Tag Archives | Banks

Bank Hackers Deny Being Iranian Agents

By on November 29, 2012 in News 1

In short, to the U.S. government, anything anomalous is an Iranian conspiracy. Wired writes:

A slew of American officials have blamed Iran for attacks on the servers of Bank of America, Well Fargo, HSBC, and other western banks. But the hackers taking credit for the sophisticated distributed denial-of-service strikes say that’s all wrong; they claim they hit the financial institutions because they were pissed off about “The Innocence of Muslims,” the infamous viral video making fun of the Prophet Muhammad. Tehran didn’t have a thing to do with it.

“We are not dependent on any government. We merely wanted to protest against the insulting movie,” people claiming to be part of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters [said].

Some security researchers believed the attacks to be so sophisticated, they could’ve only been pulled off with government help. ”This isn’t consistent with what hacktivists are capable of,” Michael Smith, a security specialist at Akamai, said in September.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

Global Mega-Bank Co-Opts Occupy Movement In New Ad Campaign

By on November 28, 2012 in News 5

The Denmark-based multinational Danske Bank is one of the world’s largest, with assets worth about $600 billion. Its new marketing campaign, fascinating in much the same fashion as a train wreck, is based around the slogans “Occupy” and “A New Normal”:

The strategy is intended to restore trust in the Bank and ensure that we live up to our new vision of being “Recognised as the most trusted financial partner.” In order to reach that objective, we must set new standards for banking operations.

Continue Reading · 5

Shadow Banking Industry Now Worth $76 Trillion

By on November 19, 2012 in News 1

Will unregulated, debt-based financial products destroy the world? Bloomberg reports that the funneling of capital into instruments of so-called “shadow banking” continues to balloon to unimaginably large proportions:

The shadow banking industry has grown to about $67 trillion, leading global regulators to seek more oversight of financial transactions that fall outside traditional oversight. The Financial Stability Board, a global financial policy group comprised of regulators and central bankers, found that shadow banking grew by $41 trillion between 2002 and 2011.

The size of the shadow banking system, which includes the activities of money market funds, monoline insurers and off-balance sheet investment vehicles, “can create systemic risks” and “amplify market reactions when market liquidity is scarce,” the FSB said.

Supervisors consider shadow banking activities to be those that allow banks to carry out business off balance sheets, as well as those which allow investors to bypass lenders and the functions they traditionally fulfill on the markets.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

Banks Forcing Legal Pot Growers to Run Cash-Only Businesses

By on November 16, 2012 in News 15

Picture: Joshua Sandoval (CC)

Even if you’re legally selling marijuana according to the laws of your state, the drug’s federal status may keep banks from doing business with you. Seems like the feds are shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the potential of marijuana as a taxable revenue, but what else is new?

Via NPR:

Voters in Washington and Colorado just approved measures legalizing marijuana for recreational use. But businesses that want to sell marijuana in those states will face a problem: No bank wants to do business with them.

I called several banks in Washington. I called a local credit union, a tiny bank in the San Juan islands. Everybody said basically the same thing. Even if selling marijuana is legal under state law, it’s still illegal under federal law. And banks and credit unions worry that this could get them in trouble.

So people who want to go into the marijuana business — who want to legally grow, distribute, sell marijuana in the state — are going to have to operate, basically, like drug dealers.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 15

Greek Magazine Editor Arrested After Publishing List Of Swiss Bank Accounts

By on November 2, 2012 in News 11

The right to free speech trumped by the right of the powerful to keep their Swiss bank accounts a secret, the New York Times reports:

The Greek police arrested and then quickly released the owner and editor of a respected investigative magazine on Sunday morning hours after he published a list of more than 2,000 Greeks who were said to have accounts at a bank in Switzerland, throwing new controversy into a scandal over whether the government is actively pursuing suspected tax cheats.

Mr. Vaxevanis posted a message to his Twitter account early Sunday saying that 15 officers had surrounded the home of a friend with whom he had been staying “like Greek storm troopers in German uniforms.” The Greek news media reported that the charges concerned the violation of the privacy of those on the list.

Mr. Vaxevanis’s arrest raises questions about freedom of the press in a country that frequently reminds its European Union partners that it is the birthplace of democracy.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 11

What The Bankers Did Next

By on October 25, 2012 in News 2

The U.K.-based Spinwatch has created an eight-minute film on the “private conversations” between government and the banking industry, and the industry’s use of lobbying and public relations to attempt to shape consensus reality in the wake of the financial crisis:

‘What The Bankers Did Next…’ takes a look at the government’s close relationship with the finance industry, some of the key players involved, and their efforts to manage public opinion and shut down debate.

Continue Reading · 2

Woman Sues 12 Of The World’s Largest Banks Over Libor Rate Manipulation

By on October 21, 2012 in News 1

In short, the pillars of finance are accused of illegally boosting Libor at the start of each month in order to inflate the interest rates (based on Libor and calculated at the beginning of the month) paid by as many as 100,000 mortgage holders, in what would seem to be the bilking of a pretty immense sum of money, CNBC reports:

A pensioner whose home was repossessed is taking on some of the world’s leading banks in the first known class-action lawsuit claiming that alleged Libor manipulation made mortgage repayments for thousands of Americans more expensive than they should have been. The subprime mortgages of Annie Bell Adams and her four co-lead plaintiffs were securitised into Libor-based collateralised debt obligations and sold by banks to investors.

The class action, filed in New York, alleges that traders at 12 of the biggest banks in Europe and North America – including Barclays, Bank of America and UBS – were incentivised to manipulate the London interbank offered rate to a higher rate on certain dates on which adjustable mortgage interest rates were reset.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

The Silver Manipulation Conspiracy That Never Was

By on August 10, 2012 in News 2

Remember back in 2010 when Alex Jones and Max Keiser were trying to persuade people to wipe out JP Morgan by buying silver? And then in 2011 the New York Times got in on the act, describing a putative conspiracy by JPM and HSBC to manipulate the price of silver. Well nothing much has happened to develop the theory despite the megabank doing its best to blow itself up by allowing the London Whale’s massively rogue trading. Kevin McElroy of ETF Daily News says it was all baloney anyway:

I promised I would stay on top of the “silver manipulation” story – and there’s another wrinkle in this story to share. The Financial Times reported yesterday that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC: the federal government’s regulatory body in charge of U.S. commodities trading) will drop its investigation into silver futures manipulation.

Before I get into it, you might recall that the specter of the precious metals conspiracy theory goes back far beyond this latest story, and further back even than the Hunt brothers’ infamous plot to corner the market on silver in the early 1980s – which really happened, by the way.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 2

The 12 Most Infamous Economic Conspiracy Theories

By on August 7, 2012 in News 9

The digital rag Business Insider (run by Henry Blodget, the unabashed Wall Street Internet booster) goes for more SEO-friendly conspiracy bashing:

The economy has sparked a wide variety of truly bizarre conspiracy theories. Despite the fact that they have no basis in truth, people continue to believe them with almost religious zeal.

The internet has given them a wider forum and audience, and has proved to be fertile ground for these ideas to spread.

These are the myths, conspiracy theories, and flat out falsehoods that just won’t die.

The Federal Reserve is a private corporation run for the profit of its shareholder banks.

Origin: This one’s been kicking around almost since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. It’s the subject of a three hour documentary called “The Money Masters”.
The reality: Nationally chartered banks do hold stock in their regional Federal Reserve Banks, and receive a small portion (6 percent of their stock) of the profits of their regional banks, which is presumably the origin of this theory.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 9