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Seizure and sale of Downey Financial Corp. and two smaller lenders may cost the FDIC more than $2 billion as foreclosures rise and home prices extend declines in the worst housing slump since the Great Depression. U.S. Bancorp acquired Downey and smaller PFF Bank & Trust, California thrifts crippled by bad mortgages, yesterday in a deal brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Community Bank of Loganville, Georgia, was also closed and its $611.4 million of deposits taken over by Bank of Essex in Tappahannock, Virginia. Regulators this year have closed the most banks since 1993 as mortgage defaults and tightening credit froze markets. The collapse of IndyMac Bancorp Inc. was among the biggest in history, costing the FDIC $8.9 billion. The agency expects Downey’s demise to deplete its Deposit Insurance Fund by $1.4 billion, with PFF costing $700 million and Community $240 million. More

Robert Prechter
You would think that banks would learn to behave differently with centuries of history to guide them, but for the most part, they don’t. The pressure to show good earnings to stockholders and to offer competitive interest rates to depositors induces them to make risky loans. The Federal Reserve’s monopoly powers have allowed U.S. banks to lend aggressively, so far without repercussion. For bankers to educate depositors about safety would be to disturb their main source of profits. The U.S. government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guarantees to refund depositors’ losses up to [$200,000]…which seems to make safety a moot point. Actually, this guarantee just makes things far worse, for two reasons. First, it removes a major motivation for banks to be conservative with your money. Depositors feel safe, so who cares what’s going on behind closed doors? Second, did you know that most of the FDIC’s money comes from other banks? This funding scheme makes prudent banks pay to save the imprudent ones, imparting weak banks’ frailty to the strong ones. When the FDIC rescues weak banks by charging healthier ones higher “premiums,” overall bank deposits are depleted, causing the net loan-to-deposit ratio to rise.

This result, in turn, means that in times of bank stress, it will take a progressively smaller percentage of depositors to cause unmanageable bank runs. If banks collapse in great enough quantity, the FDIC will be unable to rescue them all, and the more it charges surviving banks in “premiums,” the more banks it will endanger. Thus, this form of insurance compromises the entire system. Ultimately, the federal government guarantees the FDIC’s deposit insurance, which sounds like a sure thing. But if tax receipts fall, the government will be hard pressed to save a large number of banks with its own diminishing supply of capital. The FDIC calls its sticker “a symbol of confidence,” and that’s exactly what it is. More

Market Watch
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and state regulators seized Los Angeles-based Security Pacific Bank late Friday — one of two banks to fail that day and the 19th to fail so far this year. Pacific Western Bank, also based in Los Angeles, will assume all of the deposits of Security Pacific, the FDIC said in a statement. Also on Friday, Houston-based Franklin Bank was closed by regulators. The four branches of Security Pacific will reopen on Monday as branches of Pacific Western. Depositors of the failed bank will automatically become depositors of Pacific Western. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC. As of Oct. 17, Security Pacific had total assets of $561.1 million and total deposits of $450.1 million.

Pacific Western agreed to assume all the deposits for a 2% premium, according to the FDIC. In addition to assuming all of the failed bank’s deposits, Pacific Western will purchase approximately $51.8 million of assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $210 million. Pacific Western’s acquisition of all deposits was the “least costly” resolution for the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund compared to alternatives, according to the statement. Security Pacific is the third bank to fail in California this year.

Andy Sutton
Contrary Investors Cafe
Somewhere in all the turmoil the fact that we have a demographic tsunami headed for the Federal balance sheet has been forgotten. True, with a stock market crash, dizzying losses in almost all asset classes, bailouts, and bank failures, it is hard to remember everything. None of what has happened though in the past 6 months changes the fact that both Social Security and Medicare are heading for outright insolvency. A recession (or worse) will cause inflows to these programs to drop even more, thereby exacerbating the problem. Baby boomers headed towards retirement have seen the value of their savings chopped by a third or more. This will cause them rely even more on Social Security and seriously hamper their ability to spend. These programs will need trillions moving forward. At this time those trillions don’t exist. We have an immovable object and an irresistible force. Either we’re going to have to create the money or else we’re going to have to cut the benefits. To this point there has been no talk of cutting benefits. An interesting observation to make here is that a year ago, bailing out Social Security with printed funny money would have seemed far-fetched to the average person. Not so anymore. The bailout mentality is firmly in place, and in fact, the scope of monetary magnitude has been lost. We used to say millions and it was a lot of money. Then it was billions. Now we discuss trillions of dollars like it is pocket change. This is a hyperinflationary mindset. Get used to it.

The Battle of the Backstop

More than ever, it will be necessary to be able to discern between nominal and real. Our website has dozens of articles, and the focus of a good many of them has been to differentiate between nominal and real. It’s not the numbers of dollars, it’s what they buy. It will be critical for individuals to understand what your money buys. If you fully grasp this, you will know when the tide changes. You will not need the Sunday paper. Right now we are focused on falling asset prices, and in the case of energy, consumer prices. While falling consumer prices are a welcome breath of relief, do not get too used to it. Enjoy it while it lasts and watch for signs that the trend is reversing. The biggest problem is the scale of the monetary creation to date that the Fed is willing to admit. Monetary inflation leads to consumer price inflation and when those spinning wheels hit the road and get traction, look out. Things will change quickly. It is imperative to be up on the wheel here so to speak.

Make no mistake, your wealth is in harm’s way unlike any other time in history. While the assault has been ongoing since we decoupled from the backing of real money, for a time, our money was backed by some degree of common sense. However, common sense dictates that you do not create trillions upon trillions of dollars to rescue the financial economy while leaving the foundations of the real economy to reap the whirlwind. Common sense dictates that your money supply growth should not exceed the growth of your underlying producing economy. Common sense should tell you that you don’t allow financial institutions to leverage their portfolios at 100:1. Common sense should tell you that you don’t allow a bank to lend out $10 for every $1 in deposits. Common sense tells you that FDIC is insolvent. It also tells you that California and New York are going to need a bailout. It might even suggest that many of the remaining 48 will require one at some point in the near future along with every pension fund and entitlement program currently in force.

The magnitude of the final quantity of money that must be created is astronomical. From the standpoint of the authorities, it would be best if we continued to go into neverending debt. This way money could be multiplied through the banking system in an ‘orderly’ fashion. The next choices are handouts (think ‘stimulus’ packages), and direct monetization of debt (think outright purchase of new Treasury issues). The multiplier method leads to a ‘slow burn’ inflation such as what we’ve experienced to this point. However, there is an actual moment in time when the population cannot continue to accumulate debt at a level that will perpetuate the fiat system. Then we move to the latter two options which have a much greater likelihood of creating hyperinflation and the eventual end of the paper currency. We have now reached the tipping point where debt accumulation on a meaningful scale cannot continue. Therefore, we are left to watch the remains of the current liquidation of assets then reap the whirlwind of rampant, undisciplined monetary creation. More

MIKE WHITNEY
Counterpunch
There are signs that the credit crunch is easing. Interbank lending in dollars has fallen for a ninth straight day. The various indicators of stress in the market–Libor, the TED spread, and the Libor-OIS spread–are all gradually returning to normal, but the damage to the broader economy has been substantial. Major corporations have had to stretch their credit lines just to get the money they need to cover routine operating expenses and a lot of retailers have not been able to get funding for their inventories for the holiday season, so they’ll either have to hire fewer workers or simply shut their doors for Christmas. Also, corporate defaults have increased as businesses have been unable to turn over their short-term debt. According to Fitch Ratings, the “crisis will cut growth in credit this year by 50 percent as financial firms reduce leverage, investors’ appetite for risk declines, and the worldwide economy slows.” When credit is less available, there’s less business activity and the economy slows. Unemployment goes up and quarterly earnings go down. It’s a vicious circle that starts with speculation and ends in panic. The financial system has to reestablish its equilibrium by purging the excessive credit that developed through low interest rates and lax lending standards. Financial institutions everywhere are in the process of deleveraging which is putting downward pressure on the main stock indexes and creating turmoil in the currency markets.

The US Treasury and Federal Reserve are now underwriting the entire financial system. The free market has been abandoned altogether. Everything from commercial paper to money markets is now backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States”. Without that explicit government guarantee, the credit markets would still be frozen and the system would crash. But government guarantees do not address the real problem, which is toxic assets that must be accounted for and written down. All it does is take hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed garbage onto the nation’s balance sheet and undermine the creditworthiness of the United States. Eventually, foreign central banks will see the folly of this maneuver and refuse to buy more US debt. When that happens, there will be a run on the dollar and a major dislocation in the bond market. Then, the financial system will grind to a standstill once again.

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson’s $125 billion capital “giveaway” to nine of the country’s largest banks has helped to calm the credit markets, but it won’t last. The “real economy” is beginning to stumble and the stock market is gyrating more wildly than anytime in history. Wall Street is consumed with fear and investors are ducking out the exits as fast as their feet will carry them. According to the New York Times, the banks probably won’t even use Paulson’s money to extend loans to consumers and businesses (as intended), but will hoard it to make sure they are sufficiently capitalized when their mortgage-backed assets are downgraded. Even worse, the banks may use the money to gobble up smaller local and regional banks. On Tuesday’s Jim Lerher News Hour, New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin put it like this: “The other thing that some of them may do with that money is go out and make acquisitions and buy other banks, (which) means that you will not be getting this money into your pocket anytime soon….I think the larger issue is the economy and these banks, in terms of lending, are not going to start lending real money until the economy turns.”

Paulson knows what the banks are up to; after all, these are his friends. The truth is, the $125 billion was not given to the banks to soften the effects of the recession or increase lending. It was given to make the strong banks even stronger so they could monopolize the industry. Paulson’s real plan is “more consolidation” and less competition, or as economist Michael Hudson says, “Big fish eat little fish”. The Treasury Secretary is using his authority to reward his friends rather than doing what is best for the country.

In the last few weeks, the broader economy has deteriorated faster than anytime in the last 70 years. That’s why Fed chief Ben Bernanke has given the nod to another stimulus package of $150 to $300 billion dollars. The gears are rusting in place and the desperation in Washington is palpable. Calculated Risk web site provided a transcript of a conference call by MSC Industrial Supply (MSC) which summed up the prevailing mood in today’s business world:

MSC: “In the last several weeks, customers’ sentiment has turned dramatically downwards. Here are a few of the things we have recently heard and I’ll quote a few of them. One quote is our new orders are down substantially in the last few weeks. Another is that corporate has told us to reduce inventory. What we have also heard is make due with what you have. And finally, another quote is capital expenditures are on hold. Customers are concerned about the economy and the lack of available credit. They’re reducing inventories, orders, and order size and there has been a trend toward deferring capital expenditures…”

MSC: “David, we view this time as unprecedented in history. The economy is undergoing a huge change, how that is going to shake out all remains to be seen, but I think what is important to know is it’s a huge change that, frankly, no one had a chance to see coming, so we than specifically in our customer base there is a tremendous amount of fear that is gripping customers and evidenced by what we have seen the last couple of weeks in October, almost buying paralysis, that is really the way that we think about it, and frankly, in speaking with so many customers what we see happening…. What is has happened here with the credit crisis is while the economy was by no means booming, it was kind of rolling along and we almost think that what typically would have taken six, seven, eight, 9, 12 months to start to come down happened almost literally overnight.” (Calculated Risk)

Events are now unfolding so quickly, they’re impossible to follow. But this much is clear, the wheels have fallen off the cart. The Fed has lost control of the system. On Monday, Bernanke announced the creation of the Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF), which will provide $550 billion in liquidity to U.S. money market investors. It is another in a long list of steps to try to provide liquidity to a system that is burning through trillions of dollars of credit via the deleveraging hedge funds and asset downgrades. Of course, the Fed does not really have the money it has committed. It will have to expand its balance sheet, issue more Treasurys, and hope that foreign central banks do not see that the US financial system is headed for the rocks.

“It is essential we preserve the foundations of democratic capitalism,” Bush bellowed on Monday.

All that’s left of the free market is the threadbare rhetoric of our lame duck President. The world’s biggest creditor is now the most ardent defender of market fundamentalism.

Last week, banks borrowed a record $437 billion per day, topping the previous week’s $420 billion per day a week earlier. Hundreds of banks cannot meet their capital requirements without regular low interest loans from the Federal Reserve. The banking system is in shambles. The FDIC needs to determine which banks can be saved and which need to be shut down, otherwise the insolvent banks will use the money they get from the Treasury on risky bets to dig their way out of bankruptcy. Without restrictions on how they can issue credit, many of the banks will engage in the same reckless behavior and speculation that brought on the current calamity.

92 year old Anna Schwartz, who co-authored “A Monetary History of the United States” with Milton Friedman, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that Paulson and Bernanke “should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down.” Rather, “firms that made wrong decisions should fail…. By keeping otherwise insolvent banks afloat, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have actually prolonged the crisis.” At the same time, they have not alleviated the uncertainty among lenders “that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them.” This is the very heart of the matter; the distrust will remain until the bankrupt institutions are shut down and confidence is restored. The good banks have to be strengthened, the bad banks have to be closed, deposits have to be insured, foreclosures have to be reduced (to stabilize home prices), and consumers need immediate stimulus (including food stamps, extended unemployment insurance, infrastructure spending and aid to states) to rev up the economy. All of these have to be done as quickly as possible to avoid further damage to the economy and greater personal suffering. According to an estimate by the UNs International Labour Organisation (ILO) “Twenty million jobs will disappear by the end of next year as a result of the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy…Construction, real estate, financial services, and the auto sector are most likely to be hit, according to the ILO’s estimate which is based on International Monetary Fund projections for the world economy.” It could be worse if the Bernanke and Paulson botch the rescue.

The FDIC’s Sheila Bair has been the one “bright light” in the present financial train-wreck. She has done a first-rate job of closing “sick” banks and renegotiating mortgages. Last week, Bair blasted Paulson for focusing all his attention on the banks and financial institutions instead of homeowners, many of who are now facing foreclosure. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, she said: “We’re attacking it (the crisis) at the institution level as opposed to the borrower level, and it’s the borrowers that are defaulting. That is what’s causing the distress at the institution level…So why not tackle the borrower problem?”

Unlike Paulson, Bair seems to grasp that the hemorrhaging in the financial sector cannot be stopped unless the rate of foreclosures is slowed and housing prices stabilize. The FDIC chief has taken a sensible approach to the crisis by writing down the face-value of mortgages and putting homeowners in conventional 30-year fixed rate loans that make it possible for them to avoid foreclosure. According to Bloomberg, “(Bair) now has the authority to offer loan guarantees that could encourage modifications by mortgage-servicing companies in an effort to avert foreclosures. The new financial rescue plan “allows the government to set standards for mortgage changes and offer guarantees for loans that meet the standards.” This gets to the root of the larger problem which is stopping the slide in housing prices so that the mortgage-backed securities market can normalize.

The actions of the Fed, the Treasury and the FDIC are likely to cost in excess of $2 trillion. That does not include the trillions in market capitalization that are wiped out by plummeting home and stock prices. Nor does it include the incalculable suffering from rising unemployment, falling living standards, or personal hardship. Eventually, the Fed’s emergency measures will result in higher taxes, soaring deficits and slower growth. As America’s “consumer-based” economy flags and the recession deepens, capital will flee US Treasurys and securities and create a funding crisis. This may be hard to imagine, now that the dollar is strengthening and US Treasurys appear to be in great demand, but the handwriting is already on the wall.

Brad Setser explains the dollar’s surprising reversal in his latest blog-entry: “The dollar’s rise since July is part of a reversal in longstanding investment trends that prevailed during years of plentiful borrowing, strong growth and low financial-market volatility. “Essentially, every large trade that built up a head of steam in the go-go years has blown up or is in the process of blowing up,” wrote Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital, in a report to clients. “That goes for almost every asset class.”(Brad Setsers Blog)

The recent surge in US Treasurys is also misleading, much of it having to do with terrified investors that are dumping their shares in stocks, mutual funds and hedge funds for the percieved safety of US debt. Foreign investors, however, seem to be losing their enthusiasm for Treasurys as America’s future continues to darken.

The net foreign purchases of long term securities in August was a mere $14 billion following an even more dismal $8.6 billion in July; not nearly enough to meet $55 billion per month the US needs to balance its consumption of foreign goods. Even worse, the purchases of long-term US securities “went negative” by for foreign private investors (by $8.8 billion) which means that the dollar is being artificially propped up by foreign central banks to avert a disorderly unwinding of the currency.

Foreign investors and central banks are no longer providing the capital to support the US $700 billion current account deficit. They have lost confidence in America’s ability to bounce back from the credit crisis which has swept through the financial system and is now hammering away at the broader economy. That means the demand for US debt will fall and the prospect of hyperinflation will grow. Even if the dollar is able to weather the storm ahead (and the nation can avoid a funding crisis) the massive deficits brought on by Bernanke’s “emergency” spending spree will force interest rates upwards and tighten credit even more. As Michael Panzer, author of “Financial Armageddon” says:

“While the U.S. may not suffer from a funding crisis in the immediate future, the voracious money-raising appetite will make life much more difficult for the private sector, in the sense that, they will be ‘crowding out’ increasingly desperate borrowers who will find their options are more and more limited.”

The Fed now faces the daunting task of trying to maintain America’s dominant place in the global system while the economy contracts, deficits skyrocket and the pillars of US-style capitalism come crashing to earth.

(Reuters) - Threatening letters containing a suspicious white powder mailed to three U.S. financial institutions warn “it’s payback time,” according to a text released by the FBI on Thursday. More than 50 letters, with identical or similar threatening language, were sent to Chase Bank offices, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision, the FBI said. “Steal tens of thousands of people’s money and not expect repercussions (sic). It’s payback time. What you just breathed in will kill you within 10 days. Thank (redacted) and the FDIC for your demise,” said the text posted on the FBI Web site. The agency also released a photograph of the envelope in which the letter was mailed. It was addressed to a Chase Bank branch in Lakewood, Colorado, and bears an Amarillo, Texas, postmark. All the letters were mailed from the city in the Texas panhandle, the FBI said. More

Jim Willie CB
The tag team of JPMorgan as the monster and Goldman Sachs as its harlot represent a powerful pair that is more responsible for destroying the entire US financial system than 95% of the American public has any awareness. The colossus of JPMorgan is a monster, a predator, nurtured by pond scum. It has gobbled up Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover, Chemical Bank, Bank One, and more over the past two decades. Their profound presence in keeping the USTreasury Bond yields down can never be understated. They do so by managing 85% of the credit derivatives on the planet. They distorted usury prices, as in price of borrowed money, thus aggravating the LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) market in a very visible manner.

The oblong usury prices have contributed mightily to the destruction of the USEconomy itself, created bubbles, killed jobs, and wrecked savings. The ugliest hidden activity for the JPMorgan monster is to manage the Bank of Baghdad, where they manipulate the crude oil price, where drug trafficking money is funneled from Afghan sales, under management by the USMilitary aegis (guys with no uniform stripes or markings). Maybe such illicit money offsets Credit Default Swap losses, making America strong for freedom and liberty. Goldman Sachs is clearly the investment banking agent for the USGovt, given the privilege of insider trading in unspeakable proportions. They manage the Plunge Protection Team efforts to intervene in financial markets, making America strong for freedom and liberty. The new kid on the block is the FDIC. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is steering fresh meat into the corralled JPMorgan stockyards for slaughterhouse feeding.

The label of harlot might be too kind, especially from the perspective of senior bond holders. But JPMorgan requires fresh meat (capital) periodically, thus making America strong for freedom and liberty. Nevermind the fires caused after its hearty meals and flatulence. This article discusses banking system realignments to destroy savings accounts owned by the people, and the Coup d’Etat just completed. The criminals on Wall Street have taken full control of the USGovt financial management, with blank check written by a thoroughly intimidated USCongress, deceived steadily and easily. Threats and intimidation are central to the successful coup. The Ponzi Scheme has been revealed, even as the frail and tattered Shadow Banking System has been revealed. The key to the bailouts is its continued Top Down approach, which favors the Ruling Elite and denies all but crumbs to the people, who have been subjected to a foreclosure revolving door on mortgage loan assistance. Since nothing has been solved from this approach, a total systemic breakdown is assured, whose climax will be the current Administration and the Wall Street executives in charge of the criminal syndicate riding off into the sunset in retirement. Rome burns. Much more detail is provided in the upcoming October report due this weekend. The theme is this subset synopsis article is of criminality, deception, monster exploitation, market corruption, and the collapse of a failed system, whose crescendo represents the greatest financial crimes ever witnessed in modern history. Americans do it big! The proprietary Hat Trick Letter covers much more of recent events, interpretation, and analysis, but here, focus on impropriety.

THE MONSTER, ITS BROKER & HARLOT

JPMorgan will require fresh asset meat every several weeks in order to survive, but the process will result in a sequence of severely damaging CDSwap fires. Perversely, the FDIC is their investment banker agent. Two mergers of questionable nature highlight the altered role of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), which no longer protects bank depositors or their investors, but rather serves JPMorgan Chase. When Bank of America merged with Merrill Lynch, a trend started, one that exposed private stock brokerage accounts. Officially they can be legally borrowed across subsidiary lines. The FDIC averted a failure of Merrill Lynch without the credit default implications. The other event was more blatant, as the FDIC steered Washington Mutual out of bankruptcy failure and into the JPMorgan slaughterhouse. Inside its chambers, JPM gobbled up the WaMu deposits and benefited from ratio improvements. Senior bond holders were crushed, fully denied due process from bankruptcy. The FDIC has become an ugly investment banker lookalike, serving JPM and not the US public. The FDIC owns a pitifully small $45 billion in funds available for bank bailouts, at June count. When the dust clears a year or more from now, many multiples more will be necessary for many bank failures.

The path of JPMorgan growth into a FRANKENSTEIN took radical changes in course after both the failures of Lehman Brothers and recognition that Fannie Mae & Fannie Mae had to be taken over by the USGovt. To halt the run on their bonds, the USGovt acquired the entire F&F Cesspool. The impact hit the Credit Default Swap market immediately. AIG had been weakened one week earlier from the technical default of Fannie & Freddie, which resulted in broad CDSwap payouts. Ripple effects from the Lehman Brothers failure that followed were deep and broad throughout the system, killing AIG. The Wall Street central harlot (Goldman Sachs) advised the USGovt to assume full control and risk of AIG, as GSachs avoided $20 billion in sudden losses in the nick of time, a pure coincidence!

The entire episode with Wells Fargo bidding for Wachovia, in competition from Citigroup, is steeped in comedy with vampire stars. The grapevine in Washington and Wall Street passes word that the Citigroup versus Wachovia wrestling match was actually a sponsored backdoor bailout attempt to save Citigroup, not just Wachovia. Again, the FDIC was the matchmaker. My term has been ‘Dead Marrying the Dead’ which still holds true, since Citigroup has been dead for one year. Under the original Citigroup proposal, the FDIC had arranged for guarantees of $42 billion for Wachovia debt by the USFed. The new Wells Fargo deal enabled the US taxpayers to get off the hook. The reversal by the FDIC to serve the public has caused gigantic Wall Street problems, as Citigroup now finds itself in a position more perilous than anyone believed. This battle has flip-flopped once, and might again. Citigroup would probably have died if not for the USGovt purchase of bank stocks.

THE TEETH OF THE MONSTER REVEALED

JPMorgan is a monster predator at work, hidden from view. After the Fannie Mae experience, covering their giant raft of CDSwap contracts, making huge payouts, JPMorgan was close to a bankruptcy. They needed to feed off another bank, to consume private deposits and thus shore up the balance sheet. Lehman Brothers was let go to fail, but its failure would surely trigger a gigantic wave of credit market fires. The Lehman CDSwap resolution has cost roughly $300 billion, paying 91 cents per dollar of coverage on their failed bonds. The Wall Street Powerz permitted Lehman to fail, so as to prevent a JPMorgan failure, thus risking that the fires caused could be contained in CDSwap fallout. The irony is that JPMorgan undoubtedly suffered considerably from that fire in fallout. Now JPMorgan might need another Wall Street failure, for to consume another block of assets, but with yet another ensuing CDSwap fire. JPMorgan is a monster predator at work, soon hungry again. It might be eyeing Morgan Stanley. We might discover a failure in an unexpected place, like a big insurance firm, whose sector condition is not well advertised.

With each big bank failure, whether a commercial bank or investment bank, heavy damage is done to the system. The CDSwap destruction is mostly hidden, with large pillars burned out. We the people hear of the destruction only if and when a major bank fails as a result. No death, no news, however but with potentially significant hidden structural damage. As financial firms pay out vast sums on CDSwaps as in the Lehman case, and the Fannie Mae case, and the Freddie Mac case, the system bleeds capital. Lending suffers. The sequence corresponds to a powerful vicious cycle. JPMorgan will need more deaths to survive, but each death causes more deadly CDSwap fires. JPMorgan is a monster predator at work, which leaves fires on pathways where it last stepped. The best analogy is that CDSwap contract payouts from bond failures are like mini-Hiroshima events that might lead to a bigger such event. Ironically, to save JPM the financial system must destroy the shadow banking system centered in New York City, since Wall Street firms, plus Bank of America are at its center. The system lacks disclosure and transparency, just like Wall Street likes it.

Permit the pathogenesis to proceed further, and the majority of Western bank system must be burned in order to leave JPMorgan as prominent survivor to rule over a scorched empire. This process is a sick consolidation. The bank conglomerate is a major crime syndicate colossus, and center of the drug traffic money laundering, coordinated by security agencies, fully condoned by the US Federal Reserve itself. The AIG story is nowhere complete, the latest being their expensive parties. AIG has caused major complications, another monster that will resurface periodically at feeding time. Personally, my wish is to see the RICO law brought forward, at least to deposit the monster in a cage. In done my way, not a single additional USCongressional bill would be approved and granted for a bailout or rescue without rapid investigation, prosecution, turn to state’s evidence, asset seizure, restitution, and imprisonment for dozens of Wall Street executives, starting with Hank Paulson.

STOCK MANIPULATION WITH DEEP MOTIVE

Few analysts, pundits, or anchors are aware of the mammoth conflict of interest involved with the USTreasury Bond sales required to pay for all the bailouts. JPMorgan, with the essential aid of Goldman Sachs, plot to bring down the DJIA index and the S&P500 index whenever the USTreasury conducts auctions or needs Congressional passage of key bailout bills. They have sold $194 billion of Cash Mgmt Bills (CMB) in the last two weeks, today $70B, tomorrow another $60B. The big stock declines seen recently work to the BENEFIT of the USTreasury and USFed as agent for auctions. TBill yields are down near zero, in case you have not noticed, with principal prices corresponding almost as high as the bond permits. The USGovt is conducting auctions for TBills at top dollar prices, when its credit rating should be caving in radically upon downgrades. These USTreasurys are destined to enter default at a later date, where the loss to foreign investors will be maximized. Most of the US public has savings dominated by stocks, with little in bonds. So the US public is being fleeced, coming and going, since even money markets contain toxic mortgage bonds. Look for the stock market decline to come to a surprising end when the USGovt has completed the majority of their planned emergency supply sales via auction.

The Wall Street tactics have recently turned more vicious and devious, actually creating volatility, producing fear for political purpose. They accuse hedge funds of driving up the crude oil price, rendering great harm to the USEconomy and US citizens. So they urged unsuccessfully the Securities & Exchange Commission to force hedge funds to reveal their speculative positions. The Wall Street thieves and conmen wish to learn details on hedge fund positions so as to target them illicitly. In a queer twist, JPMorgan has benefited from an interesting double kill. They exploit hedge funds, wreck them, then encourage them into the fold at JPM in brokerage accounts, where their private accounts are rendered vulnerable under the new USFed rules. JPMorgan is a monster predator at work, which is permitted to manipulate markets and clients with total impunity.

There is one more detail. Lest one forget, Goldman Sachs was exempt from the short rule restriction placed on a few hundred financial stocks traded. The reason had something to do with market stability and integrity assurance! Goldman Sachs clearly profited from the ups & down in the Dow and S&P500, lifting stocks after Congressional agreements, pulling them down before those agreements. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs profit handsomely when the USGovt Plunge Protection Team pushes the stock indexes up with their usual methods. Of course JPM and GSachs are the managers of the PPT efforts. YES, IT IS TIME TO PUKE NOW!!!

HIDDEN USGOVT COUP BY WALL STREET

The USCongress has been subverted by intimidation and ignorance, maybe bribery. Regulators and law enforcement bodies are mere accomplices. The entire US banking system has undergone an unprecedented grand nationalize initiative, including the financial system, when considering the mortgage and insurance giants. The total bailouts are huge when put into perspective. This is a hidden coup, complete with deep fraud, corruption, and ruin for both prosecutors and whistle blowers. The USDollar is caught in the middle of a black hole scrambled with fraud. Paulson is the new Chancellor of US Inc, Bernanke the new Currency Lithography Manager, and Sheila Bair the Investment Banker (a la Goldman Suchs). Paulson assumes all powers over the financial state from the president, via the banking industry control. The government bailout redemption of $trillion past fraud closes the loop. Bernanke manages all efforts to use printed money for the purpose of buying worthless counterfeited and fraud-laced bonds, buying commercial bonds and posted collateral among businesses, as well as making printed paper products available to foreign central banks in relief of past fraud. Bair will act as the director of slaughterhouse traffic for JPMorgan, which needs a steady supply of bank deposits to offset their destroyed balance sheet from continued credit derivative implosion, thereby betraying the chartered FDIC pledge to protect bank depositors and senior bank bond holders through liquidation procedures, with full recognition of expedience. Hail to the king, long live the king! The US public seems so dumbstruck that it cannot demand even full disclosure of the process, let alone private offshore bank accounts for the new leaders of the successful coup.

The coup formalizes a climax to a Ponzi Scheme. A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, without any product or service bearing true value delivered. With the ongoing steadfast support offered by Alan Greenspan, they were able to maintain an incredible Ponzi scheme. They sold financial toxic waste products in the form of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV), Unidentified Financial Objects (UFO), and Credit Default Swaps (CDS). My favorite remains the UFOs. The corruption of politicians in Congress enabled the process, with relaxed guidance by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The two key ingredients for the Ponzi Scheme are a mythological ideology and a high priest to endorse the game from a credible pulpit. Alan Greenspan claimed legitimacy of the US banking system, blessed credit growth and fractional bank practices as beneficial, and praised risk pricing systems using credit derivatives as sophisticated. The high priest used to be Greenspan, but now a tag team has replaced him. Hank Paulson is the spearhead for the great coup of the US financial system. Usage of short restrictions rules has been key to both instilling instability at necessary times, and raiding hedge funds. USFed Chairman Bernanke swaps USTBonds for any piece of bonded garbage known to mankind. Mammoth placements of leveraged trades by Wall Street firms make for some of the most grotesque insider trading in US history.

DECEIT & INTIMIDATION

The lies, deceit, backroom pressure, and fleecing of the American public is deep. Take the Emergency Economic Stability Act. Most of the initial $250 billion outlay was not devoted to American bankers, but rather to foreign bankers, primarily in Europe and England, and to purchase preferred US bank stocks. The US public was not told about this redirection, which constitutes misallocation, misappropriation, and fraud. Tremendous backroom pressure was exerted at every step. The underlying assets involved in swaps do not even have to be US-based mortgage bonds. The formerly submitted Paulson Manifesto was revived in a power grab, complete with considerable infighting and squabbles, since Morgan Stanley was given favor. The usage of funds to buy investment stakes in the giant US banks is yet another direct Fascist Business Model tactic, assisting banks close to the power center, yet reeking with corruption. The sickening irony is that they have no more money to disseminate and distribute. They cannot reveal their lies until they formally request more Congressional funds. Much discussion has come that the USGovt should adopt the Swedish model in the resolution of the current crisis. Not in a New York minute!! That would require heavy stock and bond losses, and more transparency of scum. Interestingly, the market discounts words as worthless, while bailout actions fail to produce even a positive reaction for a full day, until Monday last week when the Dow Jones Industrial index rose over 900 points. That was clearly Wall Street engineering a profitable short cover rally. Check S&P futures positions beforehand, if you can. The credibility of the USFed is close to being destroyed. On October 15, the same Dow Jones index fell over 700 points, almost 8%. Even the global rate cut was rejected by stock markets, a major insult.

Intimidation of the USCongress has been huge and powerful, similar to when the Patriot Act was passed in 2002. The Congress was actually threatened by martial law in the cities of the United States if the big bailout package was not passed two weeks ago! This was not reported on CNN or CNBC, but C-Span did cover it. The mobilization of the USArmy for civilian control is well known in the past couple weeks. See the Third Brigade back from combat duty in Iraq. This account came from Rep Brad Sherman of California. To achieve supposed financial stability, the nation succumbed to totalitarianism by Wall Street thieves, conmen, fraud kings, and criminals. Instead, the bailout only covered up $trillion fraud. My position has been very stable and consistent, that such tactics are typical characteristics of the Fascist Business Model. The state merges with the large corporations, who proceed to terrorize the citizenry after unspeakable protected corruption and theft. To object is to be labeled unpatriotic!

TOP DOWN SOLUTION FAVORS THE ELITE

The top-down approach used to date aids the wealthy bankers, while the homeowners are denied aid. That aid is promised but rarely arrives. The fundamental problem here is that billion$ are devoted to shore up insolvent banks, to redeem their worthless (or nearly worthless) bonds, and to give a giant pass to the executives. Trust has eroded throughout the system. Banks distrust each other’s collateral. The result is that eventually the USEconomy will enter not a recession, not a depression, but a DISINTEGRATION PHASE. Despite Bernanke’s studious efforts, borrowing from revisionist history, his liquidity is nothing more than bailouts at the top for the perpetrators of the housing bubble and mortgage debacle. The bank system benefits little inside the US walls of finance. A bottom-up approach might have had a chance to succeed, but a top-down approach is a sham. To expect a top-down solution that actually relieves the housing inventory logjam is insane. That is like feeding a teenager with meals placed inside the human rectum, expecting nutrients to find their way to the rest of the body! The credit mechanisms do not travel upward within the pyramid, but rather in the downward direction, starting with a borrower, a good collateralized risk, and an underwritten loan, when plenty of lending capital is available. The US public has bought this stupid ‘Trickle Down’ philosophy for years, learning nothing. The USEconomy is on the verge of collapsing. Short-term credit is being denied at key supplier intermediary steps, soon to result in recognized disintegration.

The primary practical objective of this corrupt trio (JPM, GSax, FDIC) is to avoid Credit Default Swap fires, which would bring an end to their reign of terror. This USEconomic failure is in progress and is unstoppable. The 1930 Depression resulted after monumental credit abuse from the bottom up, as hundreds of thousands of people leveraged investments 10:1 with stocks primarily. The 2000 Depression will come after monumental credit abuse from the top down, as hundreds of big financial firms leveraged investments by 7:1 and 20:1 with bonds primarily. The most absurd of all is the CDO-squared, leveraging upon leverage. Total seizures have crippled the banking system. Short-term credit has largely vanished, as letters of credit are routinely not honored at ports in the United States. The panic will continue, especially when supplies dry up. More

Meridian Bank, Eldred, Illinois, was closed today by the Illinois Department of Financial Professional Regulation-Division of Banking, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC approved the assumption of all the deposits of Meridian Bank by National Bank, Hillsboro, Illinois. All depositors of Meridian Bank, including any with deposits in excess of the FDIC’s insurance limits, will automatically become depositors of National Bank, and they will continue to have uninterrupted access to their money. Depositors will still be insured with the new institution. Therefore, there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain deposit insurance. More

Main Street Bank, Northville, Michigan, was closed today by the Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC approved the assumption of all the deposits of Main Street Bank, by Monroe Bank & Trust, Monroe, Michigan. All depositors of Main Street Bank, including any with deposits in excess of the FDIC’s insurance limits, will automatically become depositors of Monroe Bank & Trust, and they will continue to have uninterrupted access to their money. Depositors will still be insured with the new institution. Therefore, there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain deposit insurance. More

Bloomberg –
It won’t take many more failures before the FDIC itself runs out of money. The agency had $45.2 billion in its coffers as of June 30, far short of the $200 billion Whalen says it will need to pay claims by the end of next year. The U.S. Treasury will almost certainly come to the rescue. Regardless of who wins control of the White House and Congress in November, no politician is likely to vote in favor of leaving federally insured depositors out in the cold. A taxpayer bailout of the FDIC would come on the heels of intervention by the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to save investment bank Bear Stearns Cos., mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the world’s largest insurer, American International Group Inc. More

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Northfork, West Virginia-based Ameribank Inc. has been closed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said late Friday, marking the 12th bank closure so far this year. Deposits at Ameribank’s Ohio branches have been transferred to The Citizens Savings Bank, while Ameribank’s Ohio branches will reopen Saturday as Citizens Bank branches, the FDIC said. Ameribank’s West Virginia deposits have been transferred to Pioneer Community Bank, and Ameribank’s West Virginia branches will reopen as Pioneer branches.

Don A. Rich
The announcement by the FDIC that it might have to “temporarily” borrow money from the Treasury, i.e., the taxpayers, is the latest squawking canary that the dollar-centric global-fiat-money and regulatory era in place since WWII is approaching a final ugly dénouement. The FDIC now fails to meet its required statutory minimum of 1.15% of capital per insured dollar in deposits due to the ongoing mortgage and credit market carnage; hence the hint for the life preserver thrown out by the FDIC to the Treasury Department the last week of August 2008.

The FDIC, like Fannie and Freddie, says, “Of course we will pay this loan back when everything returns to normal.” The accounting “profession” and “civil servants” at the CBO et al. are likely to give their seal of approval to an FDIC bailout with the assurance that “all is well” in the short run. In fact, the bailouts of Fannie, Freddie, and the FDIC in the long run by themselves are likely to be as effective as the Niedermeyer character from the movie Animal House was in attempting to stop the John Belushi–triggered stampeding crowd at the end, pitifully screaming, “Remain calm, all is well.” More

Option Armageddon
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is on the brink of bankruptcy and taxpayers may be forced to pony up hundreds of billions to bail it out—for the second time in a generation. All the while banks like Washington Mutual are deliberately putting taxpayers at greater risk. But more on WaMu later. Created during The Depression, the FDIC protects depositors from bank failures by insuring deposits up to $100,000. To fund itself, the FDIC charges insurance premiums to member banks.

It ran out of cash once, in the early 90s, due to the savings and loan crisis. Back then S&Ls advertised high interest rates to attract deposits, which they used to fund everything from speculative land deals to risky derivative trades. Their marketing pitch to depositors was compelling: high interest rates on deposits backed by federal insurance, for which the banks themselves paid little. When their risky investments lost money, they’d simply offer higher interest rates to bring in more deposits. Like any Ponzi scheme, eventually the S&Ls went bust. And taxpayers were left holding the bag. Regulators, and Congress, still haven’t learned their lesson…More

Moe Bedard
The lender carnage, death and destruction litter the home page of Aaron Krowne’s Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter like the beach at Normandy on D-Day. The infamous list has grown from September 2006 when Aaron started the website with approximately 10 failed lenders to a whopping 276 major U.S. failed lending operations today. That comes out to about one failed lender every two days over the last two years. This is no anomaly- An anomaly is an irregularity, a mis proportion, or something that is strange or unusual, or unique. If you truly think about what is going on in our country right now and from the actual evidence on the ML-Implode.com website, your will realize that this is really not the “twilight zone” and our banking system is on the verge of complete collapse. I think the question now is not “if” your bank will fail, but “when” will your bank fail.

Wall Street Journal
Exhibit A is the revelation by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair that her $45 billion deposit insurance fund may not be adequate to pay off account holders as banks continue to fail. This has been inevitable for months, but neither Ms. Bair nor Treasury wanted to admit the truth in public for obvious political reasons. Yet now we learn that the insurance fund shrank by $7.6 billion in the second quarter, bringing its reserve ratio well below the minimum required by Congress.

Quick Fact - The FDIC is a government agency that insures deposits in the U.S. against bank failure; it was created in 1933 to maintain public confidence and encourage stability in the financial system. The frightening facts are that the US Banking system is in dire straits and our government does not want you to panic and make a run on your bank. It would be the Great Depression all over again in a heartbeat if we were all to take what little cash we Americans have out of these “insolvent” banking establishments and place it under our mattresses.

That would really make them fail and fast. But will our money be safer under our mattress than these banks of cards? Ms. Bair and the FDIC may be hinting to us all, YES!

ML-Implode has listed 276 various lenders that have met their deaths and another 19 on the ailing list of lenders “about” to implode. But only the FDIC truly knows the “true” state of our nation’s banks and the hints and news coming from this mighty agency is nothing short of frightening. More

Hundreds could fail, some industry experts predict. That could force the agency to make good on its promise to insure most customers’ checking and savings deposits up to $100,000 and some retirement accounts up to $250,000, putting pressure on its insurance fund. Is the agency, whose combined insurance funds were technically pushed into insolvency during the savings and loan debacle two decades ago, ready for another banking crisis? And how bad could it get? The FDIC, which had shrunk to 4,600 employees from 23,000 at the height of the savings and loan meltdown, has been gearing up for another wave of bank failures.

It’s hiring 70 new employees and bringing back 70 retirees to beef up its teams that swoop in, usually over a weekend, to take over and reopen banks under new management. The FDIC’s Atlanta regional office, which covers seven states from West Virginia to Florida, also recently boosted its bank examiner and professional staff by about 10 percent, to about 300. The agency is also expected to soon raise the insurance premiums it charges banks and thrifts to begin rebuilding its reserves. The FDIC won’t discuss its projections, but it has been increasing its loss provisions for expected bank failures and adding institutions to its growing “problem” bank list. The list totaled 90 institutions with $26.3 billion in assets at the end of March. The confidential list is expected to be longer when the FDIC issues an update Tuesday. More

JESSICA HOLZER
The U.S. banking industry, reeling from the credit crisis, earned just $5.0 billion in the second quarter, the second-lowest level since the end of 1991, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday. The FDIC said its “problem list” at the end of June grew to 117 institutions, up from 90 at the end of March. Firms set aside $50.2 billion to cover delinquent loans, more than four times the amount from a year ago. Still, the FDIC said the level of reserves wasn’t keeping pace with higher delinquencies. The FDIC said 2.04% of all loans and leases were non-current at the end of the second quarter, the highest level since 1993. The FDIC said it planned in October to propose raising premiums charged potentially on all banks in order to bolster its deposit insurance fund. At the end of the second quarter, the fund stood at 1.01% of all insured deposits, down from an already low level of 1.19% at the end of the first quarter. More

(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said its “problem list” of banks increased 30 percent in the second quarter to the highest total in five years. The list had 117 “problem” banks as of June 30, up from 90 in the first quarter and the highest since mid 2003, the agency said today in its quarterly report released in Washington. FDIC-insured lenders reported net income of $4.96 billion, down from $36.8 billion in the same quarter a year ago. “Quite frankly, the results were pretty dismal, and we don’t see a return to the high earnings levels of previous years any time soon,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said at a news conference. More

Is the U.S. Banking System Safe?
Our economy and banking system is so complex and intertwined that no one knows where the next shoe will drop. Politicians and government bureaucrats are lying to the public when they say that everything is alright. They do not know. Therefore, it is in our best interest to cut through all the crap and examine the facts with a skeptical eye. Last week, bank stocks, which had been falling faster than President Bush’s approval rating, soared higher based on earnings reports that were horrific, but not catastrophic. Again, the talking heads, like Larry Kudlow, were calling a bottom in the financial crisis. The bank with the largest increase in share price was Wells Fargo. Their earnings exceeded analyst expectations and the stock went up 22% in one day. Wells Fargo (WFC) has $84 billion of home equity loans, with half of those in California and Florida.

Coincidently, Wells Fargo decided to extend its charge-off policy in the 2nd quarter from 120 days to 180 days, in an effort to give troubled borrowers more time to reach a loan workout. A skeptical person might think that they did not change this policy out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe, just maybe, they changed this policy to reduce their write-offs for the 2nd quarter, to beat analyst expectations. There are many stories of people who are still living in houses, twelve months after making their last mortgage payment. Their banks have not started foreclosure proceedings. Is this due to incompetence by the banks, or is this a way to avoid writing off the loss? The FASB has joined the cover-up gang by delaying the implementation of new rules that would have made banks stop hiding toxic waste off-balance sheet. The new rule would have made banks put these questionable assets on their balance sheet and would have required a bigger capital cushion

What a surprise that bank regulators, the Treasury and Federal Reserve urged a delay in implementation. Manipulate the facts because the average American doesn’t understand or care. Sounds like Enron accounting standards to me. During the S&L crisis in the early 1990s, 1,500 banks failed. So far, seven banks have failed in 2008, the largest being IndyMac. The FDIC has about $53 billion in funds to handle future bank failures. The IndyMac failure is expected to use $4 to $8 billion of those funds. Average Americans will lose $500 million in uninsured deposits in this failure. The FDIC says that they have 90 banks on their “watch list”. They do not reveal the banks on the list, so little old ladies with their life savings in the local bank will be surprised when they go belly up. Based on the fact that IndyMac was not on their “watch list”, I wouldn’t put too much faith in their analysis.

There are 8,500 banks in the U.S. Based on an independent analysis by Chris Whalen from Institutional Risk Analytics, they have identified 8% of all banks, or around 700 banks as troubled. This is quite a divergence from the FDIC estimate. Should you believe a governmental agency that wants the public to remain in the dark to avoid bank runs, or an independent analysis based upon balance sheet analysis? The implications of 700 institutions failing are huge. There is roughly $6.84 trillion in bank deposits. It is almost beyond belief that $2.6 trillion of these deposits are uninsured. There is only $274 billion of the $6.84 trillion as cash on hand at banks. This means that $6.5 trillion has been loaned to consumers, businesses, developers, etc. The FDIC has $53 billion to cover $6.84 trillion of deposits. Does that give you a warm feeling? More

First Priority Bank was shut down by regulators on Friday, making the small Florida lender the eighth bank failure in the U.S. so far this year. SunTrust agreed to take on the deposits of First Priority, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a statement late Friday. The six branches of First Priority will reopen on Monday as branches of SunTrust, it added. At the end of June, First Priority had $259 million in assets and total deposits of $227 million. There were roughly $13 million in uninsured deposits held in about 840 accounts that potentially exceeded insurance limits, the FDIC estimated. However, this amount will probably change after the FDIC gets more information from customers. SunTrust also bought about $42 million of the failed bank’s assets. The FDIC sold another $14 million of First Priority’s assets to LNV Corporation, a unit of Beal Bank Nevada. The FDIC said it will keep the remaining assets and sell them later. This bank failure will cost the FDIC’s insurance fund $72 million, the regulator estimated. More

MIKE WHITNEY
The Bush administration is going to be mailing out more “stimulus” checks in the very near future. There’s just no way around it. The Fed is in a pickle and can’t lower interest rates for fear that food and energy prices will shoot into the stratosphere. At the same time, the economy is shrinking faster than anyone thought possible with no sign of a rebound. That leaves stimulus checks as the only way to “prime the pump” and keep consumer spending chugging along. Otherwise business activity will slow to a crawl and the economy will tank. There’s no other choice.

The daily barrage of bad news is really starting to get on people’s nerves; it’s obvious everywhere you look. Most of the TV chatterboxes have already cut-out the cheery stock market predictions and no one is praising the “impressive powers of the free market” any more. They know things are bad, real bad. That’s why the business news is no longer presented like a happy-go-lucky Bollywood extravaganza with undulating females and exotic music. Now it’s more like B-grade slasher movie where everyone winds up dead at the end of the show.

A pervasive sense of gloom has crept into the television studios just like it has into the stock exchanges and the luxury penthouses on Manhattan’s West End. It’s palpable. That same sense of foreboding is creeping like a noxious cloud to every town and city across the country. Everyone is cutting back on non-essentials and trimming the fat from the family budget. The days of extravagant impulse-spending at the mall are over. So are the big ticket purchases and the trips to Europe. Consumer confidence is at historic lows, disposal income is a thing of the past, and credit cards are at their limit.

In the last three months bank credit has shrunk faster than any time since 1948. The banks aren’t lending and people aren’t borrowing; that’s a lethal combo. When credit-creation slows, the economy falters, unemployment rises and the misery index soars. That’s why Bush will mail out a new batch of stimulus checks whether he wants to or not; his back is up against the wall.

On Friday, after the market had closed, the FDIC shut down two more banks, First Heritage Bank and First National Bank. Kaboom. Two weeks earlier, regulators seized Indymac Bancorp following a run by depositors. The FDIC now operates like a stealth paramilitary unit, deploying its shock troops on the weekends to do their dirty work out of the public eye and at times when it will least effect the stock market. The reasons for this are obvious; there’s only one thing the government hates more than seeing flag-draped coffins on the evening news, and that’s seeing long lines of frantic people waiting impatiently to get what’s left of their savings out of their now-deceased bank. Lines at the bank signal that the system is broken.

Banks-runs are a shock to the collective psyche. When depositors see a bank run they realize that their money is not safe. People aren’t fools; they can smell a rat. When their confidence wanes, it extends to the whole system. Suddenly they start questioning everything they once took for granted. They become skeptical of the institutions which, just days earlier, seemed rock-solid.

Bank runs are a direct hit on the foundation of the free market system. Unchecked, the tremors can ripple through the entire society and trigger violent political upheaval, even revolution. The public may not grasp their significance, but everyone in Washington is paying attention. They take it seriously, very seriously.

An article in the San Francisco Business Times said that the FDIC is worried about the reporting on Internet blogs. They’d rather keep the information about the troubles in the banking system out of the news. Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., summed it up like this after the run on Indymac:

“The blogs were a bit out of control. We’re very mindful of the media coverage and blogs in controlling misinformation. All I can say is were going to continue to stay on top of it. The misinformation that came out over the weekend fed a lot of depositors’ fears.”

Is that a threat? The cure for a failed banking system is adequate capital and prudent oversight not threats to impartial critics of the system. That’s balderdash. Commissar Blair apparently believes that bloggers should be treated the same way as journalists in Iraq, who, if they veer ever so slightly from the Pentagon’s “the surge is a great triumph” script, find themselves on the smoky end of an M-16 at some unmarked checkpoint outside Baquba.

Last Sunday, sought Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tried to reassure the public that the banking system is sound, while bracing people for more trouble ahead:

“I think it’s going to be months that we’re working our way through this period — clearly months. But again, it’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”

Paulson is wrong; the banking system is not sound nor is it well capitalized.

If the rate of bank closures continues at the present pace, by the middle of 2009 their will be restrictions on withdrawals. Bet on it.

Journalist Bill Sardi summed it up nicely in an article last week on lewrockwell.com titled “Could Your Bail Fail?”:

So, while your bank still has money and can process your checks, it may be time to pay down debts, pay quarterly taxes and mortgage payments in advance, and think of having money outside of banks (gold, foreign currencies), etc., before your money is inaccessible or even evaporates! Don’t think all your investments outside of banks are immune from all this turmoil. For example, money market mutual funds, where Americans have invested $3 trillion, are not covered by FDIC insurance (however, money market accounts offered by banks are covered). Recent losses in some of these money market mutual funds have caused some companies to rush to plug the losses. For example, Legg Mason Inc. and SunTrust Banks Inc., recently pumped $1.4 billion each into its money market funds. Bank of America Corp. has injected $600 million.

As for your checking and savings accounts, recognize you may have five different accounts in the same bank, but the FDIC only insures individuals, not each account, up to $100,000. Putting your money in different accounts in the same bank does not necessarily provide better insurance for your deposits.

Douglas A. McIntyre
247wallst.com
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency revoked the charters of two national banks and the FDIC moved in to protect their depositors. First National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank of Newport Beach failed. According to The Wall Street Journal, The FDIC was appointed receiver of both banks. The Nevada bank has over $3 billion in deposits. Most analysts believe that the current banking crisis will only lead to about 100 bank failures, many fewer than occurred in the S&L disaster of the late 1980s. The trouble with the theory of the low failure rate is that housing prices are dropping more rapidly than most observers thought they would, and foreclosures are rising more quickly.

Bill Gross, the most prominent bond investor in the US and head of money management firm Pimco, said that the total financial company write-offs from the present housing problems will total $1 trillion. So far, less than half of that has worked its way through the system. There is not enough new capital in the market to support another $500 billion or more of bank write-downs. A lot more than 100 banks will fail in the next two years.

The 28 branches of 1st National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank, operating in Nevada, Arizona and California, were closed Friday by federal regulators. The banks, owned by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based First National Bank Holding Co., were scheduled to reopen on Monday as Mutual of Omaha Bank branches, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. More

Judged by the standards of Northern Rock, a British mortgage lender where the death throes lasted for months, the failure of IndyMac has been orderly. Its consequences were anything but. Worried IndyMac customers queued in the sweltering Californian sun to retrieve their money, despite FDIC guarantees on deposits of up to $100,000 (of the bank’s $19 billion of deposits, $1 billion is uninsured). Investors in other banks showed far less decorum. On July 14th the S&P500 banks’ index suffered its worst daily fall since its creation in 1989. Regional banks took the brunt of the punishment. Washington Mutual in Seattle and National City in Cleveland were both moved to issue statements reassuring panicking investors that they were well capitalised and had access to short-term funding. Such tactics can easily backfire. Wachovia, the country’s fourth-biggest lender, also sought to soothe markets about its finances on July 15th, and watched its shares sink further. Wachovia, which has achieved infamy for an ill-advised acquisition that swamped it with adjustable-rate mortgages in California, has lost more than 75% of its value since the start of the year. More

Source: Daily News
Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution’s federal takeover. At least three police squad cars showed up early Tuesday as tensions rose outside the San Fernando Valley branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac. Federal regulators seized Pasadena-based IndyMac on Friday and reopened the bank Monday under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Deposits to $100,000 are fully insured by the FDIC. Worried customers with deposits in excess of insured limits flooded IndyMac Bank branches on Monday, demanding to withdraw as much money as they could or get answers about the fate of their funds.

When it was clear some wouldn’t get in before closing, FDIC employees apparently took down names and told them to return Tuesday. Other customers began lining up at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and by dawn, tensions escalated because people on the list were getting priority. By 8 a.m., about 50 people on the list waited in one line and many more waited in another. Five people were allowed in at a time. Customers became infuriated, and police told them they could be arrested if they didn’t remain calm. Police stood by at some other branches around Southern California but there were no other reports of problems.