Bank profits could hinge on bad-loan reserves
Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 15:30 Spencer Platt/Getty Images People pass a sign for JPMorgan Chase & Co. at it's headquarters in Manhattan. There could be a clearer picture of how the economy is affecting big banks Friday, when JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo report their earnings. But it’s possible the picture might not be crystal clear because banks can boost their profits by dipping into their reserves, the rainy day funds set up to cover loans that may go bad. “Rainy day” hardly describes the financial crisis. It was a deluge, an endless monsoon season. Banks stashed piles of money in the crisis’s wake. But now, the weather is better, so banks are moving billions from the reserve into the profit column. “After financial downturns, during which banks are forced to reserve more, they begin to release those reserves,” says Johns Hopkins business professor Yuval Bar-Or. “So there’s nothing unusual about that.” Reserves can be huge. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that ...
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New York AG on Bear Stearns mortgage bonds: "flamboyant fraud"
Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - 15:07 Spencer Platt/Getty Images People pass a sign for JPMorgan Chase & Co. at its headquarters in Manhattan in New York City. Remember toxic assets? The lousy mortgages -- bundled into even lousier bonds -- that big banks sold off until the whole thing went bust. We now have the first major case filed against a bank that went down with the mortgage-backed securities business. "We're prosecutors; we bring cases when they're ready," says New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "And you will see more cases in the weeks and months ahead." A joint working group President Obama set up earlier this year has filed suit against JP Morgan Chase, which now owns Bear Stearns, the bank that went bust. Schneiderman, in addition to being the attorney general of New York, is co-chairman of that state-federal task force. His suit accuses Bear Stearns of deceptive and fraudulent practices and seeks damages for investors after the company (allegedly) sold bonds that were ...
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JP Morgan may pay for Bear's alleged sins
Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - 16:01 Spencer Platt/Getty Images People pass a sign for JPMorgan Chase & Co. at its headquarters in Manhattan in New York City. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed a civil lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase alleging widespread fraud in the way that mortgages were packaged and sold to investors in the days that lead up to the financial crisis. In March of 2008 Bear Stearns was collapsing. Its share price plunged from $67 a share to less than $5 a share in the span of a few days. In stepped JP Morgan Chase, snapping up the faltering Bear Stearns for a bargain and looking like it was in the clear -- until now. New York's Attorney General has charged Bear Stearns' mortgage unit with fraud over some of its mortgage-backed securities. And, as the proud owner of Bear Stearns, JP Morgan may have to foot the bill. "It’s a little bit like buying a dog," says James Cox, a professor of Securities Law at Duke University. "You get the dog, but you ...
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JPMorgan sued over mortgage-backed securities
Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - 10:15 John Moore/Getty Images A man stands outside JPMorgan Chase bank on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan in New York City. The New York Attorney General has sued JPMorgan Chase. The issue is mortgage-backed securities peddled by its Bear Stearns unit, leading up to the financial crisis. The lawsuit alleges that Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired in 2008, ignored warnings, made mortgage-backed investments look a lot safer than they actually were, and ended up costing investors about $22 billion. The suit marks a change in the way investors and prosecutors are going after the banks -- the monetary compensation is higher and the case is civil rather than criminal. "It takes a long time to get the information you need because you have to go digging through the records of large companies with millions of emails and millions of files to find the smoking gun," says economist Peter Morici. Observers expect more lawsuits like this and settlements rather than lengthy ...
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PODCAST: Ripples from QE3
Friday, September 14, 2012 - 08:35 JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GettyImages U.S. Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke speaks at a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2012 following a two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Bernanke said that the country's unemployment situation 'remains a grave concern' while speaking after the Fed cut its growth projections for 2012 and announced fresh monetary easing efforts aimed at pushing down long-term interest rates to encourage investment and hiring. Markets are up today following the announcement of another round of quantitative easing. The Fed will spend $40 billion a month buying mortgage securities to keep interest rates down and inject liquidity into the U.S. economy. Consumer prices rose in August by the most in three years. The consumer price index jumped six-tenths of a percent last month a lot of that was due to the rising price of gas. It's still not the kind of inflation that seems to concern most economists. U.S. retail sales ...
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