BAC | The Daily Capitalist

Dems Flee Bank of America

The Democratic National Committee is withdrawing its funds from the Bank of America to Amalgamated Bank, a union-0wned bank. What do they know that we don’t?

Union-Based Bank Draws Democrats

WASHINGTON—Some prominent Democratic and progressive organizations are scaling back financial ties with Bank of America Corp. and switching accounts to the nation’s largest union-owned financial-services firm.

The latest convert [...]

Moody’s: Too Much Risk

After the shock wore off from Moody’s announcement of its new ratings for the Big Banks, only two U.S. megabanks now have an “A” rating, and just barely.

As you can see from the above chart, JPM went down two notches to A2 and Goldman was down two notches at A3 (lowest A rating).

[...]

Bankers Plead; Will The Fed Shrug?

We’ll never be able to stop crony capitalists as long as we continue with our present system. This report of a Wednesday meeting at the NY Fed is not the first one and no doubt will not be the last:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, Bank of [...]

Banks Are Even More ‘Too Big To Fail’

We are not surprised that nothing has changed in the world of Crony Capitalism. We warned of this in our criticism of Dodd-Frank. We have identified that Wall Street-Washington Financial Complex. We have criticized the Fed for its boom-bust policy. President Obama knew well that nothing would change since he hired Larry Summers and Tim [...]

HELOC Hell Jeopardizes Banks’ Tier I Capital

Shaky home equity lines of credit (HELOC) loans are overwhelming major banks’ Tier 1 capital which means they need more capital to meet Basel III requirements. B of A, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase together have about 40% of all home equity loans.

B of A estimates that only about $5 billion, or [...]

KeithGram: Fractional Reserve Banking Is Not The Problem

Mish has a teardown of the latest outrage of Bank of America. It seems BoA’s counterparties are uncomfortable with BoA’s derivatives position and/or equity and would like either more collateral (yeah, right?) or else move the risk to the division which owns the retail banking and deposits from the public.

Moral Hazard: 1

BofA: WTF

Yesterday DoctoRx and I were discussing his banking problems with BofA. As you may have heard, their web site had been down since last Friday. The Doc reports that he couldn’t get in to do any online banking. He went to the branch office and was told they couldn’t [...]

BofA’s Biggest Regret

I’ll bet that this statement is something that BofA and Ken Lewis regrets mightily (press release from January 11, 2008):

Bank of America Corporation today announced a definitive agreement to purchase Countrywide Financial Corp. in an all-stock transaction worth approximately $4 billion.

The purchase will make Bank of America the nation’s [...]

Will the Next Recession Look Different from the Last One? (Assuming the Last One Has Ended)

Mish has a post up involving a discussion with a Cerdian economist named Ed Leamer. I am going to comment on one point:

Leamer: Dips come from collective postponement of the postponable purchases: homes, cars and equipment. But all three of these are at record lows relative to GDP after all the postponement that has [...]