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18 Jul 2011 23:23

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World: The US Treasury is running low on cash

  • 29 companies have more money than the United States Treasury
  • 7 of those companies are based in America source
  • » The American companies include: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Freddie Mac. Two of the top three companies on the list are Chinese. On the upside, the Treasury has as much money as Google, so that’s kind of a nice consolation prize.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Jun 2011 17:14

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Offbeat, U.S.: Homeowner revenge: Bank of America branch gets foreclosed

  • They’ve ignored our calls, ignored our letters, legally this is the next step to get my clients compensated.
  • Attorney Todd Allen • Describing the process he went through to get his clients their money back. That’s right, he foreclosed on the bank, forcing the bank to pay back attorney’s fees by padlocking the doors. Maurenn Nyergers and her husband, Florida residents who paid for their home in cash, received a false foreclosure request from Bank of America, forcing them to fight the charges in court. The homeowners won their case, but Bank of America didn’t pay the fees after five months, so (with a little help from the Sheriff’s Department), on went the padlocks and out went the computers, furniture and money from the tellers’ drawers. An hour later, the bank manager resolved it like that. Gotta love it. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 May 2011 10:39

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Biz: clearXchange: The banking system’s years-late answer to PayPal?

  • what Three of the nation’s largest consumer banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — have created a system for simple money transfers via phone or e-mail.
  • why The new service, clearXchange, gets around a banking system that takes a really long time, requires a routing number, and has to go though the Federal Reserve’s tubes.
  • threat This model threatens PayPal, the  solution du jour for this problem — which will likely someday make more money than its corporate parent, eBay. Unless this new thing takes off. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 Feb 2011 23:26

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Biz: Bank Of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo feel heat over mortgages

  • The current environment of heightened regulatory scrutiny has the potential to subject the corporation to inquiries or investigations that could significantly adversely affect its reputation.
  • A statement from Bank of America • Noting in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company could be subject to huge penalties over their abusive mortgage practices. They’re not alone; Wells Fargo and Citigroup ware in the same boat, and it’s all thanks to the shady way that the trio dealt with their foreclosures. The reports from the companies suggest that all three will take a financial hit for said shadiness. Bank of America says that the state and federal inquiries “could result in material fines, penalties, equitable remedies (including requiring default servicing or other process changes), or other enforcement actions, and result in significant legal costs.” In other words, they’re screwed for screwing over homeowners. Oops. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Jan 2011 10:53

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Biz: Bank of America takes epic charge on its hot mortgage mess

  • $2.24
    billion     the amount the bailed-out Bank of America lost in 2010, hurt by charges due to their Countrywide merger
  • $4.1
    billion     the size of the charge they had to take for investors with claims against their mortgage securities  source
  • » Why such a big charge? Apparently, someone at Bank of America (or Countrywide) was really bad at doing paperwork, or was trying to push through half-baked mortgages. Because both were named as factors in creating the huge charges which resulted from investors making claims against them. Most of the fees are headed to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by the way. Had this charge (and a separate $2 billion goodwill charge related to the Countrywide merger) not been there, Bank of America would’ve been profitable in the fourth quarter.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Dec 2010 09:30

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Biz: Kinda like burglary: Are banks unjustly breaking into homes?

This lady right here, Mimi Ash, had all of her possessions in this vacation home thrown out and taken away by Bank of America. Including her dead husband’s ashes. Yeah. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Dec 2010 11:35

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Biz: Bank of America jumps on board the “screw over Wikileaks” bandwagon

  • what Bank of America has decided to follow in the footsteps of such companies as Amazon and Paypal and will remove Wikileaks’ access to their banking systems.
  • why Beyond all the obvious-if-you-watch-the-news stuff, we think the rumor that Wikileaks has stuff to nail Bank of America to the wall has something to do with it. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

13 Dec 2010 11:10

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Biz: In the market for toxic assets? Bank Of America is having a fire sale!

  • $1 billion in toxic mortgages for sale; it’s a fire sale! (OH MY GOD) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Nov 2010 20:01

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Biz: Julian Assange dropped a HUGE hint a freaking year ago

  • At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drive. Now how do we present that? It’s a difficult problem. … To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it.
  • Wikileaks’ Julian Assange • Explaining how they leak material to the press, but dropping the fact that they have a bunch of stuff from Bank of America ready to leak. This was completely ignored by the press (and even we didn’t make much of it when we posted about it a few months back). But then our boy Julian talked to Forbes, people put two and two together, and all of a sudden Bank of America’s stock went down today. The difference? Assange wasn’t seen as a threat when he made this interview a year ago. Now … he’s a threat. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Oct 2010 09:43

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Biz: Financial reform bill puts Bank of America in the red this quarter

  • $7.3 billion in quarterly losses for Bank of America
  • $10.4
    billion     the size of the company’s one-time charge the company will take due to fees caused by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act
  • $3.1
    billion     the size of the company’s net income otherwise, which beat estimates; they plan to be more transparent about fees in the future source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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