Wells Fargo

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 2: Law-Abiding Taxpayers Treated As Criminals





Law-abiding taxpayers are treated like criminals while the criminal class of financiers and State apparatchiks are free to loot and pillage muppets and taxpayers alike. It's actually very simple: whatever the state or Federal government does to you, that's legal. Whatever action you take to protect your rights is illegal. In case you have any doubts about where our "leadership" is taking us, please review these Assorted quotes by Fascists or about Fascism.

 
4closureFraud's picture

Order Granting Oakland County’s Motion for Summary Judgment Against Fannie/Freddie FHFA RE Transfer Taxes on Deeds





In reaching its conclusion, the Court reviewed over eighty years of Supreme Court case law holding that excise taxes have historically been permitted, even when tax on the property has been forbidden.

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: The Predatory State of California, Part 2





Everyone who believes the government is "here to help disadvantaged people" needs to wake up and ask what kind of government we have when due process has been replaced with "legal" looting. R.T. reported the income in question on his 2006 Federal and Arizona tax return. Wouldn't common sense, not to mention common law, suggest that the state of California should be required to ask the citizen who now resided in another state if the income in question had been reported in that state? How about notifying the citizen of the state's claim and his/her rights to present facts relating to the state's claim? There was no due process. How can this be legal in a nation that is nominally governed by rule of law? First the state steals the $1,343 and authorizes its parasitic predatory bag-"person" Wells Fargo Bank to steal another $100 for handling the state's theft. A week or two later the citizen is notified of the theft as a fait accompli. Now the onus is on the law-abiding citizen to attempt to reclaim his own money from a distant, all-powerful Kafkaesque state agency. How can this be legal in a nation supposedly operating under rule of law? Let's be very clear about what happens here in America on a daily basis...

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Welcome To The Predatory State of California--Even If You Don't Live There





Every once in a while an event crystallizes the stark reality behind the lacy curtain of propaganda and artifice. Here is one such event. Correspondent R.T. is a retired accountant who has resided in Arizona since 2001. Prior to 2001, he resided in California. On March 14, he received a letter from the California Franchise Tax Board (the agency that collects income taxes) claiming that he owed $1,343 for the tax year 2006. This was the first notification he'd ever received of this claim. This was an interesting claim given that R.T.:

  • Did not reside in California in 2006
  • Did not file a State income tax return in California in 2006
  • Did not have any outstanding tax issues with California in 2006
  • Did no business in California in 2006
  • Owned no property in California in 2006

 

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Asleep At The Wheel





Americans have an illogical love affair with their vehicles. There are 209 million licensed drivers in the U.S. and 260 million vehicles. The U.S. has a higher number of motor vehicles per capita than every country in the world at 845 per 1,000 people. Germany has 540; Japan has 593; Britain has 525; and China has 37. The population of the United States has risen from 203 million in 1970 to 311 million today, an increase of 108 million in 42 years. Over this same time frame, the number of motor vehicles on our crumbling highways has grown by 150 million. This might explain why a country that has 4.5% of the world’s population consumes 22% of the world’s daily oil supply. This might also further explain the Iraq War, the Afghanistan occupation, the Libyan “intervention”, and the coming war with Iran. Automobiles have been a vital component in the financial Ponzi scheme that has passed for our economic system over the last thirty years. For most of the past thirty years annual vehicle sales have ranged between 15 million and 20 million, with only occasional drops below that level during recessions. They actually surged during the 2001-2002 recession as Americans dutifully obeyed their moron President and bought millions of monster SUVs, Hummers, and Silverado pickups with 0% financing from GM to defeat terrorism. Alan Greenspan provided the fuel, with ridiculously low interest rates. The Madison Avenue media maggots provided the transmission fluid by convincing millions of willfully ignorant Americans to buy or lease vehicles they couldn’t afford. And the financially clueless dupes pushed the pedal to the metal, until everyone went off the cliff in 2008.

 
Tyler Durden's picture

As Whistleblowing Becomes The Most Profitable Financial 'Industry', Many More 'Greg Smiths' Are Coming





Minutes ago on CNBC, Jim Cramer announced that Greg Smith will never get a job on Wall Street again as "one never goes to the press. Ever." Naturally, the assumption is that the secrets of Wall Street's dirty clothing are supposed to stay inside the family, or else one may wake up with a horsehead in their bed. There is one small problem with that. Now that compensations on Wall Street have plunged, and terminations are set for the biggest spike since the Lehman collapse, the opportunity cost to defect from the club has also collapsed. And if anything, Greg Smith's NYT OpEd has shown that it is not only ok to go to the press, but is in fact cool. So what happens next? Well, as the following Reuters article reports, 'whistleblowing' over corrupt and criminal practices on Wall Street is suddenly becoming the next growth industry. Yes - people may get 'priced out' of the industry, but since the industry will likely fire you regardless in the "New Normal" where fundamentals don't matter, and where the only thing that does matter is the H.4.1 statement (as Zero Hedge incidentally pointed out back in early 2010), why not expose some of the dirt that has been shovelled deep under the coach, and get paid some serious cash while doing it?

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Central Bank Attempt To Sucker In Retail Investors Back Into Stocks Has Failed





In what should come as no surprise to anyone who has a frontal lobe, yet will come as a total shock to the central planners of the world and their media marionettes, the latest attempt to sucker in retail investors courtesy of a completely artificial 20% stock market ramp over the past 4 months driven entirely by the global liquidity tsunami discussed extensively here in past weeks and months, has suffered a massive failure. Exhibit 1 and only: as ICI shows today, following what is now a 20% ramp in the stock market, not only have retail investors continued to pull out cash from domestic equity mutual funds (about $66 billion since the recent lows in October, the bulk of which has gone into bonds and hard commodities), but the week of February 29, when the market peaked so far in 2012, saw the biggest weekly outflow of 2012 to date, at -$3 billion. Alas, this means that the traditional happy ending for the authoritarian regime, whereby stocks get offloaded from Primary Dealers, and GETCO's subsidiaries, to the retail investor, is not coming, and soon the scramble for the exits among the so-called "smart money" will be a sight to behold.

 
Reggie Middleton's picture

The Goldman Grift Shows How Greece Got Got





Not many websites, analysts or authors have both the balls/temerity & the analytical honesty to take Goldman on. Well, I say.... Let's dance! This isn't a collection of soundbites from the MSM. This is truly meaty, hard hitting analysis for the big boys and girls. If you're easily offended or need the 6 second preview I suggest you move on.

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Frontrunning: Leap Year Edition





  • Euro-Area Banks Tap ECB for Record Amount of Three-Year Cash (Bloomberg)
  • Papademos Gets Backing for $4.3B of Cuts (Bloomberg)
  • China February Bank Lending Remains Weak (Reuters)
  • Romney Regains Momentum (WSJ)
  • Shanghai Raises Minimum Wage 13% as China Seeks to Boost Demand (Bloomberg)
  • Fiscal Stability Key To Economic Competitiveness - SNB's Jordan (WSJ)
  • Bank's Tucker Says Cannot Relax Bank Requirements (Reuters)
  • Life as a Landlord (NYT)
 
Tyler Durden's picture

Warren Buffett Favors Wells As The "Single Best Bank To Own": A Comparative Returns Analysis





Following on his latest bash session of gold from the weekend, when Warren Buffett dedicated a substantial portion of his annual letter to shareholders for the now routine and perfectly expected gold blasting, the Octogenarian of Omaha revealed to his faithful personal scribe Becky Quick that of all banks, he would recommend Wells Fargo as the single best bank to own. Naturally, as was previously lampooned by William Banzai, Americans, even those paying a 15% tax rate, would "do absolutely nothing for Warren trading book" if they were to buy gold instead of pooling their cash into the ponzi. As for buying WFC vs. gold, the chart below will show why the world is increasingly taking any proclamations from the man whose net worth was bailed out by the government, with humor more than serious consideration.Presenting the past decade's return of Wells Fargo and of gold. No commentary necessary.

 
Tyler Durden's picture

Frontrunning: February 27





  • Germany Crisis Role in Focus After G-20 Rebuff (Bloomberg)
  • G20 to Europe: Show us the money (Reuters)
  • Draghi’s Unlimited Loans Are No Panacea (Bloomberg)
  • Geithner says Europe has lowered risks of "catastrophe" (Reuters)
  • Gone in 22 Seconds (WSJ)
  • Gillard beats Rudd to stay Australian PM (FT)
  • Brazil Will Continue Reducing Interest Rates, Tombini Says (Bloomberg)
  • China to Have ‘Soft Landing’ Soon: Zoellick (Bloomberg)
  • China To Be Largest Economy Before 2030: World Bank (Reuters)
  • Obama pressed to open emergency oil stocks (FT)
 
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