Bailout funds notwithstanding, top players in the financial sector magnanimously showered their top executives with mind-boggling bonuses. Put together, the two banks were aided to the tune of $90 billion as bailout funds under the TARP scheme.
Biden aide defends big bank profits, bonuses
Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden's chief economic adviser defendes massive bank bonuses.
Dylan Ratigan Dresses As Thomas Jefferson
On MSNBC's Morning Meeting on Friday, host Dylan Ratigan celebrated Halloween by donning a wig and dressing in revolutionary garb like his favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson.
Can Citigroup Carry Its Own Weight?
The answer to that question concerns not only the 276,000 employees who work at what was once the world’s largest bank, but the nation’s taxpayers as well.
What is this Music? – El Degüello
Many of you have been asking what this music is that we’re using in our commercial about the sale of Guaranty Bank to Spain.
Frost Bankers are the Good Guys!
In the year that has passed since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, there haven’t been many good guys to emerge from the wreckage of the financial crisis. Look hard enough, though, and you will find a few.
FDIC sells Texas back to Spain
The recent news that the Feds closed down Texas-based Guaranty Bank and sold it to the Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, now BBVA Compass, reveals something mighty screwy.
At the annual American Bankers Association conference in Chicago, protesters faced off against the bankers who refused to extend them credit even after getting bailed out.
It was bad enough this past March when–after taxpayers had doled out a mere $180 billion to save AIG and took an 80 percent stake in the company–Americans watched in utter disbelief as the very division responsible for the insurance giant’s collapse received $168 million in so-called retention bonuses.
What do you know? The suits at troubled finance firm GMAC must like working for less money. How else to explain that GMAC is reportedly trying to get a third helping of government rescue funds?
GMAC is one of the seven firms that the Obama administration announced sweeping changes in executive compensation for last week.
Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden’s chief economic adviser and the most liberal member of the White House economic team, on Wednesday night defended the enormous profits and bonuses being generated at Goldman Sachs and other big banks that have repaid federal bailout funds and will not be required to submit to compensation limits.
ABC News reached out to six banks that were initial participants in the TARP Capital Purchase program and asked them if the large salaries and bonuses at their firms would have been possible without taxpayer and federal government help.
No bank would say that taxpayer and government help made 2009 compensation levels possible. Instead, all responding banks except one claimed that they didn’t use TARP to pay for compensation.
Last week’s announcement that “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg slashed compensation for executives at seven large financial firms by an average of 50% stunned Wall Street, stoked the fires of populist resentment, and troubled economists. Will this government-mandated pay cut drive the most talented professionals away from these companies, endangering their recovery? Does it augur further politicization of economic decisions?
On MSNBC’s Morning Meeting on Friday, host Dylan Ratigan celebrated Halloween by donning a wig and dressing in revolutionary garb like his favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, channeling the former president’s trenchant criticism of big banks.
OVER the past 80 years, the United States government has engineered not one, not two, not three, but at least four rescues of the institution now known as Citigroup. In previous instances, the bank came back from the crisis and prospered.
Will Citigroup rise again from its recent near-death experience?
There’s an excellent piece in the NYTimes chronicling the many times Citigroup has risen and fallen over the last decade.
I do remember, in fact, when Sandy Weill, head of Travelers (which many of you may not realize actually evolved out of an old-style manufacturing company, American Can), proposed the idea of a financial supermarket. Naysayers and proponents butted heads, but Citicorp was born. (full disclosure: I thought it sounded like a nifty idea at the time)
The federal pay czar is doing his job. He’s cutting enormous paydays for executives of banks and other institutions that took TARP money. That’s as it should be. Those banks performed terribly. Several would have simply vanished if the government hadn’t bailed them out. Since capitalism is all about rewarding risk and merit, these executives don’t deserve extraordinary payments.
The Texas banker Edward Speed wants his fellow Texans to think small.
Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on public outrage over big national banks rescued by taxpayer bailouts, Mr. Speed has started a campaign urging Texans to take their cash out of banks like Wells Fargo and turn it over to small homegrown institutions like his, the Texas Dow Employees Credit Union in Lake Jackson near the Gulf Coast.
Bank of America Corp. said Friday it lost more than $2.2 billion in the third quarter as loan losses kept rising, providing more evidence that consumers are still struggling to pay their bills.
The nation’s second-largest bank said it wrote down loans on its books by almost $10 billion during the July-September period, up almost $1 billion from the second quarter. The bank also added $2.1 billion to its reserves to cover bad loans, bringing its provision for credit losses to $11.7 billion. The bank’s total allowance for loan and lease losses now totals $35.83 billion.
A Lake Jackson credit union is on a financial advertising mission to remind people to remember the Alamo.
Texas Dow Employees Credit Union, with assets of $1.5 billion and 140,000 member-customers, has rolled out a series of television and print commercials to encourage the use of local Texas banks or credit unions.
Wells Fargo & Co., the second- biggest U.S. home lender, may need $50 billion to pay back the federal government and cover loan losses as the economic slump deepens, according to KBW Inc.’s Frederick Cannon.
“You are evil, thieving bastards.”
That’s just one of the scathing comments from Ann Minch, a disgruntled Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) customer who says in a YouTube video that the bank “jacked up my interest rate to a whopping 30% APR.”
Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy.
Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.
Citigroup Inc. appears to be shifting its strategy in its U.S. retail banking business, focusing on its strongest markets rather than trying to expand across the country.
Citi, one of the largest recipients of government aid, is concentrating its efforts on improving its operations and customer service in six major markets, a person familiar with the company’s plans said Thursday. The person requested anonymity because details of the plan have not been made public.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Those who believe U.S. banking giants like Citigroup (C Quote), Bank of America (bac Quote) and Wells Fargo (WFC Quote) have essentially no competition on the domestic front may want to broaden their horizons.
Spain’s largest bank, Banco Santander (STD Quote), said Monday it will raise more than $7 billion via an initial public offering of its Brazilian unit. Not only will this offering bolster Santander: it will also create one of the top 30 banks in the world with a market cap of more than $45 billion, according to a Dow Jones report.
NEW YORK — In a sharp rebuke for both Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a New York federal judge on Monday rejected a proposed settlement between the two regarding $5.8 billion in bonuses to Merrill Lynch executives.