FDIC Secretly Settling Bank Cases For Years With 'No Press Release' Clause: Report
Source: Huffington Post
At the request of rule-breaking bankers, a top U.S. regulator has for years settled bank cases in secret, raising the bar on just how far regulators are willing to go to help the industry they regulate.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures bank deposits in the U.S. and shuts down failing banks, has since 2007 repeatedly settled charges of banker wrongdoing by agreeing to "no press release" clauses that keep the settlements a secret, the Los Angeles Times reports.
In one particularly glaring example, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $54 million to quietly settle charges that its New York mortgage-banking subsidiary, MortgageIT, sold bad loans to another mortgage bank, Independent National Mortgage Corporation, a/k/a "IndyMac." IndyMac collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage loans in July 2008, a notable milestone in the financial crisis.
In exchange for the settlement, the FDIC agreed not to announce the deal unless it was asked about it, the LAT writes. That was just one of "scores" of such settlements the LAT discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that turned up 1,600 pages of documents.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fdic-settlements-no-press-release_n_2854846.html
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Laurian
(2,593 posts)hope her efforts to expose the cozy relationships between financial institutions and their regulators brings all the cockroaches out into the light for proper judgement.
fascisthunter
(29,381 posts)
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Do not pass Go. Do not start your new job on Wall Street.
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)Now they know for sure, they can get away with economic murder.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fdic-settlements-20130311,0,3871291.story
In major policy shift, scores of FDIC settlements go unannounced
Since the mortgage meltdown, the FDIC has opted to settle cases while helping banks avoid bad press, rather than trumpeting punitive actions as a deterrent to others.
By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times
4:05 AM PDT, March 11, 2013
Three years ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. collected $54 million from Deutsche Bank in a settlement over unsound loans that contributed to a spectacular California bank failure.
The deal might have made big headlines, given that the bad loans contributed to the largest payout in FDIC history, $13 billion. But the government cut a deal with the bank's lawyers to keep it quiet: a "no press release" clause that required the FDIC never to mention the deal "except in response to a specific inquiry."
The FDIC has handled scores of settlements the same way since the mortgage meltdown, a major policy shift from previous crises, when the FDIC trumpeted punitive actions against banks as a deterrent to others.
Since 2007, 471 U.S. banks have failed, nearly depleting the FDIC deposit-insurance fund with $92.5 billion in losses. Rather than sue, the agency has typically preferred to settle for a fraction of the losses while helping the banks avoid bad press.
Read more at link!
For fuck's sake!
Do they pretend the cash from the settlements landed magically in their accounts? Maybe they should launder it through other agencies, or better yet HSBC.
Un-fucking-believable! Non-disclose settlements with criminals!
Hey, market's up for jillionth day in a row. What could ever go wrong again?
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)but the government got their cut of the booty and that's all that matters.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)
Roland99
(53,345 posts)
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Wall street has been making money but the rest of us still have depressed wages and benefits and need to sacrifice more?
Left Coast2020
(2,397 posts)But I'm not a constituent of hers.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Semi-secret government, even in this.