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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday it wouldn’t surprise her to see some bank consolidation in the near future. “I see strength in the banking system that has a diverse set of financial institutions capable of satisfying different needs across our economy,” Yellen said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding, “We do have a diverse banking system with strong community banks, regional banks, larger banks that are involved in global business, and I wouldn’t want to see that threatened.” However, she continued, “Certainly in this environment, some banks are experiencing pressure on earnings and there is motivation to see some...

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...

During an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen responded to a question on whether she has confidence that no other regional or small banks will fail by stating that she doesn’t want to get into “the situations of individual banks.” But overall, the banking system is in good shape and “banks are going to be able to survive this, but we’re monitoring the situation very, very carefully.” Yellen stated that the banks that have failed “have had some very unique characteristics that have made them vulnerable” and had profiles that are “not very common. But, look, a...

The U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed that 722 banks reported unrealized losses exceeding 50% of their capital at the end of the third quarter of 2022. “Rising interest rates are creating significant unrealized losses in investment securities and in some cases depressing tangible equity,” according to the Fed’s Division of Supervision and Regulation. 722 Banks Reported Unrealized Losses of More Than 50% of Capital The U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed in a board presentation by the Division of Supervision and Regulation that 722 banks reported unrealized losses exceeding 50% of their capital at the end of the third quarter of...

NEW YORK (AP) — Recent turmoil in the banking industry may have you worried about your money. Since March, three regional banks have failed — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank. If the recent bank collapses have you worried about the safety of your money, here’s what you need to know: IS MY MONEY SAFE? Yes, if your money is in a U.S. bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and you have less than $250,000 there. If the bank fails, you’ll get your money back. Nearly all banks are FDIC insured. You can look for...

The Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates Wednesday by another 0.25 percentage points, brushing aside concerns about the financial sector and an expected recession later this year. The Fed’s rate-setting committee voted Wednesday to boost its baseline interest rate to a range of 5 to 5.25 percent, the point where Fed officials expected in March to stop hiking rates, according projections from the Fed’s last meeting. The latest rate hike is the tenth in a row since the Fed began its program of quantitative tightening in March of last year. Over the past 14 months, the Fed has boosted...

Oct 11 (Reuters) - The six biggest U.S. banks are expected to have set aside nearly $5 billion in the third quarter to cover future loan losses, Wall Street analysts said, as lenders brace for a potential global recession. Profits at big banks got a boost last year as they released funds reserved for potential COVID losses. In the third quarter of last year, they released about $4 billion of loan provisions, according to data from Refinitiv. But with growing fears of a recession as the U.S. Federal Reserve hikes interest rates aggressively to tamp down inflation, reserves in the...

Earlier this month, Deutsche Bank’s co-CEOs Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen were shown the door ... Jonathan Pollack, the bank’s global head commercial real estate, is leaving after 16 years. ... Pollack's departure comes just one month after the bank's head of structured finance Elad Shraga left to start his own fund. Shraga was instrumental in helping Deutsche become "an award-winning arranger of asset- and mortgage-backed debt." Shraga had been with Deutsche Bank for 15 years. All of this seems to lend credence to the idea that Deutsche Bank may be in trouble. The employee exodus appears to be gathering...

Submitted by NotQuant.comLooking back at the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008, it’s amazing how quickly it all happened.  In hindsight there were a few early-warning signs,  but the true scale of the disaster publicly unfolded only in the final moments before it became apparent that Lehman was doomed.First, for purposes of drawing a parallel, let’s re-cap the events of 2007-2008:There were few early indicators of Lehman’s plight.   Insiders however, were well aware:   In late 2007, Goldman Sachs placed a massive proprietary bet against Lehman which would be known internally as the “Big Short”.  (It’s a bet that would later profit from during...

The Russians are apparently afraid that Cypriot banks are in such bad shape, that bailing them out by taking them over is too risky. Instead, they are taking a wait and see attitude: Meanwhile, Cypriot efforts to clinch contribution from Russia appeared to have failed. Russia is a key player in Cyprus as Russian depositors have parked around 20 billion euros in the country. "We will only be ready to discuss various ways of support for that state only after the EU nations and Cyprus work out a final settlement," Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev told a news conference. Russia's...

The life or death of STANCHART is settled - they live; and the $250 billion of 'laundering' transactions - sanctions/terrorism/drugs-related or not - are settled for a 0.14% transaction fee (that'll teach 'em!). In other words, Std Chartered's IRR for committing years of crime is 714%. Finally this is a whopping 1.9% of the bank's entire 2011 revenues, or in other words they had to hand over 7 days of revenue (assuming a 365 day work week).

Welcome to the bizarre world of banking regulation. Despite the recent disaster wrought by affirmative action lending, Washington ratchets up still more politically correct requirements and shifts the measure of discrimination towards “disparate impact.” Even unbiased behaviors are subject to penalty unless they benefit protected classes. It’s no longer blind justice meted equally before the law. “Diversity” has become Washington’s Holy Grail, discharging unequal justice in preference for specific outcomes. The burden on businesses expands beyond banning discrimination into virtually requiring reverse discrimination. Recall before the Great Recession, banks supposedly did not sufficiently extend credit for minorities and less affluent...

Former money manager Ann Barnhardt, who in November of 2011 made the decision to cease operations of her brokerage firm and return funds to her customers citing “systemic” problems within the entire financial industry, has issued a new warning about the stability of US banks and the safety of individual deposit accounts. The warning, stemming from a recent federal appeals court ruling surrounding customer funds lost during the 2007 collapse of Chicago futures broker Sentinel, indicates that individuals who lose deposited funds because a financial institution improperly manages that money, even if those funds are supposed to be “segregated” from...

We were pretty much speechless when we read this - it sure puts guarantees by Noyer, Trichet and all the other bureaumonkeys that the ECB does not accept just any collateral in perspective. From Presseurop.eu: "The most expensive footballer in history may now be used to guarantee the solvency of a Spanish bank. “Ronaldo in the bailout fund,” headlines Süddeutsche Zeitung. The daily reports that the Bankia group of savings banks,...

One of the biggest secrets of the financial crisis was disclosed Thursday when the Federal Reserve released thousands of pages of data showing heavy discount-window borrowing by foreign banks, regional U.S. banks and institutions fighting for survival. It was the first time the Fed has given details about banks that borrowed from the central bank's oldest emergency-lending facility. Thursday's move was forced by lawsuits filed by Bloomberg LP's Bloomberg News and News Corp.'s Fox Business Network, and last year's Dodd-Frank law requires the Fed to disclose future borrowings after a two-year lag. Details of other rescue programs by the Fed...

TRULY startling revelations were few in the voluminous report, published last Thursday by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on the origins of the financial panic. This is hardly a shock, given the flood-the-zone coverage and analysis of the crisis since it erupted four years ago. Yet the report still makes... --snip-- For those of you who’ve wondered why there have been so few prosecutions of mortgage fraud during this epidemic, your answer is on Page 164. “The terrible thing that happened,” said William K. Black, a former fraud investigator in the savings-and-loan crisis who is a professor at the University...

With each day Senator Chris Dodd's hold on the Senate seat he has held for almost 30 years grows more tenuous. As the Chair of the Senate Banking committee he deserves a share of of the blame for the economic mess we are in now, and on top of that there are the recent scandals in which he has been involved.... ...This week may have been the straw the broke the camels back as he first denied and then admitted to the fact that he placed the clause in the stimulus bill allowing the AIG bonuses. Today Rick Green, Columnist...

This news is more infuriating than the AIG retention bonuses. According to Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia), at least thirteen of the companies who have accepted bailout funds from the American Taxpayers OWE TAXES to the government. Sources day that at least two of them owe over $100 Million Dollars!!! What makes things even worse is the fact that when they accepted the federal cash they had to promise that they were current in their tax payments. Who knows, maybe they borrowed Timothy Geithner's copy of Turbo Tax:

London -- Think that credit collapse that triggered the Bush administration's $700 billion bank bailout was necessary because of Republican hostility to regulation and the ineptness of President George W. Bush? If it were that simple, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party would not be squirming, and the United Kingdom would not be swimming in staggering sums of debt. It was not that long ago that market watchers hailed Brown as the savvy Euro-technocrat who, as the United Kingdom's former chancellor of the exchequer, understood capital markets and calmly navigated British finance through the storms...

Yesterday the Dow Jones industrial average shed a little more than four percent and ended under the 8,000 mark, the biggest decline on an Inauguration Day in the index’s 124-year history. The S&P 500 posted a 5.3 percent fall. Asian and Europe markets today followed suit as investors around the world began to realize the extent of the weakness of European and American banks. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist, thinks American financial institutions are carrying $3.6 trillion in credit losses. Of that amount, half belongs to banks and broker dealers. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking...