Dribs and Drabs, that's how these 'little stories' are coming out about the financial meltdown. Perhaps 'they' don't think 'we' will notice the horrifying little details that way....like the new story about AIG bonuses. Now we find out that the bonuses were actually 4 times larger than was originally reported. Doesn't it make you wonder who lied about the original figures, and why it is being reported now? But I digress.
Today I just read about the 25 Banks that were responsible for 72 percent of the Sub Prime loans estimated to be close to 1 trillion dollars. These Banks and lenders are more than responsible for the financial meltdown, which I've taken to calling 'controlled fraud'...because that is what it is, so I thought I'd let you know how our tax dollars are bailing out those Banks who refuse to help the very taxpayers with foreclosures, because of course, they want to make more money off of the 'controlled fraud'...that's how it works here in the good old US of A.
These are the names of the Lenders and Banks that brought the world to it's knees. These top 25 lenders were responsible for nearly $1 trillion of subprime loans, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of 7.2 million "high interest" loans made from 2005 through 2007.
Countrywide Financial Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $97.2 billion
Ameriquest Mortgage Co./ACC Capital Holdings Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $80.6 billion
New Century Financial Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $75.9 billion
First Franklin Corp./National City Corp./Merrill Lynch & Co.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $68 billion
Long Beach Mortgage Co./Washington Mutual
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $65.2 billion
Option One Mortgage Corp./H&R Block Inc.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $64.7 billion
Fremont Investment & Loan/Fremont General Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $61.7 billion
Wells Fargo Financial/Wells Fargo & Co.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $51.8 billion
HSBC Finance Corp./HSBC Holdings plc
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $50.3 billion ***
WMC Mortgage Corp./General Electric Co.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $49.6 billion
BNC Mortgage Inc./Lehman Brothers
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $47.6 billion ***
Chase Home Finance/JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $30 billion
Accredited Home Lenders Inc./Lone Star Funds V
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $29.0 billion
IndyMac Bancorp, Inc.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $26.4 billion
CitiFinancial / Citigroup Inc.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $26.3 billion
EquiFirst Corp./Regions Financial Corp./Barclays Bank plc
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $24.4 billion
Encore Credit Corp./ ECC Capital Corp./Bear Stearns Cos. Inc.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $22.3 billion
American General Finance Inc./American International (AIG)
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $21.8 billion ***
Wachovia Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $17.6 billion.
GMAC LLC/Cerberus Capital Management
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $17.2 billion ***
NovaStar Financial Inc.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $16 billion
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $15.3 billion
GreenPoint Mortgage Funding Inc./Capital One Financial Corp.
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $13.1 billion
ResMAE Mortgage Corp./Citadel Investment Group
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $13 billion
Aegis Mortgage Corp./Cerberus Capital Management
Amount of Subprime Loans: At least $11.5 billion
According to the Center’s analysis:
* At least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by banks that received bailout money — through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization.
* Twenty of the top 25 subprime lenders have closed, stopped lending, or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. Most were not banks and were not permitted to collect deposits.
* Eleven of the lenders on the list have made payments to settle claims of widespread lending abuses. Four of those have received bank bailout funds, including American International Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.
And now, as of yesterday, we find that AIG has continued to lie to us, the bonuses are 4 times higher than what we were told.
The 2008 AIG bonus pool just keeps getting larger and larger.
In a response to detailed questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the company has offered a third assessment of exactly how much it paid out in bonuses last year. And the new number, offered in a document submitted to Cummings on May 1, is the highest figure the company has disclosed to date. AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008.
That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees.
The figure Ashooh offered was, in turn, substantially higher than company CEO Edward Liddy claimed days earlier in testimony before a House Financial Services Subcommittee. Asked how much AIG had paid in 2008 bonuses, Liddy responded: "I think it might have been in the range of $9 million."
"I was shocked to see that the number has nearly quadrupled this time," said Cummings. "I simply cannot fathom why this company continues to erode the trust of the public and the U.S. Congress, rather than being forthcoming about these issues from the start."
AIG spokesman Ashooh said the company’s revised accounting is the result of different wording of the questions asked by Cummings and POLITICO.
The new figure of $454 million, Ashooh said, "reflects all types of variable compensation across all of our businesses," while the $120 million figure he provided earlier reflected only bonuses paid to corporate headquarters executives and high-ranking officers at its major businesses around the world. Ashooh said the $454 million figure includes the $120 million he had previously disclosed.
All of the numbers provided are on top of the controversial $165 million in retention bonuses offered to employees of a division of the company known as AIG Financial Products. It was the disclosure of those payments that set off a political firestorm earlier this year. Washington was stunned that employees of the very unit that had brought AIG to its financial knees were being so richly rewarded — especially after the company received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money.
The controversial payments were described by the company as "retention agreements" paid to keep employees from leaving.
So Liddy fucking lied to Congress when he said the AIG employees received 9 million in bonuses. It turns out they paid $454 million dollars in bonuses.
And do you hear the outrage today in Congress? Anyone screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs? Anyone dragging Liddy's ass back to Congress today? Anyone?
No. No one that I know of.....dribs and drabs...that is how these lies come out, so that, you know..............we won't notice them.
More about the Banks we have been bailing out:
The Center found that U.S. and European investment banks invested enormous sums in subprime lending due to unceasing demand for high-yield, high-risk bonds backed by home mortgages. The banks made huge profits while their executives collected handsome bonuses until the bottom fell out of the real estate market.
Investment banks Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan & Co., and Citigroup Inc. both owned and financed subprime lenders. Others, like RBS Greenwich Capital Investments Corp. (part of the Royal Bank of Scotland), Swiss bank Credit Suisse First Boston, and Goldman Sachs & Co., were major financial backers of subprime lenders.
In addition to the $700 billion bailout, the Federal Reserve began committing hundreds of billions of dollars to guarantee against losses on failing mortgage assets of AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America.
Among the lenders on the Center top 25 list, seven have received government assistance. Citigroup has collected $25 billion through the TARP program, $20 billion through the Treasury Department’s "targeted investment program," and a $5 billion Treasury backstop on asset losses. It has also been guaranteed protection from losses on $306 billion in assets. Wells Fargo has collected $25 billion in TARP funds, and Bank of America, which bought Countrywide and Merrill Lynch before their imminent collapse, received another $45 billion in TARP money. Also on the list: JPMorgan Chase (owner of Chase Home Mortgage), Regions Financial Corp. (former owner of EquiFirst), GMAC/Cerberus Capital Management, and Capital One Financial Corp. (former owner of GreenPoint Mortgage). And the bailout of insurance giant AIG may go as high as $187 billion and includes a combination of loans, direct investment by the government, and purchases of shaky assets.
Did these Banks and Lenders really understand the 'risks' that they were taking during the time they were conducting this 'controlled fraud'? You bet your ass they did..read on:
Wall Street Cash Pours In
During the boom years, investment banks provided a staggering amount of cash to subprime lenders so they could make loans.
Between 2000 and 2007, backers of subprime mortgage-backed securities — primarily Wall Street and European investment banks — underwrote $2.1 trillion worth of business, according to data from trade image Click here for expanded view publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The top underwriters in the peak years of 2005 and 2006 were Lehman Brothers at $106 billion; RBS Greenwich Capital Investments Corp., at $99 billion; and Countrywide Securities Corp., a subsidiary of the lender, at $74.5 billion. Also among the top underwriters: Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs.
When New Century filed for bankruptcy, it listed Goldman Sachs Mortgage Co. as one of the 50 largest unsecured creditors. Other New Century creditors include Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and Swiss bank UBS.
New Century earlier reported to its shareholders that it had lines of credit totaling $14.1 billion from those five banks, plus Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, and IXIS Real Estate Capital, a French banking firm (since taken over by a company called Natixis) that frequently worked with Morgan Stanley.
An investigative report prepared for the U.S. Trustee overseeing the bankruptcy case described a "brazen obsession with increasing loan originations, without due regard to the risks associated with that business strategy" at New Century. It said the company made loans "in an aggressive manner that elevated the risks to dangerous and ultimately fatal levels."
In December 2006, Citigroup pooled $492 million-worth of mortgages to sell to investors as securities, one of several major offerings the bank had packaged for Wall Street. Sixty-three percent of the mortgages were originated by New Century, according to the lengthy prospectus. Eighty-one percent of the loans were adjustable rate mortgages.
Despite their massive investment in subprime loans, some of the nation’s most powerful bankers continue to deflect responsibility.
"Demonizing the bankers as if they and they alone created the financial meltdown is both inaccurate and short-sighted," Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons told reporters recently. "Everybody participated in pumping up this balloon and now that the balloon has deflated, everybody in reality has some part in the blame."
Everybody is to blame. Wow. This is the sentence that really sends chills down my back and makes the hair on my neck stand up:
"brazen obsession with increasing loan originations, without due regard to the risks associated with that business strategy"
Information on the Banks from: http://www.publicintegrity.org/...
It is interesting to note how the Banks are now running around like rats on the sinking ships trying to raise 'more capital' to pass the 'fake stress tests'. They know the party is over and it is only a matter of time before the 'real facts' come out on just how deep and wide their 'brazen obsession' with their insane lack of any ethical standards and greed and controlled fraud comes poring out for everyone to see in the light of day. Today in the news were hear that Bernie Madoff is maintaining his silence to protect 'others'. I wonder who. Could it be his friends on Wall Street?
Today in the news we hear that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, thinks the government should keep the results of bank "stress tests" under wraps.
Yes, let's keep it all under wraps. Let's keep the lying going. Dribs and draps....may be then, we won't really notice what's going on, like the fact that Liddy from AIG lied to us about the bonuses being $9 million dollars, when they were actually $454 million dollars.
Zombie Banks? What Zombie Banks, I don't see any Zombie Banks, do you? Fraud? I don't see any fraud going on around here, do you? Everything is just so damn hunky dory, and after all, the Banks are our Friends. Just look at all the wonderful steps they are taking to help all those people who homes are being foreclosed upon. Good thing we don't have any 'skeletons' in our closets and everything is out in the open, so we can, you know..........deal with it openly and honestly.
I'm so tired of all the lies. I really, really am.