Dire warnings of the Bank of America, America’s largest bank by assets, being on the edge of bankruptcy cycle through the news media like scavenger birds circling over a dying calf as BOA suffers day after day of not actual banking losses but stock market losses.
Listen to what this analyst has to say:
Bank of America has over $100 billion in mortgage liabilities, says Chris Whalen Co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics.
On a web broadcast published on KingWorldNews, he advocates “the classical American way of dealing with this problem”– complete and total restructuring through Chapter 11. Before its too late.
He says, “The only sane way of fixing this and I mean fix it so that Bank of America comes out of the process restructured, ready to support growth, support leverage, is a classic chapter 11…”
His point: Countrywide’s bond trusts are worthless, were never properly constructed, and don’t protect investors at all. Bank of America is on the hook for all of that, and while its subsidiaries are well capitalized, the parent company is bust. The only thing to do to fix this problem is to unmake $100s of billions worth of bond contracts.
While the American people have been fed the line that the current economic crisis was caused by large number of homeowners defaulting on their loans, the truth is much more insidious:
If you’re thinking that our economic crisis was in some way the fault of homeowners who couldn’t afford their mortgages, please consider the following:
At the end of 2007, there were roughly $1.4 trillion in sub-prime mortgages in this country.
If “irresponsible sub-prime borrowers,” caused the meltdown, then $1.4 trillion would have solved the problem in its entirety, right? Because that’s all the sub-prime loans there were.
But, between the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Treasury over $13 trillion has been pumped into financial institutions to fix the “housing correction,” which is what Hank Paulson was still calling our economic collapse as of November of 2008.
At the end of 2008, there were $11.9 trillion worth of mortgages in this country. So, with $13 trillion, the government could have paid off every single one… and still had a little over a trillion dollars left over.
But there’s a lot more to the economic problem than that, explains Nomi Prins, my new favorite financial uber-genius and author of “It takes a Pillage.” Wall Street had been playing the leverage game… somewhat like they did in the 1920s, I suppose… but on mega-steroids. Leverage means borrowing on assets, and Wall Street banks were leveraged by 30:1, commercial banks by 10:1, not including their “off-the-balance-sheet” holdings, which could make their leverage ratio significantly higher in many cases.
So… in “Pillage,” Nomi Prins explains in terms anyone can understand that factoring in the leverage at 11:1, we’re looking at a $140 TRILLION economic problem… yes, you read that correctly… that’s trillion, with a ‘T’. Our Wall Street bankers, through the abuse of the securitization process and excessive amounts of leverage, created a potential tab of $140 TRILLION for the people of this country to pick up.
If you have to read that again, go ahead, I’ll wait. Because it bears re-reading.
Now do you have the scope of the problem? When we bailed out the banks we weren’t bailing out the sub-prime mortgage market. We were bailing out Wall Street from the defective securities products they created out of the sub-prime market.
And even as the banks abused the bail-out process they continued to abuse their customers.
“Earlier this year the Federal Reserve determined that the interchange fees Visa and MasterCard fix for big banks grossly exceed the cost of processing a debit card transaction by some 400%. These hidden fees were designed to boost big-bank profits by charging small businesses and merchants every time a debit card was swiped. And profit they did. Bank of America hauls in billions in debit interchange each year.”
The Durbin Amendment reigned in that dog and pony show starting October 1, 2011 and as a result BOA announced a new monthly fee to take effect for anyone using their debit card to make purchases.
So is Bank of America really on the hooks as the analyst says and needs a bankruptcy to restructure their debts?
Bank of America operates under the banking charter issued to its originating bank, the Bank of Italy, founded in San Francisco, CA in 1904 by Armadeo Giannini. This charter was granted on March 1, 1927. While we do not have an official time, I set the time at 9:00 AM, the start of the business day, a practice I’ve personally found useful in evaluating businesses, though this is not a standard astrological practice. The location is set in San Francisco, as this is where Mr. Giannini started his bank.
This charter to operate as a bank was set when the Sun was conjunct Jupiter in the sign of Pisces. This Jupiter/Sun combo squares Mars in Gemini and Saturn in Sagitarrius. Mercury, the planet of commerce as well as communication makes a stress aspect (inconjunct) to Neptune. Can it be fair to say that this entity is not entirely above board in its business dealings? If we were to evaluate this as the chart of a person, we might say that this is a person who talks out both sides of their mouth. And with the Sun/Jupiter combo making a trine to the planet of power and control, this is one entity that has no problem keeping on top of a situation.
As far as transits go, Chiron/Neptune is just beginning a long slow transit of the Sun/Jupiter natal combination, and with the planet of abundance, Jupiter making a friendly energetic connection to that combo and a trine to Pluto BOA is considering bankruptcy as an option. But if it does proceed with that option it is isn’t because they need to reorganize their debt but because they want to. Because in the long run it makes a better balance sheet to tell investors, “So sorry we aren’t able to pay you.” Because it gives a really good excuse to layoff more employees. And those employee pension funds are just too juicy to ignore since pension funds magically disappear during a reorganization. (I guess not having to pay taxes on receipts of investments in pension funds just isn’t enough incentive anymore.) And once again big business can stick it to their customers and the people who labor for them in the interests of short term gains.
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