinch the cards' conventional revenue...

Bank of America will begin testing a new slate of checking accounts in Massachusetts and two other states later this month in an effort to generate more revenue from customers.......... A second new account, called “Premium,’’ will cost $15 a month unless customers either maintain a $5,000 minimum balance, use a Bank of America credit card at least once a month, or add $2,000 to the account every month. A third new account, labeled “Enhanced,’’ will cost $25 per month unless holders maintain at least $20,000 in deposits and investments in certain accounts or link their accounts to a Bank...

Remember, the allegations made by various legal folks in the practice (and apparently validated by the case law thus far) is that not one note has been able to be produced that contains all of the required conveyances and endorsements. What's going to happen when (or if) these folks gain access to the files and find that they're missing - that is, that the custodian doesn't have them? Well now that would be interesting, no? "Mortgage-backed securities" that in fact have no mortgages in them? Why that would be a wee problem, no?

For many years, I’ve been a fan of Warren Buffett’s long term approach to value investing. Understanding the value of a company, regardless of its momentary stock price, is a great long term investing strategy. But it pains me whenever I read commentary from Buffett that glosses over reality or is somehow self-serving. His OpEd in the NYT today – Pretty Good for Government Work – paints an artificially rosy picture of the Bailout, ignores the negatives, and omits his own financial interest in government actions. What might he have written if Sir Warren was dosed with some sodium pentothal...

The total cost to rescue and then overhaul mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could reach $685 billion, according to estimates published Thursday by Standard & Poor's. Fannie and Freddie have already cost taxpayers nearly $134 billion, but S&P analysts said Thursday that the government could ultimately be forced to inject $280 billion into the firms because of a slowdown in the housing market. Any entities that might replace Fannie and Freddie would need new start-up funding that would go beyond the money already committed. A consensus of academics, industry officials and investors has coalesced around the idea of...

Frightening FalloutIn order to easily buy and sell mortgages between themselves so that these loans might be repackaged, securitized and then sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities, banks and other lenders needed a quick way to "trade" individual mortgages. They created a company called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). This group includes Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), GMAC LLC (NYSE: GMA), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), Washington Mutual (now owned by JPMorgan Chase), the United Guaranty Corp. unit of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA), Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC), mortgage-servicing companies and other similarly...

"The latest ugly news for Bank of America is actually coming from Europe, where big institutional money managers and other mortgage securities buyers are now beginning to organize for an assault."

At the end of last week's letter on the whole mortgage foreclosure mess, I wrote: "All those subprime and Alt-A mortgages written in the middle of the last decade? They were packaged and sold in securities. They have had huge losses. But those securities had representations and warranties about what was in them. And guess what, the investment banks may have stretched credibility about those warranties. There is the real probability that the investment banks that sold them are going to have to buy them back. We are talking the potential for multiple hundreds of billions of dollars in losses...

Rep. Barney Frank to attend Brockton foreclosure prayer vigilSunday meeting also will update residents on homeowners assistance program By Erik Potter GateHouse News Service Posted Oct 23, 2010 @ 11:51 AM BROCKTON — Rep. Barney Frank and Undersecretary of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation Barbara Anthony will join the Brockton Interfaith Community for a community meeting and prayer vigil Sunday afternoon. The purpose of the meeting is to update citizens on a new federal homeowners assistance program that was included in the Frank-Dodd banking bill passed in July. The meeting will be Sunday at St. Patrick Church, 335 Main St.,...

About time someone made an ad like this. (posted on TheBlaze.com). No hype, not even a voiceover. Just the facts, which are absolutely damning. I would suggest the makers of the ad adapt it to go NATIONAL. Could do a lot of damage to Dems. For now, to help run it to defeat Barney Frank, use donation link below:"BETRAYED OUR TRUST"

Call this good news/bad news for Barney Frank in his fight to hold onto his job in Massachusetts’ 4th CD. The Boston Globe reports that Frank has a 13-point lead — but only gets 46% of the vote in a two-way race, 46-33. With a week to go before voting, Frank’s inability to get a majority may reveal a serious problem, and the Globe notes that enthusiasm may be that problem (via Jim Geraghty): US Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, leads his Republican challenger, Sean Bielat, by 13 percentage points among likely voters in the Fourth Congressional District. In...