Posts Tagged ‘Banks’
Image courtesy good.is
While you were spending time resting, relaxing, and ringing in 2012, your favorite bloggers at USDemocrazy were keeping tabs on some of the most interesting stories of the new year.
Hate unused and seemingly useless balances on old metro cards? Some students at NYU have proposed an idea that would allow the more than $52 million dollars in unused fares to be used for community-based charities.
All eyes are on Iowa as the nation predicts the Republican nominee – well, most of them. A new study on the ever-coveted undecided voters seeks to define the complexities of the group. Twelve distinct types were found, including the Apathetics that are actually less likely to vote for candidates that try hard to get their votes. Another researcher claims that undecided voters are just interested in a candidate that can beat Obama.
Hundreds of people in Minneapolis protested the end of hawalas services there, the wire-transfer service that allows the largest population of Somali immigrants in the United States to send money back home. US banks call the transfers too risky, while many people that rely on the service are unsure of where to turn.
Continue to keep an eye on our posts this year for updates, especially as we move into election season!
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#DOCcupy the Movement: A recap of the past few weeks
by LittleBones 
#DOCcupy the Movement
It’s been an eventful few weeks with the Occupy movement around the country. The video above show the aerial view what is estimated to be 100,000 Occupy protestors taking over a highway in Oakland last week.
Now that more people are looking at the movement, some criticism on the recent weeks of police violence has been emerging. One marine says that the crowd-control methods of the Oakland police are even prohibited in war zones.
Saturday marked the International Day of Divestment from international banks where thousands of people transferred their money from big corporations like Bank of America to local credit unions. One report shows that since September 29, 4 in 5 credit unions have seen membership increases. This is an increase more than all new membership in 2010.
Over at Occupy Wallstreet, female protestors have constructed a safe haven for women. This safe house is in response to the few incidents of sexual assault that have taken place in Zuccotti Park.
Still confused about what this movement is and why people are so passionate about it? Take a look at this short animation that summarizes the problems at hand.
And FYI – we’re putting the final touches on our first installment of our own #DOCcupy that features our local movement in Baltimore. Fingers crossed that it’ll launch this week!
Thanks to Wikimedia
Everybody can remember a bully in the playground from their youth. This big nasty character would take candy or money from innocent little ones.
You better watch out! Today some of these bullies have grown up and may be after your house!
There has been a crisis in the housing market where big banks (who own the loans on homes around the country) have been falsely repossessing houses.
Here’s what’s been happening:
Banks make loans to individuals and resell the ownership of the loans to investors. To do this Stephen Ganel, of Time, notes
the banks had to file and retain paperwork that transferred the ownership of the mortgages from the original lenders to the new investors. Well, it appears the banks bungled that process, or at the very least in a number of case, in potentially many cases, they lost the paperwork.… (then)the banks tried to cover it up.
To deal with the missing paperwork, Calculated Risk notes, banks used
“Robo-signers” [, who] are individuals who signed affidavits stating that they had “personal knowledge” of the facts in a foreclosure case, when in fact they did not.
Was this just a mistake or was it something more sinister? …read more.
President Barack Obama gave a big speech yesterday. He was addressing the leaders of Wall Street and challenged them to join him in an effort to fix the problems that caused the financial crisis the world is facing today. The cartoon above addresses the same issue. The cartoonist thinks that this is a burning issue.What do you think?
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Question: Do you remember that recent financial crisis that was going to (play scary music) DESTROY THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!?! (in case you don’t… crawl out from under your rock and check out US Democrazy’s past coverage).
Fortunately for us, politicians everywhere agreed to do everything possible to ensure that such a crisis did not happen again.
Unfortunately, these politicians cannot seem to agree on… what exactly “everything possible” means…
Like everything in Washington these days, reform of the financial and banking industry (which helped create the almighty mess we are stuck in) is in a partisan deadlock.
There was some progress made in 2009 when the House of Representatives passed a financial reform bill last December.
Since then, that bill has languished in the clutches of the US Senate (an organization about as fast as molasses up hill in January).
But HARK! (play triumphant music) all that is about to change! A Senate version of the bill may be emerging! …read more.
Got Ya’…Iraqi officials uncover plot to bomb government ministries.
Got You Too… FDIC advances a proposal to penalize banks for risky practices.
I feel like I’m forgetting something…
Florida Grandmother Forgotten in Jail for 15 Days
If we at USDemocrazy want to see a good cat fight, we turn on Animal Planet.
Last Sunday, we saw TV cat fights involving lions, tigers and even President Obama!
That’s right, on Sunday President Obama had his catty claws out. In an interview he referred to America’s Wall Street bankers as a bunch of “fat cats”.
To make the name calling worse, it was only a day before Mr. Obama was scheduled to meet with these very same top bankers.
What was this meeting about (clearly not another friendly beer summit)? …read more.
Jay Leno says he’s not out to save NBC… “Uh, what?” says NBC back…
The U.S. is all about new beginnings. And making mortgage lenders work, too.
Lesson learned: cold, hard cash is best not kept in the freezer. (Any old police office with the muchies is going to look there.)
Thanks to Wikicommons.
***UPDATE: Here are the Official Results***
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been under a lot of stress lately. (We at USDemocrazy thinks it has something to do with fixing the tanking economy.) Now it seems he has been passing this stress onto others.
The US Treasury has required major banks to undergo “Stress Tests” (like waiting in line at the DMV) to see if they are financially sturdy enough (i.e. have enough money) to stand on their own two feet without government crutches.
The results are in… sort of…
The Feds will not be releasing the official results until later today. Luckily, there have been a number of leaks to the press.
Geithner has announced the results will be “reassuring” … although anythingother than total disaster might seem reassuring in this economic climate.
Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Regional Financial, Sun Trust, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, Fifth Third, P.N.C. and GMAC need more money. No surprises here.
Among those banks tough enough to survive are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and American Express. (You can now open the champagne and charge it to your AmEx card.)
What happens to those stressed out banks? Does the government issue Valium?
Well, it seems the banks get one month to put a plan together for raising cash.
Once the banks get their stress report cards, the pundit class will weigh in with their interpretation of the grades. The NY Times has a great collection of experts giving their two cents worth. Arianna Huffington is as vocal as ever with her opinion,
“The fact that the stress test results to be released on Thursday are unlikely to show the full extent of the sickness of our financial system is one more symptom that Obama’s economic team needs to be put in quarantine…”
We’ll see down the road how accurate these tests were. So what do y’all think? Are you and the banks stressed enough?
Hey amigo, where’d ya get that gun… From the US!
What’s the prognosis, doc? Some stocks with a side of t-bonds.
Ron Paul meets Sacha Baron Cohen.
I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics. So, that didn’t turn out that way. But, by the time he started pulling his pants down, I … What in (inaudible) is going on here? I ran out of the room.
