11/9/16 TRUMP WINS THE PRESIDENCY 

Pennsylvania
was at the epicenter of the populist movement

Donald J. Trump will take the oath of office to become the 45th President of the United States on Friday, January 20, 2017. With more than 145 million votes cast, the popular vote looks to be around 48%-47% with Trump defeating opponent Hillary Clinton in the more important electoral college.  Republicans retained control of both the Senate and House of Representatives.  

Single-party control of the White House and both Houses of Congress has positives and negatives from a portfolio manager perspective. Following several years of gridlock inside the Beltway, the potential now exists for a number of legislative initiatives to be passed. Examples would include fiscal stimulus/infrastructure spending, corporate tax reform, reducing regulation, and addressing rising health care costs.

Technology is no good measuring populism.

Tapper: If Trump vote persists, "It's going to put polling industry out of biz, it's going to put voter projection industry out of biz"
Chuck Todd now saying the poll weights may have been busted. underweighted rural vote

Never in history have so many financial media pundits got so much wrong. Biggest loser? Data journalism.  Biggest winner? Shoe leather journalism. 

Pennsylvania voters made history becoming the first Republican to win the state since 1988 as he swept the state’s coveted 20 electoral voters. It was a win that placed him over the finish line and made history as he became the United States first populist president-elect in nearly 250 years. This election was a bombshell, and it was intended to be a bombshell. Trump was a vehicle for the anti-elite message. Pennsylvania may force both parties to start to evolve towards an anti-trade, anti-foreign intervention position. Washington power never gave respect to these people and their ways of life, their work ethic, and their tendency to not be mobile and they were punished not given a third Obama term. 

The ratings victory went to the network that helped him get there, NBC, where he became a TV star on The Apprentice. With a 7.0 household rating in the metered markets, NBC topped the Big 4 on Tuesday with its primetime coverage of the race between Hillary Clinton and the ex-Apprentice host. CNN earned approx $100M above expected election year lift in TV & digital thanks to Trump fascination. Many in media failed to take Trump seriously for much of primaries, relying on him to boost ratings, clicks - and profits.

There's no better time to learn economics.

 

THE ROLE OF ECONOMICS by JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES:

"The ideas of eCONomists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are nore powerful than is conmonly understood. Indeed, wthe world is ruled by little else." 

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual infulences, are usually slaves of some defunct eCONomist."
 

2016 Prosecution of Financial Crisis Fraud Ends With a Whimper

FROM 2008 - 2016 NOTHING GOT ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE CITIZENS BY THE LAWYERS WHO ARE THEIR TO SERVE AND PROTECT THEM.

One source of great frustration from the financial crisis has been the dearth of cases against individuals over subprime lending practices and the related securitization of bad loans that caused so much financial havoc. To heighten the frustration, I offer Aug. 22, 2016, as the day on which efforts to pursue cases related to subprime mortgages were put to rest with no individuals — save perhaps the unfortunate former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre — held accountable.

The likelihood that the Supreme Court will take up the appeals court’s decision appears to be low. The issue about what constitutes fraud in a contractual relationship is narrow, raising arcane questions about how a court should construe an agreement between sophisticated parties and when full disclosure is required. This is the type of claim that is usually pursued in a private lawsuit rather than through a federal enforcement action, so the justices may not want to be dragged into a dispute that will have little precedential impact on the application of federal law.

The lack of cases identifying individuals for any misconduct related to the financial crisis has become an all-too common complaint. What will be additionally disheartening to many is that even those few cases that were brought have now ended up largely as defeats for the government

 

WHAt
DID GOLDMAN JUST SAY????

JAMIE DIAMON - "even the United States does not have a divine right to success."

2/3/16 Goldman Sachs Says It May Be Forced to Fundamentally Question How Capitalism Is Working

The profit margins debate could lead to an unsettling conclusion. So will profit margins inevitably roll over? Goldman went through both sides of the argument. Goldman wrote: "We are always wary of guiding for mean reversion. But, if we are wrong and high margins manage to endure for the next few years (particularly when global demand growth is below trend), there are broader questions to be asked about the efficacy of capitalism." In other words, profit margins should naturally mean-revert and oscillate.

Goldman Sachs reached a settlement with the federal government for $5 billion because they were selling worthless packages of subprime mortgages.

Goldman Sachs finally admits it defrauded investors during the financial crisis

Settles on FIVE BILLION SETTLEMENT - NO EMPLOYEE HELD ACCOUNTABLE APRIL 11, 2016
$5.1 billion to settle a lawsuit related to its handling of mortgage-backed securities leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Another bank fine where calculation not explained,no one goes to jail, investors pay through share price. They will merely send a cut of profits from long-ago fraudulent activity to a shakedown artist, also known as U.S. law enforcement.

Taxpayers Screwed As Half Of Goldman Sachs Settlement With The DOJ Is Tax Deductible.

Only on Wall Street can you orchestrate a heist worth billions and not do jail time. 
Why the Goldman Sachs Settlement Is a $5 Billion Sham The penalty might sound pretty stiff. But get a load of the real math. BY DAVID DAYEN

DEAD BANKERS

 

 

Strange Deaths of JPMorgan Workers Continue Wash trades occur when the same beneficial owner is both the buyer and the seller. Wash trades were banned under United States law because they can falsely portray volume and price movement.

Profiteering on Banker Deaths:

Regulator Says Public Has No Right to Details

Banking Deaths: Why JPMorgan Stands Out 

Suspicious Deaths of Bankers Are Now Classified as “Trade Secrets” by Federal Regulator 

Swiss Insurers and JPMorgan Have More Than “Suicides” in Common 

JPMorgan Vice President’s Death in London Shines a Light on the Bank’s Close Ties to the CIA   

Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London      

As Bank Deaths Continue to Shock, Documents Reveal JPMorgan Has Been Patenting Death Derivatives   

 

5 BANKS
FLUNK LIVING WILLS

Regulators FLUNK  Some Big Banks’ ‘Living Wills’

U.S. regulators gave a failing grade to five big banks on Wednesday, including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), on their plans for a bankruptcy that would not rely on taxpayer money, giving them until Oct. 1 to make amends or risk sanctions.  The move officially starts a long regulatory chain that could end with breaking up the banks. The plans are separate from the Fed's stress tests, where banks demonstrate stability by showing how they would withstand economic shocks in hypothetical scenarios.  "The FDIC and Federal Reserve are committed to carrying out the statutory mandate that systemically important financial institutions demonstrate a clear path to an orderly failure under bankruptcy at no cost to taxpayers," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement.

J.P. Morgan,  Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), State Street Corp (STT.N) and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK.N), do not correct serious "deficiencies" in their plans by October, they could face stricter regulations, like higher capital requirements or limits on business activities, regulators said. To receive not credible verdict from Fed, FDIC. Under Dodd-Frank Section 165d, proper remedy for banks that fail to create credible living wills is breaking them up! 

U.S. regulators are preparing to notify some of the largest U.S. banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., that they have submitted flawed plans detailing how they would handle a potential bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter. The move,  would raise the prospect of higher capital requirements or other regulatory sanctions for some of the institutions.

 

NEEL KASHKARI

 

Reining in big banks has nothing to do with politics Fed's Kashkari

What Breaking Up the Banks Wouldn't Fix FRED KASHKARI

Neel Kashkari, who helped structure the bailout, is now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. On Tuesday he gave a speech, stating that those big banks pose an “ongoing risk to our economy.”  It was an impressive speech and surprising given his past as both a Goldman Sachs banker and as a “free-market” Republican. It also angered many bankers and politicians, because he voiced a secret of Wall Street: Despite Dodd-Frank, despite claims to the contrary by some politicians, “the largest banks are still too big to fail (TBTF).” 
The old Wall Street, prior to 30 years of deregulation, was filled with partnerships. Employees were required to keep their money in the company, so if the firm failed, bankers failed, resulting in a degree of self-policing. Wall Street bankers were personally invested in the strength and integrity of their decisions, because if they went wrong, they themselves lost big.  Bankers today get paid mostly in cash bonuses. Many on Wall Street, certainly those who work at the big banks, have a fantastic win-win deal: They get paid if they win and they don’t have to give anything back if they lose.
The crisis was good for many bankers, and not just the ones who bet against housing blowing up like in The Big Short, but for many who had behaved recklessly, and were responsible for the crisis. Including some of the CEOs of banks that got bailed out or blew up.

2/16/16 Fed President Kashkari Compares TBTF Banks 2 Risky Nuclear Reactors; Regulators "Won't See Next Crisis Coming"

Fed's newest member, former Goldman Sachs banker, suggests breaking up Wall Street banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve's newest policymaker on Tuesday called on lawmakers to consider "bold, transformational" rules including the breaking up of the nation's largest banks to ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook should they fail.  In his first speech as head of the Minneapolis Fed, Neel Kashkari urged a radical shakeup of Wall Street's banks, straddling the line between the Fed's policymaking remit and political advocacy.

End TBTF

Under the Fed’s proposal, the banks would need debt and a capital cushion equal to at least 16 percent of risk-weighted assets by 2019 and 18 percent by 2022. If U.S. banks were to fail, stock investors would lose everything, but the debt would be converted into equity in a reconstituted company. It’s an element of the so-called living wills lenders are required to submit to the Fed and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. each year to map out how they could be resolved after a collapse. The idea is that when a bank fails, regulators would have a war chest to fund a new, healthy version of the company without having to use taxpayer money.

TO OLD TO FAIL ! 

2016 Oldest bank MONTE DEI PASCHI OF THE 1% BY THE 1% FOR THE 1%
Italy's Monte dei Paschi di Siena says BAIL OUT plan backed by underwriters has secured underwriters to back a turnaround plan involving the sale of 9.2 billion euros ($10.3 billion) in bad loans and a 5 billion euros capital increase.

Italian Bank Rescue That Mustn’t Fail Hangs Over Como Party
Monte Paschi The institution founded in Siena in the 15th century remains in intensive care after two bailouts since 2009 and 8 billion euros ($8.9 billion) of fresh capital raised from investors in the last two years. Paschi, shown in European stress tests to be the region’s most vulnerable lender to a severe economic shock, is now the focus of a new plan to restore profitability. At the center of that is Monte Paschi’s need for yet more cash. On July 29 -- the same day of the stress test results -- Chief Executive Officer Fabrizio Viola announced a plan to tap investors again by selling up to 5 billion euros of stock after first moving 28 billion euros of bad loans off the bank’s books for securitization and a subsequent sale. According to Corrado Passera, Italy’s former economic development minister and a former CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

SECURITY

 

*How Corporate America keeps huge hacks secret* 

The backbone of America -- banks, oil and gas suppliers, the energy grid -- is under constant attack by hackers. But the biggest cyberattacks, the ones that can blow up chemical tanks and burst dams, are kept secret by a law that shields U.S. corporations. They're kept in the dark forever. Secrecy could hurt efforts to defend against future attacks.
Steven Aftergood, who leads the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, worries that "by categorically withholding this information, the government is concealing the very factors that shape homeland security policy." "Instead of a precise picture of an actual threat, the public is left with only vague generalities. The resulting deliberative process is crippled from the start," Aftergood said. It's not just the energy industry. Every company that's considered "critical infrastructure" can keep major hacks secret: the telecom industry, big banks, major chemical makers.
CNNMoney reviewed a 2009 DHS policy manual explaining the policy to law enforcement, government agents and industry. The manual explicitly explains this information is to be kept out of the hands of journalists, regulators and the public at large. The media "may not receive PCII" unless a company approves. A safety inspector "does not have a valid need-to-know" if he or she plans to use that information "for regulatory purposes." The manual explains what this means in practice. What happens if a severe vulnerability exists that makes train stations prone to terrorist attacks? If that information is categorized as "PCII," a federal regulator can't mention it -- even when writing reports to push for better safety regulations at train stations.​

SWIFT - BANKS ROLE IN TERRORISM

April 2016 These Cyber Thieves Hacked the Heart of the Global Financial System
$951 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February. 
SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. A cyber-heist suggest that an essential lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood to hacking attacks, due to the vulnerabilities in software known as Alliance Access that enabled attackers to modify SWIFT’s client software.

The private "Flash" notification, which provided technical information about the attacks, said a "malicious cyber group" had compromised the networks of multiple foreign banks.  "The actors have exploited vulnerabilities in the internal environments of the banks and initiated unauthorized monetary transfers over an international payment messaging system," the alert said.

14 Jan 2016 Some companies will pay hackers up to US$1 million in ransoms

to claw back stolen data according to a poll by the Cloud Security Alliance. The survey garnered 209 respondents of which half were in IT security and a third from tech with most hailing from companies with up to 1000 staff and a quarter from large enterprises with over 50,000 employees. Half of those responding were from the US, and a quarter from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The report (PDF) found a quarter of respondents would pay ransoms to prevent the release of sensitive corporate data. 14 said they'd pay more than $1 million to black hats to prevent sensitive data dumps. theregister.co.uk

HACKING TEAM’S LEAK HELPED RESEARCHERS HUNT DOWN A ZERO-DAY

ZERO-DAY EXPLOITS ARE a hacker’s best friend. They attack vulnerabilities in software that are unknown to the software maker and are therefore unpatched. Criminal hackers and intelligence agencies use zero day exploits to open a stealth door into your system, and because antivirus companies also don’t know about them, the exploits can remain undetected for years before they’re discovered. Until now, they’ve usually been uncovered only by chance.  But researchers at Kaspersky Lab have, for the first time, discovered a valuable zero-day exploit after intentionally going on the hunt for it. And they did so by using only the faintest of clues to find it.  The malware they found is a remote-code execution exploit that attacks a vulnerability in Microsoft’s widely used Silverlight software—a browser plug-in Netflix and other providers use to deliver streaming content to users. It’s also used in SCADA and other industrial control systems that are installed in critical infrastructure and industrial facilities.

PANAMA PAPERS 

 

[SEE WHITE SHOW LAWYERS - TAX HAVENS - OFFSHORE BANKING]

PANAMA PAPERS The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

Panama Papers reveal offshore secrets of China’s red nobility

British banker behind firm sanctioned over North Korea nuclear program
A British banker with ties to North Korea set up an offshore company allegedly used by the isolated and heavily sanctioned state to fund its nuclear quest and sell weapons, the Guardian newspaper reported, citing leaked Panamanian documents.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0X30BC

Najib Razak 1MDB scandal: Malaysian Prime Minister's accounts triggered internal money-laundering alarm 
Hundreds of millions of dollars were being wired into Najib Razak's accounts from the Saudi Arabian Government, a mysterious Saudi prince and two shadowy British Virgin Island companies, while the head of a Malaysian state-owned company topped up the Prime Minister's credit card accounts with millions of Malaysian ringgit in cash.  Mr Najib's Platinum Mastercard and Platinum Visa had been overdrawn thanks to a 3,320,670.65 ringgit ($US1,039,369.91) purchase of jewellery in September 2014 — a spending spree described inside AmBank as a "huge volume".  Mr Najib's wife Rosmah Mansor has previously been reported to have purchased a series of luxury items, from diamond jewellery to designer handbags, which appear beyond her husband's $A130,000 official annual salary.

LIBOR

 

 

FINRA fines Raymond James $17 million for violating anti-money laundering rules
 

2016 FINRA fines Raymond James $17 million for violating anti-money laundering rules

LIBOR trial: ex-Barclays staff earned big bonuses, court hears Defendants stood to gain or lose hundreds of thousands of pounds if they succeeded in manipulating rates, jury told.

Ex-Barclays Libor Traders `Driven by Money,' Prosecutor Says: Five former Barclays Plc traders accused of rigging benchmark interest rates were driven by money and profit, a lawyer for U.K. fraud prosecutors said at the start of a 13-week trial.  "Their goal was to make more profit on their trading" and they were rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate "for their own advantage,” said James Hines, a prosecutor for Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

A group of former Barclays bank employees accused of conspiring to rig Libor interest rates were paid big bonuses and offered each other wine and coffee in return for favourable rates, a court has heard.  Jonathan James Mathew, Stylianos Contogoulas, Jay Vijay Merchant, Alex Pabon, and Ryan Michael Reich deny conspiring to manipulate the US dollar Libor, or London interbank offered rate for more than two years, between 1 June 2005 and 1 September 2007.  The third Libor trial in the UK comes after the scandal rocked the financial world and led to billions of dollars in fines for major banks, including Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank.  On the second day of his opening speech at Southwark crown court in London, James Hines QC, a prosecutor for the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, said: “Making money was the name of the game.”

BANK RISK

 

Jimmy Lee: JPMorgan's Trillion-Dollar Man

JPMorgan Chase Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee ''probably lent a trillion dollars to the people in this room," CEO Jamie Dimon once remarked at a gathering of private equity and corporate titans celebrating Lee's 30 years at the bank. That kind of power has won Lee friends in high places.

Most Shocking Part of Global Wealth Study: It's Not Just That 62 People Own as Much as 3.6 Billion Poorest One detail most of the media hasn't grappled with so far.

“The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44 percent in the five years since 2010—that’s an increase of more than half a trillion dollars ($542 billion), to $1.76 trillion,” Oxfam noted. “Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half fell by just over a trillion dollars in the same period—a drop of 41 percent. Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1 percent of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1 percent.”

The biggest reason the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer—and wages for the middle-class in countries like the U.S. have stagnated in recent decades—is because investments have been rewarded, but not labor. “One of the key trends underlying this huge concentration of wealth and incomes is the increasing return to capital versus labour,” the report said. “In almost all rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has been falling.”

The Six Too Big To Fail Banks In The U.S. Have 278 TRILLION Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives

The very same people that caused the last economic crisis have created a 278 TRILLION dollar derivatives time bomb that could go off at any moment.  When this absolutely colossal bubble does implode, we are going to be faced with the worst economic crash in the history of the United States.  During the last financial crisis, our politicians promised us that they would make sure that “too big to fail” would never be a problem again.  Instead, as you will see below, those banks have actually gotten far larger since then.

5 U.S. Banks Each Have More Than 40 Trillion Dollars In Exposure To Derivatives

When is the U.S. banking system going to crash? I can sum it up in three words. Watch the derivatives. It used to be only four, but now there are five "too big to fail" banks in the United States that each have more than 40 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives. Today, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of about 17.7 trillion dollars, so when we are talking about 40 trillion dollars we are talking about an amount of money that is almost unimaginable. And unlike stocks and bonds, these derivatives do not represent "investments" in anything. They can be incredibly complex, but essentially they are just paper wagers about what will happen in the future. The truth is that derivatives trading is not too different from betting on baseball or football games. Trading in derivatives is basically just a form of legalized gambling, and the "too big to fail" banks have transformed Wall Street into the largest casino in the history of the planet. When this derivatives bubble bursts (and as surely as I am writing this it will), the pain that it will cause the global economy will be greater than words can describe.

2016 BANKSTERS

 

 

WELLS FARGO

FAKE ACCOUNTS - FAKE REGULATORS - FAKE SUPERVISION - FAKE SECURITY - FAKE AUDITORS - FAKE EVERYTHING

BANKSTER CHAIRMAN AND CEO JOHN STRUMPF
Wells Fargo employees defrauded customers by opening an estimated 2 million unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts for customers. 5,300 terminations, or 5.3% of its 100,000 branch-based employees.
Wells Fargo has strict quotas regulating the number of daily "solutions" that its bankers must reach; these "solutions" include the opening of all new banking and credit card accounts. Wells Fargo admits that as many as 2 million checking and credit card accounts may have been fraudulently opened for customers without their consent. And the bank's employees didn't just stop at that. They also surreptitiously transferred customer money into these accounts, sometimes causing overdrafts in the customer's existing, authorized accounts.
COVERING YOUR ASS
"As you know, every Wells Fargo team member is expected to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethics and business conduct, which are spelled out in our Code of Ethics," he wrote. "If you ever see activity that is inconsistent with our Code of Ethics, please report it immediately to your manager, HR Advisor, or our anonymous EthicsLine." ~ BANKSTER JOHN STRUMPF
Wells Fargo paid in fines to regulatory agencies for its transgressions: The Spoils of Bank Fraud 185 million fine.

WHO PAYS THAT 185 MILLION DOLLAR FINE? THE SHARE HOLDERS DO!!!!

Carrie Tolstedt, the (<<criminal bankster>>) executive who oversaw Wells Fargo's community banking division for much of the past decade.
Tolstedt will earn a purported $93 million payday, according to The Financial Times, the lion's share of which stems from the exercise of stock awards that she received from the bank along the way. The bank's latest proxy filing shows that the 27-year Wells Fargo veteran owns more than 2.5 million shares of stock in one way, shape, or form. NO BANKSTER GOES  TO JAIL!

 

 

BANKS

 

2016 Senator Elizabeth Warren Requests Formal Investigation About Why The Obama Administration Did Not Prosecute Wall Street
In a letter sent Thursday to Michael E. Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Warren said her staff had found that members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) had referred 25 cases to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. None of those referrals were pursued.  “The Department has failed to hold the individuals and companies... accountable,” Warren wrote. “This failure requires an explanation.”  Warren also wrote to the head of the FBI, James Comey, and asked him to release records of FBI investigations into financial misdeeds in the wake of the crisis, to further illuminate why the Obama administration decided not to prosecute firms linked to the financial crisis.
The FCIC was a 10 member investigatory body tasked by Congress in 2009 to look into the root causes of the economic collapse. In 2011, the FCIC turned over a mountain of evidence to the Justice Department -- including whistleblower testimony, and internal bank documents. Though the FCIC wasn’t allowed to launch criminal investigations, it did make prosecutorial suggestions to the Department of Justice. Phil Angelides, who chaired the FCIC, applauded Warren’s demand for an investigation into why the referrals were not followed up.

1/14/16 FINALLY IT TOOK 8 YEARS TO NAIL THESE BASTARDS 
Goldman Sachs Will Pay $5B to Settle Financial-Crisis Claims 
AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED!

2016 THE BIG SHORT

Seven of the world's biggest banks have agreed to pay $324 million to settle a private U.S. lawsuit accusing them of rigging an interest rate benchmark used in the $553 trillion derivatives market.  Rigging the "ISDAfix" benchmark for their own gain from at least 2009 to 2012.

THE TRAUNCH

MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES FRAUD 

10/2016 U.S. credit union regulator paid law firms $1 billion to sue banks

The top U.S. credit union regulator said on Thursday it had paid more than $1 billion in legal fees to two law firms to pursue lawsuits against various banks over their sales of toxic mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis.  The National Credit Union Administration said the contingency fees represented 23.2 percent of the $4.3 billion the agency recovered in settlements with banks over their sale of faulty securities to five credit unions that later failed.  The announcement marked the first time the NCUA had revealed the lawsuits' costs. NCUA Board Chairman Rick Metsger said the agency previously withheld disclosing its fee arrangements to protect its litigation position and ensure maximum returns.  "Without this fee arrangement, which shifted most of the risk of these legal actions to outside counsel, there would have been no legal investigation of potential claims, no litigation, and no legal recoveries," Metsger said.  The payouts came after settlements with banks, including Morgan Stanley, <MS.N> Bank of America Corp,<BAC.N> JPMorgan Chase & CO <JPM.N> and Barclays Plc<BARC.L>. Most recently, last month the NCUA announced a $1.1 billion deal with Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc<RBS.L>.  The payouts went to two law firms, Korein Tillery LLC and Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel PLLC, which pursued lawsuits against the banks. Neither firm immediately responded to a request for comment on Thursday.  The sum was more than double what another regulator that pursued a similar set of lawsuits against many of the same banks last year said it paid while obtaining an even larger amount of recoveries.  The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has acted as conservator for mortgage funders Fannie Mae <FNMA.PK> and Freddie Mac FMCC <FMCC.PK> since their government takeover in 2008, in September 2015 disclosed paying two other law firms $406.7 million.

6/2/16 FDIC, banks in $190 million settlement over risky Countrywide debt
Eight financial services firms have paid the FDIC $190 million to settle claims they misled five U.S. banks into buying risky mortgage securities from the former Countrywide Financial Corp, contributing to the banks' failures.  The FDIC on Thursday said the accord resolves claims against Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Edward D. Jones & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG.  Acting as receiver for the failed banks, the FDIC accused the defendants of violating federal and state securities laws based on alleged misrepresentations in offering documents for 21 Countrywide residential mortgage-backed securities they underwrote between 2005 and 2007.

2/1/16 Credit Suisse and Barclays Record Settlement with AG and SEC
Credit Suisse and Barclays have reached a joint $154 million settlement with the SEC and AG Schneiderman’s office. Credit Suisse will pay a total of about $85 million ($30 million to each of the SEC and the AG, and $24.3 million in returned profits. Barclays will pay about $70 million ($35 million each to the SEC and the AG) to settle their charges.

2/5/16 HSBC Will Pay $470M In Federal-State Mortgage Case
HSBC Holdings PLC  agreed to pay $470 million to resolve state and federal claims that it committed abuses in its mortgage origination, servicing and home foreclosure operations.
The deal HSBC reached with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Reserve and 49 states mirrors the terms first put forward in the $25 billion national mortgage settlement in 2012 as well as a subsequent $1 billion settlement with SunTrust Mortgage Inc. in 2014.
The settlement with HSBC covers much of that same ground as well, after regulators turned up evidence of robo-signing, foreclosure abuses and shoddy mortgage servicing practices at HSBC during and after the financial crisis. 
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman No individuals were named in the settlement despite a recent Justice Department memo requiring prosecutors to seek to hold individuals accountable for corporate malfeasance. HSBC said in securities filings that it had been in negotiations with the Justice Department and the other agencies prior to the release of Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates’ memorandum on holding individuals accountable.HSBC’s progress in meeting the settlement’s terms will be subject to the same outside monitor as the other banks that have reached similar mortgage settlements.

HSBC committed to providing $370 million in consumer relief that will primarily go toward lowering the principal on mortgages at risk of default and lowering interest rates on other mortgages, among other forms of help to troubled borrowers, and $100 million that will be paid out to homeowners who were foreclosed upon between 2008 and 2012.
The DOJ, HUD and CFPB said that the settlement includes new rules to prevent robo-signing, poor documentation and lost paperwork, among other practices that led to the bank's history of noncompliance. The new standards say that foreclosure must be a last resort and HSBC is restricted from foreclosing while the homeowner is applying for a loan modification, and also includes rules governing timelines and rights for the loan modification process.

FRAUD

1. Trump University was tempting Phoenix-area people with in those 2008 sessions: how to make money off of those foreclosures that were spiking at record levels in 2008, after the collapse of the housing market and the subprime loan system that had artificially puffed it up.
2. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has publicly censured two units of Bank of America for breaches of the city's takeover codes in two deals last year, the regulator said on Wednesday.  The SFC said the censures were linked to the role of the units in a partial offer for China Resources Beer (CRB) and the privatization of Power Assets Holdings Ltd.  The regulator said the Bank of America units failed to disclose their dealings in equity swaps in both the CRB partial offer and the Power Assets privatization, despite taking the role of adviser on both transactions.
3. 6/2/16 - In 2005, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Greenberg and Smith of using fraudulent transactions to hide the insurance company's losses and mislead investors about its financial condition. Former AIG Chief Hank Greenberg Must Stand Trial For Fraud, N.Y. Court Rules The New York Court of Appeals ruled that state officials can try to recover millions of dollars in bonuses and interest from Greenberg, 91, and his co-defendant, Howard Smith, 71, former AIG chief financial officer. "Nobody — no matter how rich or powerful — is allowed to commit fraud in our state, and we are very pleased the people of New York will finally have a chance to obtain justice at trial," state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
4. JURY VERDICT OVERTURNED BY THE JUDGE
   Bank of America Corp. was not liable for fraud written by Circuit Judge Richard C. Wesley subject to a penalty of more than $1.2 billion for its actions before the economy collapsed in 2008 despite a jury's finding to the contrary, a federal appeals court ruled. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said there was insufficient evidence for a jury to conclude at a 2013 trial that mail and wire fraud was committed by the bank's Countrywide Financial unit in late 2007 and 2008 when it passed along mortgages to government housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
5. Japan has gone to negative interest rates and NOV 2015 Yellen said the Fed would consider negative rates if economy soured -
6. Citigroup Inc. executives encouraged foreign-exchange traders to use electronic chat rooms to share client orders with employees of rival banks, a practice that forced finance companies to pay $10 billion in regulatory fines, according to evidence presented to a London employment tribunal.
7. Switzerland signs deal to end banking secrecy but THE U.S. DOESN'T making American the #1 place to hide money!!!
8. HSBC were fined £28m in Switzerland and $285m in US for money laundering. Neither reported by BBC. Head of BBC is HSBC director.
9. HSBC escapes action by City regulator following Swiss tax scandal Financial Conduct Authority will take no action against bank whose Swiss arm helped clients to evade tax.  So basically banks like HSBC can act with impunity.
10. JPMorgan to pay $4 million for false statements about broker pay: SEC reuters
    JP Morgan Chase & Co's brokerage unit will pay $4 million to settle allegations it misled customers about how it paid brokers, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday.

11. UBP to pay $187 million to avoid U.S. charges of aiding tax evasion - reuters

12. Wall St. watchdog homes in on high-frequency trades to combat spoofing - reuters -- MUST READ MORE ABOUT HFT 
    In THE BIG SHORT movie the character of Mark Baum was the real guy named Steve Eisman

13. This Lawsuit Could Cost Vanguard Investors Billions Has one of the U.S.'s top mutual fund companies been avoiding taxes?
    Vanguard investors might soon have to pay billions more in fees a year.
    The popular mutual fund company is known for its low cost index funds. But a whistleblower suit claims that one of the reasons that its index funds are so cheap has allowed the company to avoid tens of billions of dollars in taxes in the past eight years alone. The suit claims that Vanguard owes $35 billion in back taxes, penalties and interest since 2007. 

14. Vanguard December 12/2015 agreed to pay millions of back taxes in Texas. That state awarded the former Vanguard tax attorney David Danon a $117,000 whistleblower fee.