After the ECB concluded its latest annual stress test, which as expected found no problems with Europe’s largest banks instead scapegoating Italy’s well-known troubled banks in results that were widely discredited by the market, yesterday in an unexpected outcome, German economic research institute ZEW found that Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, had the highest potential capital shortfall, as much as €19 billion in a study of 51 European banks using U.S. Federal Reserve stress test methods. The capital gap is greater than DB’s entire market cap. Continue reading »
It was considered one of the bigger paradoxes for years. Back in 2003, Warren Buffett famously dubbed derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” and yet over the next several years went ahead and entered a number of the contracts, including both equities and credit, ostensibly by selling CDS to collect up monthly premiums. However, at least when it comes to CDS, after several years of Berkshire trimming its credit derivative exposure, it is now completely out. Meanwhile, Citi is loading up on any CDS it can find…
New York, NY – In 2015 there was a popular “conspiracy theory” floating around the internet after a rash of mysterious “suicides” by high profile banking professions. What once looked like wild speculation is now beginning to resemble a vast criminal conspiracy connected to the Libor, interest-rigging scandal.
Over forty international bankers allegedly killed themselves over a two-year period in the wake of a major international scandal that implicated financial firms across the globe. However, three of these seemingly unrelated suicides seem to share common threads related to their connections to Deutsche Bank. These three banker suicides, in New York, London, and Siena, Italy, took place within 17 months of each other in 2013/14 in what investigators labeled as a series of unrelated suicides. Continue reading »
Americans have spent much of 2016 lamenting the addition of chips into their credit and debit cards. In exchange for the extra few moments consumers spend checking out, however, they are promised enhanced security to protect their accounts.
But a new discovery unveiled Wednesday by professional hackers at the Black Hat USA summit in Las Vegas called into question the supposed ironclad security of the new chips, which are referred to as EMV technology.
Retailers and banks began replacing regular magnetic stripe card readers with EMV last October after credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard threatened to hold them responsible for false charges made on cards during magnetic strip transactions. The mandate came amid high-profile breaches of retailers like Home Depot and Target. Continue reading »
China is desperate to solve several problems it has due to its debt to GDP ratio being north of 300 percent. It may have found a pretty unconventional one by letting companies become banks…
Last October, we reported that “Wall Street Was Shocked As Feds Bring Criminal Case Against Goldman Banker Over Fed Leaks.” Briefly, because as we also reported several months later, nobody actually ended up going to prison for the infamous story of Goldman Sachs obtaining classified NY Fed documents as a result of the revolving, ended up with two workers getting slaps on the wrist in some modest penalties.
Today the story got its closure, when the Fed announced that Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $36.3 million to settle allegations by the Federal Reserve that it obtained and used confidential regulatory materials from the central bank two years ago. This amounts to 0.1% of the firm’s 2015 revenue of $33.8 billion. Continue reading »
This article was written by Shaun Bradley and originally published at The Anti-Media.org.
Editor’s Comment: No one knows how much longer they can prop up the system and keep appearances. But one thing that is undeniable is how deep the financial crisis really goes. Nearly every Western nation is much more fragile than it appears on the surface; the exposure to derivatives, and the unsustainable system is headed for disaster – and there is no way to contain, stop or “fix” it.
Unfortunately, the perpetrators who have set us up for a fall are likely to escape in their golden parachutes before the disaster hits, and devastation spreads rapidly deep into the fabric of society. What is now a difficult time can and likely will become a nightmare where jobs are gone, money is inflated and worthless, and the real assets have been swindled. The patchwork solutions of the past financial crisis won’t hold, and the big one is falling upon us all like a ton of bricks.Continue reading »
What do you do when you are one of the biggest indices in Europe and are unable to rise simply because two of your biggest constituents, if not so much in market cap any more but certainly in terms of systemic importance, just can’t catch a bid? Why you delete them, of course even if the two names in question happen to be Europe’s two largest banks, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
For a few minutes at the open, mainstream business media persuaded itself that the EU stress tests had proved that everything was fine in Europe’s banking system again. But very quickly, things went south with Italian banks – the center of the storm – reversing gains and then extending losses with Unicredit now down 8% (after being up 4%).
A “great” America has at least these three required policies:
End lie-started and unlawful Wars of Aggression.
Arrest Left and Right .01% War Criminals and .01% trillions-looting banksters.
Enact monetary reform and public banking for ~$1,000,000 per US household benefits.
Because the documented facts are Emperor’s New Clothes obvious, any US leader, including Trump as president must stop the worst crime a nation’s military Commander-in-Chief can commit, arrest those who engaged in them, arrest banksters for fundamental fraud with tens of trillions in damages, and enact obvious economic reforms.
If Trump as US President will not act for these three policies, he must join those arrested for ongoing US crimes killing millions, harming billions, and looting trillions. Continue reading »
Three senior Irish bankers were jailed on Friday for up to three-and-a-half years for conspiring to defraud investors in the most prominent prosecution arising from the 2008 banking crisis that crippled the country’s economy.
The trio will be among the first senior bankers globally to be jailed for their role in the collapse of a bank during the crisis.
The lack of convictions until now has angered Irish taxpayers, who had to stump up 64 billion euros – almost 40 percent of annual economic output – after a property collapse forced the biggest state bank rescue in the euro zone.
…
“DISHONEST, DECEITFUL AND CORRUPT”
All three were convicted of conspiring together and with others to mislead investors, depositors and lenders by setting up a 7.2-billion-euro circular transaction scheme between March and September 2008 to bolster Anglo’s balance sheet.
Moments ago, the European Banking Authority published the 2016 bank stress test results, whose purpose – as every other year – is to inspire confidence in Europe’s struggling banks; it differs from a market-based assessment of bank stress – that particular “test” can be seen by observing the stock prices of such giant banks as Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, both of which recently hit all time lows. As previewed yesterday, Italy’s 3rd largest, and most insolvent bank, Banca Monte di Siena was the worst performer in European regulators’ stress tests, and the only lender to have its capital wiped out in the exam.
In this special 2016 Summer Solutions episode, Max and Stacy talk to Das, author of ‘A Banquet of Consequences: The Reality of Our Unusually Uncertain Economic Future’, about the structural changes needed to halt the decline in real wages. They also discuss financialization, economic apartheid and debt jubilees.
Never has Germany’s lending giant Deutsche Bank looked this miserable, and according to its latest earnings release, the pain is set to get even worse.
Having purged virtually all of his domestic political enemies, it will probably not come as a surprise the head of research as well as the chief strategist at one of Turkey’s largest brokerages was stripped of his professional license and is facing criminal charges over a report analyzing the impact of the July 15 coup attempt, marking the first expansion of the president’s unprecedented crackdown on the nation’s private financial sector.
According to Bloomberg, the Capital Markets Board published a decision in which it said the strategist, Mert Ulker, failed to “fulfill his responsibilities” in the preparation and publication of a July 18 report produced by Ak Investment, the brokerage arm of Turkey’s second-largest bank. Ulker also faces charges under articles 299 and 301 of the penal code, which make insulting Turkey’s president, the nation or its institutions a crime. The CMB license is required to work in capital markets in Turkey. The statement didn’t say whether Ak Investment’s status was affected. Continue reading »
Italy is scrambling to secure a privately-backed bailout of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the most exposed of the country’s troubled lenders, including a plan to raise €5bn of fresh capital so as to avert nationalisation, the FT reports. The bank needs to obtain some €5 bilion in capital ahead of Friday’s stress test, or else a dire “contagion” scenario could unfold that could impair not only all Italian banks, but promptly spread first to France and then to Germany…
In another reminder that monetary unorthodoxy in the face of NIRP is coming to a savings account near you, overnight the RBS banking group warned 1.3 million customers they could be charged negative interest rates if the Bank of England cuts base rates below zero. As seen in the letter posted below, the bank warned that: “Global interest rates remain at very low levels and in some markets are currently negative. Dependent on future market conditions, this could result in us charging on credit balances.”
“I think not. The parrots were only doing as they were told. I still believe the populace were herded into Brexit under a false ‘identity/immigration’ banner. For years now, because the core of the Rothschild dynasty is resident in England, logically, they would want it to be the base for the future of their next economic structure. This article kind of sets off down that road, but also points to israel becoming more entrenched as a major player than certain forecasts predict.”
I believe London, as well as Frankfurt (former Rothschild residence), will be destroyed.
“As predicted, Brexit WILL be used to trigger the economic collapse starting with a UK Banks “Bail Out” followed by a “Bail in” as the snowball of economic inactivity gathers momentum.
Brexit is the perfect ploy, even though it won’t happen as the 52% had hoped.
Ignorance of the internal workings of the PTB have made us all look stupid, but will we learn?”
As a new bailout is being prepared by the Bank of England, there are questions about what, if any, actions will actually be taken to leave the European Union under the new prime minister, who actually campaigned for ‘Remain’ but has so far appointed pro-Brexit cabinet members.
The new Prime Minister in the UK, Theresa May has announced that she will not pursue Article 50 proceedings to leave the EU anytime during 2016, setting the stage for putting off the split that the referendum called for.
Portuguese banks, already undercapitalised and loaded with bad debt, are bracing for heavy losses from Lisbon’s so far unsuccessful attempts to sell Novo Banco, the lender salvaged from the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo.
It was a perfect gift to a desperate market. All that was needed was a gentle hint that Italy’s troubled banks and their bondholders might not be hung out to dry. A “public backstop” for Italy’s weakest lenders would be a “very useful” measure in these “exceptional times,” ECB President Mario Draghi said.
Most Italian and European bank stocks surged.
The ECB is the second member of the institutional triad formerly known as the Troika to have called for a taxpayer funded bailout of Italy’s banking system. Earlier this month the IMF used its article IV consultation – an annual economic and financial health check – to warn of “global spillovers” from a full-blown Italian banking crisis, “given Italy’s systemic weight.” Continue reading »
On the economy crashing this year, investment banker and former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts says, “Could we turn into a bear market? I think given the commitment to equity markets and given the willingness to debase the currency, I think the chances of that are relatively small this year. Next year, depending on what happens in the election, the gloves are going to come off globally about what’s been going on in the U.S. Anything could happen. That’s the danger if you are an investment advisor or an investor. The swings here is we could be up 30%, or we could be down 50%. A black swan could happen, so if you are an investor, you need to be prepared for very, very wide swings both up and down in prices in the equity markets. Here’s the important thing to remember. . . . We now have $12 trillion sitting in negative interest rates. Where’s all that money going to go? It can’t sit there getting nothing. It will have to go into real estate. It’s going to have to go into equity. It’s going to have to go to precious metals because it can’t sit there getting no or negative yields forever. . . . The debt game is over.”
On gold and silver, Fitts says, “Interest rates coming down makes gold and silver more attractive. I think the number one thing driving precious metals is you’ve still got growth going on in Asia, and they are buyers. People are afraid, and they are looking at what is going on with the leadership, and they are getting scared. They want to hedge their bets, and gold and silver is where you go when you don’t trust the system.”
Today we got the first official confirmation of just how vast the 1MDB money-laundering scheme was and that it stretched to the very top. What is now also confirmed, is that at the heart of the fundraising operation was none other than Goldman Sachs.
Germany’s largest lender is set to shut over a quarter of its branches across the country as the company goes through a major restructuring process.
The closures are set to take place over the next few months , with 188 of Deutsche Bank’s 723 branches nationwide due to close their doors.
On Sunday, Deutsche Bank published a list of the affected branches.
North Rhine-Westphalia is to be hit hardest, with 51 branches in Germany’s most populous state listed for the chopping board. In Bavaria eleven will close, eight of which are in Munich. Continue reading »
That’s the total amount of government bonds in the world that have negative yields, according to calculations published last week by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Given that there were almost zero negative-yielding bonds just two years ago, the rise to $13 trillion is incredible.
In February 2015, the total amount of negative-yielding debt in the world was ‘only’ $3.6 trillion.
A year later in February 2016 it had nearly doubled to $7 trillion.
Now, just five months later, it has nearly doubled again to $13 trillion, up from $11.7 trillion just over two weeks ago.
Think about that: thetotal sum of negative-yielding debt in the world has increased in the last sixteen days alone by an amount that’s larger than the entire GDP of Russia.Continue reading »
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