Category Archives: Banking industry

Quelle Surprise! The Geithner Doctrine Not Only Puts Banks Above the Law, It Also Serves to Excuse Their Bad Behavior

Our Treasury Secretary, also known as the Bailouter in Chief and “Foamy,” has a default explanation for why ordinary citizens must bend over every time banking interests are threatened. The more formal statement of this policy is the Geithner Doctrine, which is “nothing must be done that will destablize the banking system.” However, Geithner also subscribes to the Humpty Dumpty School of Language, in which words mean what he chooses them to mean, nothing more or less. So “destabilize” means “hurts the profits or reputation of” and “banking system” means “any bank that is pretty big and/or well connected”.

UK Gets Tough on Missold Swaps; What Excuse Does the US Have?

Even though the executive branch of the English government has as much of a soft spot for its banks as America’s does, its regulators are less craven than ours (admittedly, ours set such a low standard that it is not all that hard, and the UK’s relative advantage may be about to go into reverse with the appointment of the new head of the Prudential Regulation Authority, since the designee presumptive believes big banks can’t be prosecuted).

An Open Letter to David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, from Mrs N Turner

NC readers can find some of the background on Nikki Turner’s story here. 18 months later, five years after her own business was destroyed, and a full decade after the very beginning of the HBOS fraud story, she is still waiting for the police investigation to lead to a prosecution. Mrs Turner’s open letter was […]

Neil Barofsky Meets with Occupy Wall Street

Neil Barofsky met with several Occupy Wall Street working groups Sunday for nearly two hours. Barofsky is relaxed, thoughtful, and direct a Q&A format.

One of his major themes was that the unwillingness to mete out meaningful punishments to miscreant banks means that the authorities are providing incentives to engage in criminal activity.

Where is Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy on Big Bank Crimes and Obama?

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.

Last week’s big revelation on banking is that it is now official Department of Justice policy under Obama that big banks and their executives are above the law.

Ian Fraser: HSBC’s $1.9 Billion Settlement Sets (Another) Dangerous Precedent

Yves here. One of the things that has too often gone missing in the many discussions of why massive scale money launderer HSBC was not prosecuted is the basis of the “doing that would be destabilizing” excuse. When a company is indicted (mind you, indicted, not convicted), pretty much all Federal and many (most?) state agencies are required to stop doing business with it, immediately. The effect of the loss of so much business, particularly for a large financial firm, is seen as a death knell.

Of course, that’s the point.

Deutsche Bank’s $12 Billion in Hidden Losses: Why Whistleblower Charges Have Merit and Why They Matter

I’ve read the Department of Labor complaint of former Deutsche Bank employee Eric Ben-Artzi that, among other things, alleges that the German bank violated SEC, GAAP and IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) requirements and probably also Sarbanes Oxley, and have had follow up conversations with him and his counsel. The charges are specific and sufficiently well supported to merit serious investigation. In their efforts to dismiss his charges, defenders of the bank’s position overlook the public reporting requirements for complex financial transactions like the one in question, a leveraged super senior (LSS) trade. Nor does their Panglossian “everything worked out for the best” argument stand up to scrutiny.

Quelle Surprise! OCC Confirms that Big Banks are Badly Managed, Lack Adequate Risk Management Controls

American Banker has an article up that is astonishing in that it tells us that the main regulator of national banks, the OCC, has confirmed one of our ongoing complaints: that the controls at the biggest banks are inexcusably weak. The OCC is the last place you’d expect to hear this from; historically it’s been a major enabler of banks playing fast and loose with the rules. And the implication is that bank execs should be wearing orange jumpsuits rather than getting multi-million pay packages.

Neil Barofsky: Too Big to Jail – Our Banking System’s Latest Disgrace

By Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, currently a senior fellow at the NYU School of Law and the author of Bailout. Cross posted from The New Republic with author permission

You can be forgiven if you watched the Department of Justice’s announcement yesterday of a $1.92 billion settlement with HSBC with a sense of disappointment–and déjà vu.

Is Obama Getting Rid of the FHFA’s Ed DeMarco to Bail Out the Banks?

Believe it or not, sometimes I’m not cynical enough.

Basel III: Dead on Arrival?

In my last post on Basel III, I suggested that we would soon see a silly game played out over the coming months whereby banks on either side of the Atlantic would alternate in securing more and more concessions on Basel III until the whole thing became manifestly pointless and got sidelined.

In fact it is all happening rather faster than that.

Deutsche Bank Didn’t “Ignore” Losses of LSS Trade, It Went Through the Mother of All Canadian Restructurings

A default position among what passes for finance cognoscenti in the blogosphere is to argue that media stories pointing up bank improprieties are making a mountain out of a molehill. The form of the argument is usually, “If you only understood XYZ technical issue, this is not such a big deal.” Now that isn’t to say that position is wrong; we’ve more than occasionally made just that type of argument. But if you are going to go that route, it’s incumbent on you to take account of the relevant background; otherwise, whether you intend to or not, your argument can wind up being the equivalent of “Look, over there!”

We’ve seen this type of diversion-as-argumentation take place on the brewing Deutsche Bank scandal over losses that three separate whistleblowers allege that that bank hid from investors during the crisis. Matt Levine and Felix Salmon say, to use Levine’s turn of phrase, that all the German bank did was ignore the losses until they went away. That is a misrepresentation of what actually happened.

HSBC to Pay $1.9 Billion Fine for Money Laundering

It seems the Federal Government has finally woken up and is making a show of being serious about one type of bank misbehavior, that of money laundering. The striking element about the agreementwith various Federal agencies and the Department of Justice is that nearly $1.3 billion of the $1.9 million fine comes in the form of a deferred prosecution agreement.