bank failures

Is The FDIC Doing Death By 1000 Cuts Against TBTF Banks?

mersJust when you think Justice will never be done, another civil lawsuit is filed. The FDIC filed three lawsuits against Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and BoA among others for peddling bad mortgage backed securities stuffed with toxic mortgages to their sucker, Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas. Guaranty Bank later failed in 2009. Housing Wire:

This week, the regulator filed multiple lawsuits in Travis County (Austin), suggesting Guaranty suffered major losses from toxic RMBS loans sold and packaged by mega banks and other financial institutions.

Defendants named in the multibillion-dollar lawsuits include Countrywide, JPMorgan Chase ($38.04 0%), Ally Financial, Deutsche Bank Securities ($34.07 0%), Bank of America ($8.19 0%) and Goldman Sachs ($105.32 0%) among others.

FDIC, on behalf of Guaranty, claims the banks misrepresented loan-to-value ratios, underwriting criteria and appraisal amounts when selling, packaging and underwriting home loans that became collateral for mortgage securities sold to Guaranty.

The FDIC is Broke

When Colonial Bank failed on Friday, the 77th bank to fail this year, very few people noted that it was the largest bank failure of 2009. Even fewer people noted that the cost of cleaning it up required more capital resources than the FDIC had.
The total losses of Friday's five bank failures, according to the FDIC, would be $3.67 Billion. The problem is that the FDIC had less than $650 million in its Deposit Insurance Fund at the time.

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Did the Irish just end Globalization?

Bailout legislation protecting domestic deposits in Irish national banks was signed into law by President Mary McAleese at 3:30 PM (Irish time).

President Mary McAleese has this evening signed legislation giving effect to the Government's €420 billion bank guarantee scheme.

A single-line statement from Áras an Uachtaráin just after 3.30pm said Mrs McAleese had signed the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 into law.

Unlike the US FDIC or the British Financial Services Compensation Scheme, Ireland has had, until today, a deposit insurance scheme to protect only something like the first €20,000 deposited by individuals into banks.