Category Archives: Banking

Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke can’t get a re-fi

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Ben BernankeAnd likely you can’t either.

As a reminder, Ben Bernanke is a former two-term Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He, like many others today, made an astounding discovery:

He couldn’t qualify for a mortgage re-fi.

From TheHill.com:

Why you and Ben Bernanke can’t get a mortgage

by Andre F. Shashaty

If you are one of the millions of Americans with a good household income and reasonably good credit who cannot get a mortgage to buy a home, I have bad news:  The lawyers, lobbyists and politicians in Washington, DC have no intention of making a mortgage loan available to you or even Ben Bernanke anytime soon. The former Fed Chair recently said he got turned down in an attempt to refinance his mortgage.

Don’t blame the bankers, though.  It is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

Revisit that: it is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

It’s been exactly six years since former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan described the housing crisis and the collapse of the mortgage finance systems as a “once in a century credit tsunami.”

While the storm may have passed, the damage remains.

After being taken over by the federal government, the American mortgage finance system still hasn’t been fixed, and it may not be for several more years.    

No one argues that mortgage lenders should be left to their own devices. But respected leaders are now saying that Washington has swung from reckless disregard of what lenders were doing to extreme micromanagement of the lending process. 

Micromanagement.  Yeah.  That always works.

Note to Ben Bernanke: boo-fucking-hoo, asshole.

Get in line.

BZ

 

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PAYING the bank to keep your money there: negative interest rates

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Negative Inttest RatesThis likely slided below your own radar screen — except that of BZ’s — but the European Central Bank recently acted in an amazing fashion.  It cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%.

That is what is called a “negative interest rate.”

The point of the move is to prompt banks in the ECB to disseminate more loans to businesses and individuals.  To try to create a current flow, if you will.  Some people have an entirely different take on the ECB move: it’s outright desperation due to general failing European economic recovery.

Some people say a move like this will only serve to further unemployment and cause inflation, due to unintended circumstances.

Neil Irwin of the New York Times recently wrote in his June 4th article:

Europe Gets Negative Interest Rates. What Does That Even Mean?

First there was ZIRP. Now get ready for NIRP.

The first is “zero interest-rate policy,” the strategy for trying to stimulate economic growth that the United States has undertaken for the last five and a half years (and the Bank of Japan much longer than that). The second is “negative interest rate policy.” And that’s what the European Central Bank put in place on Thursday for the 18 nations that use the euro currency.

Irwin provides an example of a negative interest rate:

When a bank pays a 1 percent interest rate, it’s clear what happens: If you deposit your money at the bank, it will pay you a penny each year for every dollar you deposited. When the interest rate is negative, the money goes the other direction.

Negative interest rates.

Coming soon to a bank near you?

BZ

 

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Buried in the news: “Tenth death in six weeks in the global financial services sector”

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Financial Deaths 2014At first glance, I saw the following article from the UKDailyMail.com:

American Bitcoin exchange CEO found dead in her Singapore home after suspected suicide at age 28

The American CEO of an exchange for the troubled bitcoin digital currency has been found dead after a suspected suicide at her home in Singapore.

1390550_10152396648239782_1189719612_n.jpgWisconsin native, Autumn Radtke, 28, was discovered inside her apartment on February 28 and officials in the South East Asian city state are now waiting for toxicology test results to determine the exact cause of death.

Now, anyone with a modicum of brain tissue in their wheelhouse knows that having anything to do with “Bitcoins” was akin to expecting wealth from buying a pet rock.  Only a hyrax or a paramecium bet on that losing proposition — to the tune of “$400 million dollars gone missing” or “hackers robbed $600K.”

So let’s go back to February 26th, as documented again in the UKDailyMail.com:

‘Where’s our money?’: Bitcoin investor may have lost £200,000 in £225million ‘virtual bank job’ on currency exchange as chief executive breaks his silence

A Bitcoin investor fears he has lost nearly £200,000 after an apparent £225million ‘virtual bank job’ on a leading currency exchange.

Kolin Burges, 40, believes that his money was stolen from the Tokyo-based Mt Gox exchange which has shut down its website after 744,000 Bitcoins were reportedly stolen.

The crisis has shaken confidence in the virtual currency which has seen its value plummet from an all-time high of nearly £700 in December to nearer £300 today.

And there you go: “virtual currency” gets you virtual value.  Virtually.  Not completely, but almost.  And “almost” doesn’t quite make it in the Land of Cash.  When you invest in air, sometimes all you get back is air.

Are you starting to recognize a pattern here yet?  And are you beginning to realize that someone, or a series of someones, may not have immensely enjoyed investing in air?

I think even ol’ clotted, addled and intemperate BZ can do the math on this one.

But here’s the part few seem to have noticed from the first article: Radtke’s “passing” was the “tenth death in six weeks in the global financial services sector.”  Please see the graphic at the top of this post.

Really?

And this from PoliticalBlindspot.com on February 11th:

Now FIFTH Banker In Two Weeks Found Dead, Ruled ‘Suicide’ by Nail Gun

“Suicide by nail gun.”  Wowzer.  I can’t wait to read this one.

Last week we reported on the bizarre deaths of four major international bankers within less than a week. Now a fifth has joined them, and police are once again ruling it a suicide. Richard Talley, 57, the founder and CEO of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, has reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head – multiple times – with a nail gun.

Nail GunThat’s right, Talley was said by coroners to have shot himself in the head with a nail gun, even after the first nails had entered his brain.

Talley joins four other top officials from JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and the Federal Reserve have all turned up dead over the course of the past two weeks.

Anyone besides me thinking that “suicide by nail gun” might be just a hair bit suspicious?

Makes me think of:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.

Do, don’t you want me to love you
I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you

It’s all coming down fast.  I suspect a disturbance in The Force.

And I stand reassured that each and every one of these deaths is simply a coincidental suicide.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  These are not the bankers you’re looking for.

BZ

 

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