The Fed has hardly begun to impose high interest rates and already the banksters are squealing like stuck pigs

 

Wells Fargo sets aside $8 million to compensate about 400 homeowners foreclosed from 2010-2015 due to computer glitch

Well whoopdedoo. That's about only $20,000 a pop.

Sorry you lost your job. Here's a sandwich.

Story here.

Total nonfarm is up 288,000 in June: Why I'm yawning

Unemployment in June falls to 6.1% and total non farm employment is up 288,000, seasonally adjusted, to finish the second quarter. Not seasonally adjusted, the figure is an impressive sounding 582,000 newly employed.

So Q1 GDP at -2.9% is meaningless, right? We're really doing much much better than that number indicates, yes?

That's what fellow traveler Rex Nutting thinks over at MarketWatch in "The payrolls report is right, and GDP isn't". He goes so far as to say that even 2008 negative GDP was meaningless:

"Take, for instance, the first quarter of 2008, just as the Great Recession began. The first estimate of quarterly GDP was 0.6% growth. In mid-2008, that was revised to 0.9%. A year later, however, GDP was revised to a 0.7% decline. The most recent estimate is that the economy shrank 2.7%. It’s madness to think this number means anything."

Spoken like a true believer in the success rate of Soviet 5-year plans. At least "shrank" shows he's educated.

And even John Silvia of Wells Fargo says the jobs report shows "economic growth is far better than the Q1 GDP report indicates".

Oh really? I don't think so. The employment gains aren't telling us anything indicative of a break out to the upside either for jobs or for the economy. To see this you have to stop comparing apples to oranges by comparing monthly change in jobs to GDP which is measured on a quarterly basis.

When you look at the jobs figures on a quarterly basis, you see that total nonfarm always takes a dive in Q1, good economy or bad economy, and it always rebounds in Q2, good economy or bad economy. It tells you almost nothing about the economic trend that in Q2 you always get an increase. So we should expect the jobs numbers to go up in the spring, and they always do. Go all the way back in the not seasonally adjusted data to 1981 and you will see that this is true, in the awful year 1982 when the gain was a lousy 1.0%, and even in the dreadful year of 2009. When 2009 was over there were nearly 30 million first time claims for unemployment, yet between Q1 and Q2 that year total nonfarm went up 138,000, a paltry 0.1% but still completely counter trend. The worst was over. Not.

In 2014 we have just witnessed total nonfarm go up 2.805 million jobs between the end of Q1 and the end of Q2, the most since Obama has been president. But guess what? That's an increase of barely 2.06%. Obama's actually done better, for example in 2011 when the increase was 2.09%, his best Q1 to Q2 gain on record. But we don't point to that number today as a sign of the economy turning around at that time, especially since the measure has been weaker since, and GDP has actually gone negative since.

It's instructive to compare Obama's recent 2.06% quarter on quarter gain with past presidents' records for the same period from winter to spring.

How high was the best record Q1 to Q2 since 1980, for example? You would be surprised that it's barely 29% higher than Obama's best to date. Reagan, of boom fame, holds top spot at just 2.69% in 1984. Clinton comes in second with 2.56% in 1994. George W. Bush comes in third with 2.14% in 2005. Obama comes in fourth in 2011 at 2.09%. And George Herbert Walker Bush brings up the rear in 1989 at 1.92%.

But the best record isn't a very good predictor of economic growth ranking. Best GDP to worst was Clinton, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and then Obama (so far), not Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Bush I.

The overall jobs record between Q1 and Q2 seems like a better predictor of likely economic growth ranking. Clinton, first for GDP, averaged 2.22% over eight years while Reagan, second, averaged 2.07% for the increase in total nonfarm between the winter and the spring. In third is George Herbert Walker Bush at 1.69% (third also for GDP), followed closely by Obama at 1.68% (last for GDP so far) and George W. Bush bringing up the rear at 1.3% (fourth for GDP).

It's entirely possible that Obama already peaked for jobs increases from winter to spring in 2011. Each of the other four presidents peaked early or mid-term. It would be unusual for Obama to do better this late in his term. And so far he hasn't, and has just two more opportunities to prove me wrong.

Overall Obama has lost his momentum, his aura and his credibility, and his lately shrill tone sounds more like a dying bunny the cat got in the backyard than a statesman presiding over the final years of a successful term. I think that means it's likely Obama's overall jobs performance is going to remain weak, as will his GDP.

All But One Big Bank Would Fail Real Stress Tests, Which Means In An Actual Crisis It's 2008 All Over Again

So says Bloomberg View here, naming Wells Fargo as the only one which would pass:

The results aren’t pretty. Using a start date of Sept. 30, 2013, the same as that of the Fed's latest round of stress tests, the NYU model gives only one of the six largest U.S. banks -- Wells Fargo & Co., Inc. -- a passing grade. The other five -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- would have a combined capital shortfall of more than $300 billion. That's not much less than they needed to get themselves out of the last crisis.

And Now A Word From The Paternal Fascists At Wells Fargo

Seen here:

“Retirement security is a shared responsibility between government, business, and individual and a system that is designed to motivate all stakeholders will drive the best outcome for Americans to achieve retirement security, said Joe Ready, director of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust.

In the good old days your retirement was no one's responsibility but your own.

I Know! Let's Get The Sequestration Cuts From The Banks!

In an editorial on February 20th, here (which has caused quite the hubbub), Bloomberg.com maintained that most big banks are not profitable because their preferred rate to borrow from the government amounts to a gift roughly equal to their stated profits:

The top five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. - - account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits . . .. In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry -- with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy -- would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.

No one seems to be inquiring too deeply, however, why the banks are not profitable without continuing massive taxpayer support ($83 billion annually -- remind you of anything beginning with the letter "s" and starting today?).

Gee, could it be because of all those bad mortgages on and off the books which are not performing and cutting into their capital? Ya think?

And maybe, just maybe, the Fed's policies are trying to repair this one thing only, while telling us it's to help with employment, housing, the stock market even, blah, blah, blah, pissing down our backs and tellin' us it's rainin'?

If this were really a free market economy with a private banking industry, we'd have had the equivalent of $85 billion in sequestration spending cuts for years already by not subsidizing these losers.

And another thing we wouldn't have is these big banks. They would have failed already.

Occupy Portland Vandalizes Two Banks and a Starbucks

Anti-capitalists, they call themselves:

Police said they received an e-mail that said it was from "Some Of Those Responsible" and read in part, "about an hour and a half ago (around ten pm, Tuesday night) a group of anticapitalists rolled up on the US Bank at SE 39th and Main and smashed out its windows and ATMs." ...

Police said a second e-mail was received after the Key Bank branch and Starbucks locations were vandalized, which read in part, "wherever capital chooses for its bunker, we will be there to attack it in the night." It was signed "For freedom, for equality, for anarchy".

Story, here.

A Chase branch and a Wells Fargo branch were vandalized last November (story here).

Big Banks Got Rock Bottom Cheap Loans of $1.2 Trillion on Worst Day in Dec. 2008, and Limbaugh Denies They Were Bailed Out

TARP was meant as a diversion from the real action going on behind the scenes, and the diversion is still working on the dunderheads like Rush Limbaugh.

He continues to be fixated on TARP, but ignorantly so. TARP was at least 10 times smaller than the real bailout which put taxpayers at risk.

Just today we have learned that the biggest banks made $13 billion in profits from the Federal Reserve's emergency loans, profits which small, well-run banks all over America did not get to enjoy. In fact, contrary to Limbaugh, the well-run banks got the shaft, having to pay advance premiums for FDIC insurance to cover all the failures, which last time I checked have cost $80 billion, mostly on the backs of the customers of the banks, you and me, who will end up paying the bill as banks pass their cost of doing business on to us. Part of that cost of doing business has been subsidizing the bad behavior of the top five or six 800 lb. gorillas like Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Our fascist government picked winners and losers both through TARP and the Fed's emergency lending programs. We do not have a free market in banking. And Rush Limbaugh aims to keep it that way.

What is more, TARP recipients continue to be delinquent in paying dividends under the TARP program, as reported here in The Chicago Tribune in October:

[M]ore than 170 U.S. banks ... have missed approximately $275 million in TARP dividend payments to the government through August.

It is a myth that TARP has been "successful" in the sense that everything has been "repaid". It has not. TARP funds alone still not repaid come to $93 billion as of right now. Add in $183 billion more for Fannie and Freddie.

I nominate these as Rush Limbaugh's most ignorant comments to date:

European banks are teetering on the edge. The Italians went out and they sold bonds and they can't pay them now as they're maturing. The euro might collapse. It is real trouble. And, meanwhile, US banks did not get bailed out. Not the big banks, not the Wall Street banks. They did not get bailed out. 

We have so many lies and myths being told that people believe. Most of the big banks were forced to take TARP money so as to avoid there being a stigma. The banks that needed TARP money were the local mom and pop banks all over the country that were in trouble. The big banks, Wells Fargo, these guys were forced to sign a paper agreeing to take X numbers of millions of dollars, billions, maybe, I forget the number, but whatever it was, just to make it look like everybody was in the same boat. But the big banks paid it all back. These Occupy people are protesting something that never happened. The big banks did not get bailed out. Taxpayers made a profit on the money they were forced to borrow. Other banks did get bailed out, the little mom and pops, but the big ones did not. 

Europe is teetering, Italy, Spain, you name it, and what do we get on the Sunday shows?

It is the ignorance of the Tea Party about state-sponsored banking and the bailouts which has allowed Occupy Wall Street to occupy the vacuum the Tea Party has left about this most important of unresolved attacks on American capitalism. Unfortunately the attack on American style capitalism is now a two-front attack. On the left are the socialists of the Democrat Party who want effectively to nationalize the banking system and outlaw risk. On the right we have the liberal consensus from the era of Franklin Roosevelt which is an ad hoc echo of European fascism which pretends that banking is free enterprise while making the taxpayer responsible for its many and frequent excesses.

Too bad for America that the demagogues of both the right and the left keep you from hearing the truth.   

Guarantees Implicit Under Dodd-Frank Hand Big Banks Billions in Borrowing Advantages at Taxpayer Expense

So says John Carney here, calling Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, among others, our new Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs.

Here's Why Your Government Stalled on the FOIA for Two Years

Because the American taxpayer has bailed out the whole world, that's why. We're now the biggest suckers in history.

And the following information wouldn't have been released either, except for the Dodd-Frank legislation:

Citigroup ($2.2 trillion)

Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion)

Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion)

Bear Stearns ($960 billion)

Bank of America ($887 billion)

Goldman Sachs ($615 billion)

JPMorgan Chase ($178 billion)

Wells Fargo ($154 billion)

Swiss bank UBS ($165 billion)

Deutsche Bank ($97 billion)

Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack ($1.25 trillion)

General Electric ($16 billion)

Harley-Davidson Inc. ($2.3 billion)

Caterpillar Inc. dealers ($733 million)

The story from yahoo.com is totally irresponsible for saying the Fed didn't take part in an appeal to the Supreme Court with a group of commercial banks seeking to prevent the disclosure of the names of institutions receiving emergency loans in 2008. Hell, the Fed appealed all the way up the line until it came time to appeal to the Supreme Court or comply with two (2! II! Zwei!) orders from lower courts to disclose the information. And we still don't have that.

Has anyone painted a clearer picture of the bankruptcy of our largest institutions and industries?

Only a fool would keep his money in a bank now.

Hell, only a fool would keep money.