"The Bank of America deal announced Thursday, the government’s largest-ever settlement with a single company, means the nation’s second-biggest bank will shell out $16.65 billion over allegations that it knowingly sold toxic mortgages to investors. ... The sum surpasses Bank of America’s entire profits last year and is significantly higher than the $13 billion it offered during negotiations in July."
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The story doesn't mention the nearly $90 billion paid out by the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund for the failed banks which have numbered over 500 since 2007, the funds for which are supplied by insurance premiums extorted from the honest banks. But it is the depositors who end up paying for that cost of doing business in the end. Nor does it ruminate on the effects of the Federal Reserve's Zero Interest Rate Policy, which allows those first in line for money to get it rock bottom cheap and speculate with it. The financial sector now rivals the household sector in stock ownership. Savers meanwhile get the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Ten years prior to 2007 the country was finally beginning to recover from a decade long Savings and Loan crisis which witnessed over a thousand institutions fail, costing the taxpayers directly about $130 billion. No sooner was that over in 1995 when the wizards of smart conspired to abolish the Glass-Steagall banking regime in 1999, precipitating the recent panic less than a decade later. And, of course, the Great Depression after 1929 followed closely on the heels of the establishment of the Federal Reserve itself in 1913, signed into law by one Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University. Over 700 banks failed in 1930, and 9,000 over the ensuing decade. The professionals have a long history of failure. The prudent avoid them.
