Consumer protection

Amid the usual meandering propaganda, Tim Geithner finally catches up to Zero Hedge from February 2010: "The three largest U.S. banks account for 32 percent of total banking assets in the United States, in comparison to 46 percent for the three largest in Japan, 58 percent in Canada, 63 percent in the UK, 65 percent in France, 70 percent in Germany, 71 percent in Italy, and 76 percent in Switzerland. And total banking assets are 461 percent of GDP in the UK, 178 percent in Germany, and 820 percent in Switzerland." Supposedly this is intended to indicate just how much less concentrated the US banking system is compared to other nations: "Some argue that the U.S. financial system is too concentrated, which could promote systemic risks.  But the U.S. banking system today is less concentrated than that of any other major economy.  And
total banking assets in the United States today are only about the size
of U.S. GDP – much lower than in other developed economies." So just because the entire system is broken beyond repair, it makes sense to tout that the US is broken just a little bit less than everyone else? Also, where is the mention of the fact that the bulk of these balance sheets are chock full of toxic US securitized detritus and that without the US selling its worthless crap around the world, we would not be in the predicament we are in now. In the meantime, here is what Zero Hedge presented in February of last year...

While the dominant topic of conversation when discussing margin hikes (or reductions) usually reverts to silver, ES (stocks) and TEN (bonds), what everyone so far is ignoring is the far more critical topic of real margin risk, in the form of roughly $600 trillion in OTC derivatives. The issue is that while the silver market (for example) is tiny by comparison, it is easy to be pushed around, and thus exchanges can easily represent the illusion that they are in control of counterparty risk (after all, that was the whole point of the recent CME essay on why they hiked silver margins 5 times in a row). Nothing could be further from the truth: where exchanges are truly at risk is when it comes to mitigating the threat of counterparty default for participants in a market that is millions of times bigger than the silver market: the interest rate and credit default swap markets. As part of Dodd-Frank, by the end of 2012, all standardised over-the-counter derivatives will have to be cleared through central counterparties. Yet currently, central clearing covers about half of $400 trillion in
interest rate swaps, 20-30 percent of the $2.5 trillion
in commodities derivatives, and about 10 percent of $30 trillion in
credit default swaps. In other words, over the next year and a half exchanges need to onboard over $200 trillion notional in various products, and in doing so, counterparites, better known as the G14 (or Group of 14 dealers that dominate derivatives trading including Bank of America-Merrill Lynch,
Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche
Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBS,
Societe Generale, UBS and Wells Fargo Bank) will soon need to post billions in initial margin, and as a brand new BIS report indicates, will likely need significant extra cash to be in compliance with regulatory requirements. Not only that, but once trading on an exchange, the G14 "could face a cash shortfall in very volatile markets when daily margins are increased, triggering demands for several billions of dollars to be paid within a day." Per the BIS "These margin calls could represent as much as 13 percent of a G14 dealer's current holdings of cash and cash equivalents in the case of interest rate swaps." Below we summarize the key findings of a just released discussion by the BIS on the "Expansion of central clearing" and also present a parallel report just released by BNY ConvergEx' Nicholas Colas who independetly has been having "bad dreams" about the possibility of what the transfer to an exchange would mean in terms of collateral posting (read bank cash payouts) and overall market stability, and why a multi-trillion margin call could result in the biggest buying spree in US Treasurys... Ever. 

Update: Hearing has been delayed until 3 pm.

While we await to find and bring to our readers the channel that will carry today's hearing between the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of "Federal Reserve Lending Disclosure: FOIA, Dodd-Frank, and the Data Dump" chaired by Ron Paul and Fed and NY Fed General Counsels, Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., and Scott G. Alvarez, below we present their prepared testimony that was just released by the New York Fed. The key section from the testimony: "We remain concerned that a more rapid release of information about borrowers accessing the discount window and emergency lending facilities could impair the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide the liquidity needed to ensure the smooth working of the financial system. If institutions believe that publication of their use of Federal Reserve lending facilities will impair public confidence in the institution, then institutions may choose not to participate in these facilities. Experience has shown that banks’ unwillingness to use the discount window can result in more volatile short-term interest rates and reduced financial market liquidity that, in turn, can contribute to declining asset prices and reduced lending to consumers and small businesses." Luckily, courtesy of $1.6 trillion in excess reserves, and the stigma now associated with Discount Window borrowings, for everyone except for Dexia, we doubt the Fed will ever have to worry about the discount window before the banking kleptoracy blows itself up once again.

MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, sued over Michigan foreclosures for over $100 million in actual damages on multiple counts, including fraud and wrongful foreclosure, as well as more than $300 million in punitive damages...

What kind of back-assward world do we live in when the FED has to propose a rule like this?

Since most of us only deal with mortgage loan origination fees when we buy a home or refinance a mortgage, the average citizen will have a tough time sorting out the often-arcane issues at stake. But the bottom line is straightforward: the already-limited mortgage market is about to become more limited, as small mortgage brokers are being shoved out of business. Call it “unintended consequences” or a cloaked plan to channel more of the mortgage business to the “too big to fail” big banks, but regardless of the motivations, the rules end up limiting consumer choice and making it harder for home buyers to get a loan. That's bad for housing in two ways: limited competition drives costs up, and marginal buyers will find nobody wants their business because it's simply not worth the compensation allowed by the Fed's new rules.

Following the clusterflock of black swans that has hit world markets in the past month, the Fed has realized it needs to act quick to distribute money to undercapitalized bank shareholders ahead of the upcoming bank sector bail out, which will naturally be funded by taxpayers all over again. According to the Fed, the 19 worst banks in America (in other words those that are allowed to issue dividends) are: Ally Financial Inc. (no, really, f/k/a GMAC is healthy), American Express Company, Bank of America Corporation, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, BB&T Corporation, Capital One Financial Corporation, Citigroup Inc., Fifth Third Bancorp, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Keycorp, MetLife, Inc., Morgan Stanley, The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., Regions Financial Corporation, State Street Corporation, SunTrust Banks, Inc., U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo & Company. The surge in share prices of the mentioned banks confirms that this is nothing but the latest round of Fed-endorsed taxpayer rape, which nobody can do anything against as the Fed is an "unsupervised" entity, DC is owned by Wall Street, and the peasantry is downloading porn on their iPad.

UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS CENTRAL DIVISION | CitiMortgage may not rely on the recorded assignment of the plaintiff’s
mortgage from MERS because it was never the holder of the note, and therefore lacked the right to assign it...

Philly Fed's Plosser once again releases a slam dunk speech which is the most vocal critique of Ben Bernanke's interpretation of the freedoms afforded to him by monetary policy to date. "How do you use monetary policy to burst a bubble in Las Vegas real estate, where house prices were appreciating at a 45 percent annual rate by the end of 2004, without damaging the Detroit market, where prices were increasing at less than a 3 percent annual rate? Because monetary policy is such a blunt instrument, asking monetary policy to do what it cannot do, such as seeking to deliberately influence the evolution of asset prices, risks creating more instability, not less. Moreover, the moral hazard created by the belief that the central bank would intervene if prices of a certain class of assets became “misaligned” might, in fact, cause more inefficient pricing and more instability, not less...monetary policy cannot reverse the sharp decline in house prices when the economy has significantly over-invested in housing" And more: "I have advocated the elimination of Section 13(3) of the
Federal Reserve Act, which allowed the Fed to lend directly to
“corporations, partnerships and individuals” under “unusual and exigent
circumstances.”" Plosser's conclusion is spot on, and means that Congress should immediately enact a limit on the Chairman's recently self-appointed 3rd mandate, which is to not only reflate the biggest asset bubble in history, but to get the Russell 2000 to 20,000: " I too am concerned that we are in the
process of assigning to monetary policy goals that it cannot hope to
achieve. Monetary policy is not going to be able to speed up the
adjustments in labor markets or prevent asset bubbles, and attempts to
do so may create more instability, not less. Nor should monetary policy
be asked to perform credit allocation in support of particular sectors
or firms. Expecting too much of monetary policy will undermine its
ability to achieve the one thing that it is well-designed to do:
ensuring long-term price stability."

Gold and silver are now down hard over the past two days and the reason may have something to do with the fact that the CFTC utterly caved to JPM in their long-awaited decision on position limits in a 4-1 vote. While position limits will eventually be set, maybe, someday, the course of action taken by the CFTC grandfathers in JPM's (and HSBC, et al) current outlandish positions. For anybody like JPM that has no intent of taking physical delivery, they are prevented from accumulating a position that is 125% of the total deliverable supply. What sort of a limit is that?? That's like trying to limit the damage from auto accidents by limiting freeway speeds to 'no more than' 175 mph. Also, anybody who might want to actually buy the physical is limited to 25%, so any potential Hunt Bros. need not apply. The outer limits of this game have been exclusively reserved for speculators and manipulators. That's not even remotely the outcome I was hoping for. This 'ruling' tantamount to saying "carry on!"

Instead of wasting time with Byron Wien's Top 10 "predictions for 2011" we have decided to skip this latest and greatest worthless charade in prognostication, and instead we believe that presenting the list of what the man whose retirement age has come and gone, thought would happen in the past year, is a great example of why all these so called institutional Wall Street experts are nothing but two bit hacks. As may be expected, somehow Wien got exactly zero out of ten correct! The man is the contrarian indicator on Wall Street. Also keep in mind: it takes a lot of skill to be this bad.

The man who probably more so than anyone else can be singled out as the person (behind the scenes) responsible for the destruction of America, first with his successful drubbing of every vestige of regulation, then his isolation of Brooksley Born and her all too prescient concerns on structured products and derivatives, and finally, with carrying over his debilitating management practices from Harvard over to the US in general for the past two years, just had his farewell speech, which in typical fashion can be summarized as follows: "I am smarter than you peasants, go to hell." For a more official summary of his valedictory, here is WaPo's Dana Milbank: "Summers's final performance was very much in character. He arrived 10
minutes late for the speech, his suit jacket open, his shirt pulling
tightly at the buttons, his suitpants stained on one of the knees. His
hair showed signs of bedhead, but it could have been mussed by Summers
during one of his morning meetings. He jiggled his legs while listening
to the introduction by EPI President Larry Mishel, who had some edgy
words for his guest. Although both men grew up in Philly, Mishel said,
"when he moved to Boston, he adopted the Boston Red Sox as his baseball
team. Me? I'm still a fan of the Fightin' Phils." Summers rushed to rebut this point - by insulting the home team. "If I
lived in Washington, I might still be a Phillies fan, too." There were
groans in the audience." And of course, it is not like it was Summers fault for doing anything to bring unemployment down even as total US debt under his watch increased by over $2 trillion: "On Monday morning, he went to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal
think tank, to give his "perspectives on the past two years." But in his
remarks, he spoke of not a single wrong decision he made." So now that the disastrous, and hopefully final, reign of this distant Tatooine descendant is over, here are the three finalist to fill his extra wide chair, two of whom promise to do absolutely nothing to break Wall Street's stranglehold over the White House, and thus increase the odds for a widespread populist mutiny with each passing day.

After we reported a week ago that JPMorgan was trying to corner the copper market, many noted this was not surprising, considering the bank's comparable approach in manipulating various other precious metal markets. Naturally, we extrapolated that the main reason why the CFTC continues to refuse to delay implementation of position limits is precisely due to the JP Morgan's need to control commodity pricing precisely due to such manipulative trading practices: "As for the CFTC, we now know why they are so intent on delaying the size limit discussion:
after all, any regulation will be forward looking - better let JPM
accumulate all commodities it can and distribute these via hidden
channels to affiliated subs before the ever so busy Gary Gensler corrupt
cronies decide to raise their finger on what is increasingly an ever
more blatant market manipulation scheme. At least in this case, JPM will
push the price higher unlike what it is doing courtesy of its gold and
silver manipulation. However, the PM market (especially Asian accounts)
will soon make sure Blythe Masters is looking for a job within 3 months
as we predicted a few weeks ago." The only problem with this story is that so far, is that unlike copper, JP Morgan's now legendary paper short in the silver market, long taken for granted by the "less than in mainstream" community, has been persistently ignored by the broader media due to the a lack of concrete evidence. Hopefully that will now change: courtesy of a speech delivered by none other than the CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton, who continues to expose the CFTC and the banker cartel's illegal market manipulation practices, we now have proof that "one trader held over 40 percent of the silver market." As this trader is either JP Morgan directly, or various Blythe Masters proxies, we can only hope that finally the broader outcry against JPM's ongoing attempt to suppress precious metal prices (insert Mike Krieger/Max Keiser "Crush JP Morgan" campaign here) will force the bank to finally unwind its shorts. And if not, perhaps the market speculators will do it for them: as of Friday, the SLV ETF held an absolute record 10,941 tonnes of silver, an increase of 163 tonnes for the week.

...Going through it right now

S&P has released its first official estimate of what it believes the cost of Donk will be on the Too Vampiric To Fail. In a nutshell, the range of various costs could be as high as $22 billion, due to a drop in debit fees, lower derivative income, FDIC DIF replenishment, prop trading, and new compliance expenses. Additionally S&P expects another $85 billion in additional required Tier 1 Capital (which is a joke compared to its Tangible Common cousin). One thing is certain: just as Grayson yesterday said that nobody has any idea about what the charges associated with foreclosure and MERS-gate, and all are merely guessing, the same thing can be said of S&P. It is without doubt that the final outcome of Donk will either cost nothing or infinitely more. Yet for some reason this report made the headlines, so we present it for those 3 readers who actually care what S&P has to say.