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An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor. But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was...

Former Indymac director who runs White Military Office gave thumbs up to criminally stupid fly-by. Heckuva job, Lou. Read »

...FlashBack So why a 30s style bank panic now? Why Indymac? Because the left hated them. Indymac has been in the crosshairs for some time. The trial lawyers started going after them about a month ago. Not long after that, Schumer started sending letters to regulators attacking Indymac, questioning the financial viability of a bank which he had never examined. Neither Schumer, nor any of his staff even bothered to contact Indymac with any questions. Unsatisfied with the response, Schumer leaked his letters to the press. The local paper in Pasadena (where the bank is located) played along, and ran...

<p>A top bank regulator has been placed on leave pending a Treasury Department investigation into regulators' approval of backdated cash infusions for troubled thrifts.</p> <p>The Office of Thrift Supervision said Thursday its acting director, Scott Polakoff, was placed on leave. He is being replaced by OTS Chief Counsel John Bowman.</p>

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Thursday it completed the sale of IndyMac Federal Bank, one of the largest casualties of the housing bust, to OneWest Bank. Pasadena, Calif.-based OneWest, a federal savings bank formed by an investor group that includes billionaire George Soros and Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell, agreed last December to purchase the failed California lender for $13.9 billion.

LOS ANGELES – Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Thursday it completed the sale of IndyMac Federal Bank, one of the largest casualties of the housing bust, to OneWest Bank. Pasadena, Calif.-based OneWest, a federal savings bank formed by an investor group that includes billionaire George Soros and Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell, agreed last December to purchase the failed California lender for $13.9 billion. OneWest will assume all deposits of IndyMac's 33 branches, which will reopen as branches of OneWest on Friday, with deposits continuing to be insured by the FDIC. As of Jan. 31, IndyMac had total assets...

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reached a preliminary agreement to sell the remains of IndyMac Bank -- one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history -- to a team of high-profile investors, suggesting there is private money willing to invest in troubled banks if the government agrees to shoulder heavy losses. Bloomberg News/Landov Christopher Flowers The investment team, which includes affiliates of private-equity chieftain Christopher Flowers, hedge-fund investors George Soros and John Paulson, and computer mogul Michael Dell, will contribute $1.3 billion in capital toward a purchase of IndyMac Federal Bank. The investor group and the government...

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. senator on Tuesday warned American International Group Inc. (AIG.N) employees to return bonuses they are receiving or face being slapped with a major tax on those payments. "They should voluntarily return them (the bonuses). If they don't we plan to tax virtually all of it," Senator Charles Schumer, a member of the Democratic leadership, said in a speech on the Senate floor. Schumer noted that AIG lost nearly $100 billion last year and is now being propped up by U.S. taxpayer funds. Providing performance bonuses to employees "Defines Alice in wonderland business...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California's attorney general is reviewing a request by former employees of IndyMac Bancorp Inc to investigate whether a New York senator triggered the bank's collapse by releasing confidential information. At issue is a much-publicized letter that Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, sent in June to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) questioning the company's ability to survive. The FDIC took control of IndyMac on July 11 after depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. At the time, OTS Director John Reich...

IndyMac will soon earn the first half of its name back. The government, which seized the failed bank last summer, is expected to close a deal in the next week that would return the California mortgage lender to private ownership. For IndyMac, the deal means independence in less than eight months. For the government, the IndyMac sale provides a shining example that takeovers can work at a time when the Obama administration may soon begin pushing for more nationalizations. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.) "The fact that the government ownership of IndyMac is coming to an...

The man at the center of a fraud scandal at the Treasury Department has been allowed to quietly quit and retire from his job as a government regulator, despite allegations that he allowed a bank to falsify financial records and amidst outcries from investigators who say the case shows how cozy government regulators have become with the banks and savings and loans they are supposed to be checking on.

New York Senator Charles Schumer proposed handing $15,000 of Joe the Plumber's money to every person who buys a home. It is possible that someone has come up with a more foolish idea, but no one had yet been able to find one that makes less sense. In addition to the fact that taxing non-home buyers to hand a really big check to home buyers (as opposed poor children, unemployed workers, or people needed health care) is a questionable redistribution of income (spreading the wealth around), this proposal is incredibly easy to game. I'm going to buy my brother's house...

Shoring Up Your Intellectual Defenses A likely feature of the political debate of the next few years will look something like this. Conservatives will make a specific argument about a specific public-policy dispute — say, NR's editorial today questioning the need and wisdom of appropriating the second half of the TARP funds — and liberals will then respond not with a meaningful rebuttal of the specific argument but instead with a general attack on conservative credibility. "Your free-market ideology led to the worst recession since the Great Depression," they will assert. "Why should we believe anything you say now?" Getting...

Darrel Dochow May Not Be the Only Official Who Helped Banks Hide Financial Problems A brewing fraud scandal at the Treasury Department may be worse than officials originally thought. Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News. In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules -- even if it disguised the bank's health to the public. Treasury Department Inspector General Eric...

The FDIC has just announced that a consortium of private equity and hedge fund firms would be buying IndyMac. IndyMac was an independent "bridge bank" spun off of Countrywide Mortgage in the late 90s.  IndyMac acted as a "bridge bank" to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. New York Democrat Charles Shumer precipitated the fall of IndyMac in May of 2008 by releasing "inside" information that the mortgage company was in dire financial straits. This disclosure created the initial "bank run" that is credited by many economists as the initial trigger that prompted the current mortgage crisis. The FDIC took over...

A group of private investors agreed today to buy IndyMac Bank, the Pasadena specialist in exotic home loans that collapsed in July and became the third-largest bank to fail since the government began insuring deposits in 1934. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which has run IndyMac since its collapse, said the bank would be purchased by IMB Management Holdings, a New York-based partnership led by buyout expert J. Christopher Flowers, hedge-fund operator John Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, chairman of private equity firm Dune Capital Management. IMB Management Holdings and the investor group will inject about $1.3 billion in new capital...

A private equity company led by former Goldman Sachs executives is the likely buyer of IndyMac Bank, according to a report published Friday. The winner of the bidding for the Pasadena-based thrift is New York-based Dune Capital Management, founded in 2004 by ex-Goldman partners Steven Mnuchin and Daniel Niedich, according to the report on the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter Web site.

One of the main US banking regulators allowed banks to backdate transactions so as to maintain "well capitalised" status and avoid regulatory restrictions, the Treasury department's watchdog arm has said. The practice came to light as part of a routine federal investigation into the failure of IndyMac, one of five lenders regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision to be wound down this year. IndyMac suffered a run on its $19bn (€13.6bn, £12.8bn) in customer deposits in July after Senator Chuck Schumer, chairman of Congress's joint economic committee, made public a letter he had written to regulators questioning the lender's...

A long-awaited sale of IndyMac Bank may be announced as early as today. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has been looking for a buyer, or buyers, for the Pasadena lender since the government declared it insolvent and seized it in July. Final bids were due by Dec. 12, and the FDIC said it expected to close a deal by the end of the year. The American Banker newspaper reported Tuesday that the announcement could come today.

A senior bank regulator was removed from his job after being accused of helping mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp alter its records so it appeared to be in better shape -- weeks before it was seized by the government. The Office of Thrift Supervision has reassigned its top West Coast official, Darrel Dochow, who was also a controversial figure in the regulatory lapses surrounding the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s. In a letter sent Monday to Sen. Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, the Treasury Department's inspector general wrote that the federal OTS allowed the bank...