What is Going on with Banks this Week? by ChaztheMeatHead ..... Conspiracy Forum
Date: 4/12/2016 8:19:09 PM ( 9 y ago)
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Just about every major banker and finance minister in the world is meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, following two rushed, secretive meetings of the Federal Reserve and another instantaneous and rare meeting between the Fed Chair and the president of the United States. These and other emergency bank meetings around the world cause one to wonder what is going down. Here’s a bullet list of the week’s big-bank events;
It is rare for presidents to meet with the chair of the Federal Reserve. The last time President Obama met with Janet Yellen was in November of 2014, a year and a half ago. It is even more rare for the vice president of the United States to join them. In fact, I’ve heard but haven’t verified that it has never happened in a suddenly called meeting with the Fed before.
For security reasons, the president and vice president don’t regularly attend the same events. There are, of course, many planning sessions or emergency meetings where they do get together, but not with the head of the Federal Reserve. Emergency meetings where the VP is included in the planning session would include situations related to dire national security in case the VP winds up having to take over.
(George Bush and Dick Cheney were exceptional to the point that everyone commented on how often the VP was included in meetings with the president, but I always figured that was because George Bush couldn’t think and speak without Cheney acting as the ventriloquist.)
In fact the meeting with the prez and vice prez is so rare that the White House is bending over backwards to assure the entire nation that the president is not meeting with Yellen to try to influence the Fed, which is required to act independently of politics (so they say).
According to the White House, President Obama is meeting with the Fed chair and Biden to discuss the nation’s “longer-term economic outlook,” even though Yellen just told the entire nation that the economy was strong and had arrived nearly back at “full health.” The president says they will be “comparing notes.” Do their notes about the nation’s outlook disagree?
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said both Obama and Yellen are focused on ways to expand economic opportunities for the U.S. middle class. He called the meeting an opportunity for the two to “trade notes” while emphasizing that Yellen makes decisions about monetary policy independently. (SFGate)
Either such meetings are, indeed, extremely rare, or the White House doth protest to much because they spent more time emphasize what the president was not going to do than what he was going to do in assuring us he will not try to influence Yellen.
“The president has been pleased with the way that she has fulfilled what is a critically important job,” Earnest said. He added that Obama has “the utmost respect for the independent nature of her role.”
Earnest also said that, “even in a confidential setting” Obama would not “have a conversation that would undermine” the Fed’s ability to make “critical financial decisions independently.”
If such meetings with the Fed are so rare they require careful explanation, why the sudden call of the meeting, oddly timed between two specially called, emergency meetings of the Fed — or, at least, “expedited” meetings of the Fed. It can’t just be that the president wants to plan what he will be saying at this week’s G-20 conference, if he’s to speak there. That kind of planning would happen in advance because one knows the conference is coming. One striking peculiarity of the presidents meeting with the Fed is that it appeared to have been called immediately after the Fed announced Monday’s “expedited” meeting of the Board of Governors.
We are in an election cycle, and I already speculated in my last article that, with the anti-establishment, Fed-hating candidates, Sanders and Trump doing so well in their bids for the presidency we could be sure the Administration would be doing all it can along with the Fed to put some accelerant on this economy and forestall the recession that I believe we have already begun.
A recession would prove Trump and Sander right in their statements about a coming recession or the failed actions of the Fed and Wall Street to bring true recovery. So, the Fed and the President have every reason to work together to make sure such an announcement never happens. That could be what “comparing notes” on the economy’s future means — how do we assure the economy doesn’t fall apart in the next few months before the election since we have that common interest?
That would explanation why the White House is saying, in advance of any accusations, that the president isn’t trying to influence the Fed. They want to get ahead of the story. Of course, it could just be that they recognize such rare meetings will lead to the kind of speculation I’m now doing.
Here is the announcement the Fed posted at the end of last week for Monday’s meeting (italics mine):
Advanced Notice of a Meeting under Expedited Procedures
It is anticipated that the closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at 11:30 AM on Monday, April 11, 2016, will be held under expedited procedures, as set forth in section 26lb.7 of the Board’s Rules Regarding Public Observation of Meetings, at the Board’s offices at 20th Street and C Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. The following items of official Board business are tentatively scheduled to be considered at that meeting.
Meeting Date: Monday, April 11, 2016
Matter(s) Considered 1. Review and determination by the Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates to be charged by the Federal Reserve Banks. A final announcement of matters considered under expedited procedures will be available in the Board’s Freedom of Information and Public Affairs Offices and on the Board’s Web site following the closed meeting.
…Dated: April 7, 2016
The promised update after the meeting merely added,
Effective April 11, 2016, the meeting was closed to public observation by Order of the Board of Governors 1 because the matters fall under exemption(s) 9(A)(i) of the Government in the Sunshine Act (5 U.S.C. Section 552b(c)), and it was determined that the public interest did not require opening the meeting.
One day later, the Fed put out an announcement of another special meeting to be held on Tuesday, after the suddenly scheduled meeting with the president:
Advanced Notice of a Meeting under Expedited Procedures
It is anticipated that the closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, will be held under expedited procedures, as set forth in section 26lb.7 of the Board’s Rules Regarding Public Observation of Meetings, at the Board’s offices at 20th Street and C Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. The following items of official Board business are tentatively scheduled to be considered at that meeting.
Meeting Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Matter(s) Considered 1. Bank Supervisory Matter A final announcement of matters considered under expedited procedures will be available in the Board’s Freedom of Information and Public Affairs Offices and on the Board’s Web site following the closed meeting.
…Dated: April 8, 2016
O.K. Two expedited, closed meetings in a row with a meeting with the president and vice president in between that is so rare it required special White House defense as to what would not be happening in the meeting.
The first meeting was to talk about setting interest rates, which the FOMC will be meeting to consider again later this month, having just postponed their scheduled increase in March. The second meeting is more interesting. If you have served on board or worked with boards that go into closed session, you know they always use the most generic terminology possible when announcing the meeting for sharing in minutes what happened in the meeting.
The fact that it is a bank supervisory matter makes it sound like a particular concern, not a discussion about supervisory policy. Something is the matter somewhere that requires an immediate meeting right after another immediate meeting … behind closed doors. That something regards bank supervision. Board hold closed meetings when they have to talk about specific institutions or individuals with details that they don’t want to go public. This all comes very close to sounding like some bank somewhere is in trouble, and the trouble is big enough to call a special meeting of the very august board of governors right after they just had a special meeting, and if you know these kinds of guys, they don’t like wasting their time in excessive meetings.
Naturally, I am as curious as you probably are about why so many last-minute meetings behind closed doors and with the president and vice president at a time when all central bank heads will be meeting with finance ministers in Washington, D.C. So, I cast about for some possible related stories as to what could be the matter, and I found several very hot ones going on this same week.
The president’s meeting with the Fed and the Fed’s meetings with the Fed were all called right after the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank revised the revisions of its previous revisements to say the US economy now looks like it will report in for the first quarter at 0.1% growth.
It seems I cannot write fast enough to keep up with the Federal Reserve’s downward revisions of anticipated GDP growth for the first quarter of 2016. No sooner did I click “publish” on my last article where I noted they have just revised their estimates of GDP down to a 0.4% annualized growth rate than I read an article stating they had revised it again down to 0.1%!
Isn’t this where I said this quarter was going? That is within a rounding error of going negative and is less their margin of error for their data. It was only back in February that the Fed anticipated a cruising speed of 2% growth for GDP in the first quarter. They have revised that number down every week.
Of course, the fact that the Fed and the President called an unscheduled, closed-door meetings to include the VP does not mean there is any connection between the events, and I certainly am not concluding even for myself that there is something dire happening here … but stay with me. There is more to perk the ears.
That’s no small potatoes for a coincidence in timing. What if the numbers to be reported are even worse than has been anticipated, and the Fed is seeing bank trouble in some of those numbers and the President has received advanced information about some of those numbers. All speculation on my part, of course. What isn’t speculation on my part is that Wall Street is already predicting that this week’s quarterly bank reports are going to look something like the start of the Great Recession.
Analysts say it has been the worst start to the year since the financial crisis in 2007-2008 and expect poor first-quarter results when reporting begins this week…. Analysts forecast a 20 percent decline on average in earnings from the six biggest U.S. banks, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. Some banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), are expected to report the worst results in over ten years. (Reuters)
Whoa! That means, for Goldman, even worse than any time just prior to or during the Great Recession. When you consider how bad the last decade has been, being worse than that is pretty bad. Moreover, the timing is considered unusually nasty:
This spells trouble for the financial sector more broadly, since banks typically generate at least a third of their annual revenue during the first three months of the year…. Bank executives have already warned investors to expect major declines…. Citigroup Inc (C.N) CFO John Gerspach said to expect trading revenue more broadly to drop 15 percent versus the first quarter of last year. JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N) Daniel Pinto said to expect a 25 percent decline in investment banking. Several bank executives have warned about declining quality of energy sector loans.
“The first quarter is going to be ugly and we don’t think that necessarily gets recovered in the back half of the year,” said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of First American Trust, which owns shares of Citigroup, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Goldman. “There are a lot of challenges ahead.”
Is anyone starting to feel a little financial crisis deja vù? Last time it was declining housing-sector loans. This time, as I’ve been saying for the last few months we would soon see, it’s declining energy-sector loans. Looks like that is ready to materialize.
This week and next is the big-bank reporting season. So, we should know right away if this is the next leg down in the Epocalypse. Something that big would certainly merit a flash meeting with the president and vice president, multiple meetings of the board of directors, and a G-20 financial summit in Washington along with meetings with the IMF and World Bank.
Not saying that’s what it is. Just sniffing out the kinds of stories that could be related to all these meetings, some planned earlier, others suddenly and somewhat secretively called.
Five and a half years ago, I wrote an article here that mentioned how the Great Depression took its second and deepest plunge in 1931 because of the failure of a private Austrian bank named Credit Anstalt.
In May 1931, a Viennese bank named Credit-Anstalt failed. Founded by the famous Rothschild banking family in 1855, Credit-Anstalt was one of the most important financial institutions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and its failure came as a shock because it was considered impregnable…. The fall of Credit-Anstalt—and the dominoes it helped topple across Continental Europe and the confidence it shredded as far away as the U.S.—wasn’t just the failure of a bank: It was a failure of civilization.
Now, as I’ve been writing about the start of what I believe will be the the second and worst dip of the Great Recession, another Austrian bank is crumbling.
Austria created Heta Asset Resolution AG when it nationalized all the bad loans of Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International five years ago to rescue the bank and depositors by creating a “bad bank” to contain the problems. Hypo’s troubles began, much as Credit Anstalt’s had before it, when it was required to adjust its books to reflect the true value of its collateral assets after the value of real estate in southeastern Europe collapsed. Everything fell apart upon the realization of how little it was actually worth.
After pouring through 5.5 billion euros of taxpayer money to no avail and discovering a 7.6-billion-euro hole in its balance sheet still remained to be filled, Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling ended support in March 2015. Surprise, surprise, the bad bank created by the government to put a fence around all the bad debts of the original bad bank became nothing but a black hole of debt, swallowing all money poured into it with nothing to show for the effort. That didn’t stop Schelling from claiming the nationalized bank was in good health in order to put a good face on things as leaders are inclined to do when dealing with really bad stuff in order to protect the public from a scare.
Yesterday, under the first application of Europe’s new forced “bail in” procedures, Austria seized the money of depositors to pay the bank’s debts, leaving many citizens broke. Sighs. This is apparently what happens if your money is still locked up in a bank with “good health.” But the good news is, the wealthiest were saved.
A year ago, the government had set,
a moratorium on repayment of principal and capital lasts until May 31, 2016, giving the FMA time to work out a detailed plan to ensure equal treatment of all creditors. (Zero Hedge)
But what about the depositors? Well, this past Sunday afternoon we got to find out.
In a move which could trigger a collapse of European banks, Austria “Bailed-in” a failed bank; seizing depositor money to pay bank debts, leaving citizens broke. This could be the actual start of a complete systemic banking collapse in Europe as panicked citizens, seeing their fellow depositors wiped out in one fell swoop, start pulling their money out of the banking system. This has “DISASTER” written all over it. (SuperStation95)
It does, indeed, sound a tad bit like Credit Anstalt, and the wider threat is that it gives a clear picture to all bank depositors in Europe of what Europe’s new bail-ins look like when they happen:
Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG.
The highlights from the announcement…
a 100% bail-in for all subordinated liabilities,
a 53.98% bail-in, resulting in a 46.02% quota, for all eligible preferential liabilities,
the cancellation of all interest payments from 01.03.2015, when HETA was placed into resolution pursuant to BaSAG,
as well as a harmonisation of the maturities of all eligible liabilities to 31.12.2023.
Only after 2023 will any remaining assets be distributed to the depositors. That’s if any remain. Europe’s new rules were intended to make sure that depositors did not take all the loss; but, as it turns out, they remain the last to be paid once Europe puts a fence around a failing bank. That’s because the big-money creditors of the bank complained. They’re still holding out for ninety-two cents on the euro, so that doesn’t bode well for anything being left for the smaller depositors, whose money will, in the very least, be kept in a lockbox for seven years. First money will be taken from all the senior depositors and then from the little guys. Those who are stockholders are considered the “preferred creditors.” Depositors are “subordinated creditors.” The above highlights say the stockholders will get 46 cents on the euro, but they are to receive it in the form of stock in the failed bad bank, and the regular depositors will get nothing.
Given that such an agreement happened on Sunday afternoon, and that central banks and regulatory bodies usually talk with other national bodies that may be affected, I have to wonder if the thought of how Europe might react on Monday had anything to do with Monday’s sudden meetings of the Fed.
Five hours after the above story broke, Italy’s minister of finance called an emergency meeting of Italian bankers to engage “last resort” measures for dealing with 360-billion euros of bad loans in banks that have only 50 billion in capital.
From: http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/what-is-happening-to-banks/
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