A Look Back…

Société Générale S.A. (SocGen), the 3rd largest bank in France and 8th largest in Europe, hit some ‘speed bumps’ in 2008. They announced to the world on the 28th of January 2008 that one of their junior futures traders had racked up a series of regrettable trading losses. And the company was ‘out’ a cool $7.2 billion.

At about this same time, wiser minds at SocGen were ‘chasing yield’ and loading the company up with Mortgage Backed Securities, including certain ‘cesspool grade’ MBS’s, packaged and pedaled by Goldman Sachs. They insured their mortgage-backed asset portfolio with billions of dollars worth of hedging in AIG ‘sewer-quality’ credit default swaps (CDS’s).

AIG, with no meaningful reserves, bled out quickly when the mortgage default wave ripped across America in 2007-08, and SocGen was suddenly staring up at an $11 billion loss.

The U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to ‘cover’ AIG’s counterparties (at 100 cents on the dollar), and SocGen promptly received (courtesy of U.S. taxpayers) $6.9B in CDS payments and $4.1B in collateral postings from AIG in March 2009.

On top of all that, the Fed aimed the “secret liquidity lifeline” water canon SocGen’s way and soaked them with an additional $17.4B.

And SocGen regained its ‘financial health’ by the end of 2010. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers.

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –

Excerpts: Societe Generale SA, which in January 2008 spooked investors by announcing a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) trading loss from unauthorized bets by a former trader, was one of the earliest borrowers from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s discount window during the crisis. On May 22, 2008, the Paris-based bank got $3.5 billion of loans from the window — 23 percent of the total outstanding for all banks on that date — in addition to $13.9 billion from the Term Auction Facility.

After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in September 2008, Societe Generale received 1.7 billion euros of preferred shares and 1.7 billion euros of subordinated debt from the French government to bolster its capital and lending. The bank repaid the state funds in November 2009 after a rights offering.

Peak amount of [Fed-based] debt on 08/22/2008: $17.4B

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U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than to be granted access to the same direct liquidity extensions that major U.S. and foreign banks received during the financial crisis of 2007-2010.

This access to liquidity would relieve debt burdens at ‘ground level’ in America, and restore ‘financial health’ to millions of U.S. citizen families.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen –Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –  Excerpts:

As the U.K.’s biggest mortgage lender, Edinburgh-based HBOS Plc faced mounting losses in September 2008 on subprime home loans to people with poor credit histories, as well as on so-called Alt-A loans, which didn’t require borrowers to provide proof of income.

On Sept. 18, London-based Lloyds TSB Group Plc agreed to buy HBOS, and the U.K. government later injected 17 billion pounds ($27 billion) of capital into Lloyds to assure the deal closed.

The Federal Reserve helped, too. HBOS borrowed as much as $18 billion from the U.S. central bank in November 2008. Lloyds completed the takeover in January 2009 and kept using HBOS as a conduit to borrow from the Fed through February 2010.

Peak amount of debt on 11/20/2008: $18B

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Note: Lloyds Banking Group, Plc was later named as one of the banks involved in defrauding U.S. citizens and municipalities via LIBOR rate manipulation.

LIBOR rate-rigging defrauded U.S. mortgage holders via ARMs resets. It also burned municipalities across the U.S. billions out of dollars in municipal bond costs by artificially ‘tilting’ rates against the interest rate swaps that had been purchased by municipalities, such as Baltimore, to hedge the bonds. And it adversely affected the value of ‘swap lines’ that were held by several dozen U.S. banks.

Reuters reported on March 14, 2014 that the FDIC was suing 16 banks that it believed were involved in LIBOR rate-rigging: “The banks named as defendants include Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC.”

“Other defendants in the lawsuit included Rabobank, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Societe Generale, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and WestLB AG.” Barclays and UBS had already settled.
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Note: all of the named banks had received billions of dollars, during the height of the financial crisis, from the Fed’s “secret liquidity lifelines.”
Citigroup, peak amount received from Fed: $99.5B
Bank of America: $91.4B
RBS: $84.5B
Barclays $64.9B
The most recent bank to be implicated, and fined: Lloyd’s Banking Group, Plc, peak amount received from Fed during the financial crisis: $505M
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The very banks that received billions of dollars in bailout funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve were defrauding American families, state municipalities, and other U.S. financial institutions.
American families deserve nothing less than the same direct access to liquidity that these banks received, from various Federal Reserve credit facilities, and ultimately, U.S. taxpayers, during the great financial crisis.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Dresdner Bank AG, ‘under water’ in subprime debt – Fed to the rescue…

 Notes from Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:     

German insurer Allianz SE put its Dresdner Bank AG unit up for sale in 2008 as subprime-mortgage losses mounted.

By the time Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG agreed to buy Dresdner on Aug. 31, 2008, for 9.8 billion euros ($14.4 billion), Dresdner was borrowing $11 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

After the deal closed in January 2009 at a renegotiated price of 5.1 billion euros, Frankfurt-based Dresdner kept drawing from the Fed. The last of its loans from the U.S. central bank were repaid on July 16, 2009, more than six months after the Commerzbank deal closed.

Peak amount of debt on 7/02/2008: $18.4B

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The U.S. Federal Reserve was providing bail-out funds, through various credit facilities, to banking operations all across the globe during the height of the financial crisis.

Many of these banks created their own systemic toxicities which precipitated the global financial crisis – which then triggered tens of millions of job losses across the U.S. and millions of home mortgage foreclosures.

And U.S. taxpayers, through the Fed and U.S. Treasure Department, bailed them out.

The Leviticus 25 Plan provides the mechanism for a Citizens Credit Facility – to grant the same direct access to liquidity extensions that the Fed provided to scores of domestic and foreign financial institutions during the great financial crisis of 2007-2010.

The Leviticus 25 Plan will reignite the economy, re-incentivize work, reduce the heavy debt burdens and the unhealthy dependence on government by the citizenry, provide for massive debt reduction at the family level, generate $37.303 billion annual Federal budget surpluses (2027-2031). And restore economic liberty in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Commerzbank AG, headquartered in Frankfort, is the second largest bank in Germany.

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  –  Excerpts:
Commerzbank AG agreed to buy Dresdner Bank AG from the insurer Allianz SE for 9.8 billion euros ($14.4 billion) on Aug. 31, 2008. Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy, sinking global markets and saddling both banks with bad loans and trading write-downs.

While the Dresdner price was later renegotiated down to 5.1 billion euros, by 2009 Commerzbank was heading for an annual loss and getting emergency liquidity from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Commerzbank borrowed as much as $22 billion from the Fed in July 2009.

The bank, which also had to get about 18 billion euros ($26 billion) of capital injections and 15 billion of debt guarantees from the German government, declined to say whether it got emergency liquidity from Germany’s central bank.

Peak amount of debt on 7/16/2009: $22 billion

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Commerzbank and Dresdner, chasing ‘yield’ in the red-hot subprime market, wired themselves up with some of Lehman’s supposedly high-grade securitized mortgage instruments.  The highly leveraged Lehman bled out quickly when the housing market collapsed and default waves began rolling in.  And Commerzbank and Dresdner got body-slammed with bad loans and trading write-downs.’

U.S. citizens, who did not make those disastrous investments, were then called in to bail out Commerzbank…. to the tune of $22 billion.  To bail out this foreign bank and help make them once again financially ‘healthy’…

Big banks made disastrous investments and got summarily ‘bailed out.’  And American tax-payers got… ‘austerity’…(?)

It’s time to level the playing field.  It is time for U.S. citizens to receive nothing less than that same access to direct liquidity infusions that foreign banks received from the Fed.

The time is now to restore financial health to millions of families across America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

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A Look back…

Norinchukin Bank is a Japanese bank with a hefty U.S. investment portfolio (over $800 billion). It is Japan’s largest hedge fund and has branches overseas in New York, London, and Singapore.

Bloomberg notes below that Norinchukin routinely accessed the Federal Reserve discount window for “usual fundraising needs for U.S. dollars.”

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:
While the U.S. Federal Reserve’s website says its 97-year-old discount window is designed to “relieve liquidity strains in a depository institution,” Norinchukin Bank made the discount window part of the business plan. “We used the Fed’s discount window as part of our usual fundraising needs for U.S. dollars,” Junji Okamoto, a spokesman for Japan’s largest lender for farmers and fishermen, said in an interview.

“We did not have any special urgency or specific needs for the borrowing.” The Tokyo-based lender, owned by more than 4,000 shareholders including farm, fishing and forestry cooperatives, kept a $6 billion balance at the discount window from October 2008 through October 2009. Its overall Fed borrowings peaked at $22 billion in June 2009.

Peak amount of debt on 6/29/2009: $22B

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Question: If a Japanese Bank / hedge fund with shareholders from 4,000 Japanese cooperatives can routinely draw liquidity infusions from the Federal Reserve, then would there be a reasonable basis for allowing U.S. citizens direct access to the same liquidity?

Answer: Yes.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

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“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon

Fortis Bank SA/NV was a large Dutch-Belgian banking and insurance conglomerate, the 20th largest revenue-generating company in the world in 2007. It rolled the liquidity-draining dice with its massive 2007 acquisition of ABN AMRO, and then again with its heavy exposure to U.S. subprime mortgages. The financial crisis hit, and down went Fortis. The Fed promptly opened up its big beautiful bailout water cannon and pumped billions of dollars directly onto Fortis’ tattered and worn balance sheet.

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:                                                                                                     “Fortis Bank SA/NV, the banking unit of Brussels-based Fortis, was broken up after getting 7.2 billion euros ($10.3 billion) of capital from the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg in September 2008. It was later nationalized. Belgium sold a 75 percent stake in the bank to Paris-based BNP Paribas SA in an all-stock transaction that took seven months to complete. In a 2009 report, Fortis disclosed borrowing as much as 58.7 billion euros from the emergency liquidity lending facilities of the Belgian and Dutch central banks in October 2008. Data show Fortis Bank also tapped the U.S. Federal Reserve’s discount window, taking a $7 billion overnight loan on Sept. 29, 2008, and as much as $26.3 billion in February 2009 from the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and Term Auction Facility.

Peak Amount of Debt on 2/26/2009: $26.3B
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The Federal Reserve’s “secret liquidity lifeline” bailouts of U.S. and foreign banks set the stage for a gradual, long-term erosion of the U.S. Dollar.

American citizens indirectly financed those massive ‘free money’ Wall Street financial sector bailouts through a loss of U.S. Dollar purchasing power.

American families deserve nothing less than the same direct access to credit that U.S. and foreign banks received during the global financial crisis of 2007-2010. It is time to restore American families to economic “health.”                                      

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57397 downloads )

Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, based in Munich, Germany, is a financial enterprise consisting of a group of banks that specialize in real estate financing.

Hypo purchased Ireland-based Debfa Bank in October 2007.  Debfa promptly ‘took on water’ in 2008 when a boat load of municipal bonds it had underwritten got downgraded.

Depfa’s heavy debt burdens quickly dragged Hypo down into the debt swamp during the global financial crisis.

And then…..

The U.S. Federal Reserve galloped in to the rescue, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, to help bail out Germany-based Hypo in the fall of 2008.

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011: “Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, a German commercial-property lender with 1,366 employees, borrowed as much as $28.7 billion in November 2008 from the U.S. Federal Reserve through the New York branch of its Depfa Bank Plc unit. That’s about $21 million per employee. It borrowed almost one-third as much as Citigroup Inc., which has 190 times as many employees.

The Fed aid came in addition to 142 billion euros ($206 billion) of emergency credit lines and debt guarantees from German authorities. Hypo, which invested in mortgage-backed securities in the years before the financial crisis, said in a 2009 report that it lost access to short-term funding after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy. Hypo didn’t disclose any Fed borrowings until the loans became public in 2011.”

Peak Amount of Debt on 11/4/2008: $28.7B

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If the U.S. Federal Reserve can rescue foreign financial corporations like Hypo Real Estate Holding ($28.7B in direct liquidity transfusions), from their disastrous investment decision-making – then the Fed also has the power to grant direct liquidity extensions also to American families to help relieve debt burdens and restore the financial health of U.S. citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57393 downloads )
 

BNP Paribas is the largest bank in the Eurozone and 10th largest bank worldwide. The French bank is headquartered in Paris, with global headquarters in London.  It owns subsidiaries all over the world, including BankWest in the U.S..

“BNP Paribas escaped the 2007–09 credit crisis relatively unscathed reporting a €3 billion net profit for the year of 2008, and €5.8 billion for 2009.”

Thanks in no small part to U.S. taxpayers…

Background – Exhibit A:

Zero Hedge  Feb 13, 2014:  US Taxpayer “Bailed Out” BNP Paribas Probed By DoJ & Fed

“TARP Recipient BNP Paribas got $4.9bn of bailouts from the U.S. Taxpayer – Today, as the WSJ reports we learn BNP Paribas has been funding transactions in Iran, Syria and other countries subject to U.S. Sanctions since 2002. The bank set aside $1.1 billion to settle investigations by the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve but as the NY Times reports, investigations are playing out on multiple fronts – centering on whether the firm did “a significant amount” of business in “blacklisted” countries (and routed the deals through the US financial system).”

Via WSJ,  –  “…an internal probe conducted over the past few years “a significant volume of transactions” between 2002 and 2009 that could be “considered impermissible under U.S. laws and regulations...” “involving entities that were doing business in U.S.-sanctioned countries, such as Iran, Cuba, Sudan and Libya during the 2002 to 2009 period.

“BNP Paribas SA on Thursday became the latest bank to disclose the extent of its litigation problems in the U.S., saying it has set aside $1.1 billion against potential penalties related to transactions in countries under sanctions...

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Background – Exhibit B:                    

BNP Paribas Sued by US Over Banker’s Alleged Role in Fraud 

Oct. 19, 2011 (Bloomberg) — “BNP Paribas SA was sued by the U.S. over allegations the Paris-based bank aided a grain export fraud scheme involving commodity payment guarantees provided by the Department of Agriculture.

A corporate banker in BNP’s Houston office allegedly helped a scheme that defrauded the Agriculture Department of at least $78 million through deals he made with four U.S. grain exporters, according to a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Houston.”

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  –  #18 recipient of Fed’s “secret liquidity lifelines”

“The credit crisis accelerated after BNP Paribas SA, France’s biggest bank, announced in August 2007 that it would halt withdrawals from three funds because mortgage-market turmoil “made it impossible” to value certain assets. BNP began taking Federal Reserve loans in December 2007 when the Term Auction Facility opened.

By April 2008, its Fed debt reached $29.3 billion. In 2009, BNP became the euro region’s largest bank by deposits, purchasing Brussels-based Fortis’s units in Belgium and Luxembourg for 10.4 billion euros ($15.2 billion). It issued 5.1 billion euros of preference shares to the French government in March 2009, and reimbursed the state by October. In December 2010, when the Fed disclosed the loans, BNP said it used the TAF “to assist in recycling and facilitating liquidity.”

Peak Amount of Debt on 4/18/2008:  $29.3B

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BNP Paribas received $4.9 billion in TARP funds from the U.S., and they went on to rake in a tidy $29.3 billion credit extension from the Fed via the Term Auction Facility… “to assist in recycling and facilitating liquidity.”

They were meanwhile funding significant transactions (Bloomberg) “involving entities that were doing business in U.S.-sanctioned countries, such as Iran, Cuba, Sudan and Libya during the 2002 to 2009 period.”  And they ran a “grain export fraud scheme” which ‘cooked’ the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a cool $78 million.

The $64,000 question: If BNP Paribas is deserving of direct cash infusions from the U.S. government and the Fed, then would it not be perfectly reasonable for U.S. citizens to also qualify for their own direct credit extensions “to assist in recycling and facilitating liquidity” at the family level.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen –  Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57393 downloads )

A look back…

Background – Bear Stearns:

The Atlantic – Jan 25, 2011: Emails Suggest that Bear Stearns Cheated Clients out of Billions

“Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear.

Last week a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of [sh#%].”

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According to the lawsuit, the Bear traders would sell toxic mortgage securities to investors and then sell back the bad loans with early payment defaults to the banks that originated them at a discount. The traders would pocket the refund, and would not pass it on to the mortgage trust, which was where it should have gone to be distributed to the investors who owned the bonds.

It was this blatant internal awareness inside the Bear mortgage trading division that the Ambac suits says led Bear to implement an across-the-board strategy to disregard its contractual promises and conceal the defective loans….

In 2007, when Ambac started to realize something was very wrong with its high-rated bonds, it demanded Bear provide loan-level detail and reviewed 695 non-performing loans in its portfolio. Ambac’s audit concluded that 80 percent of the loans showed an early payment default….

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:

Bear Stearns Cos. Chairman James “Jimmy” Cayne told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that the Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility, set up in March 2008 to supply emergency funding to brokerage firms, came “just about 45 minutes” too late. Without access to liquidity from the central bank, New York-based Bear Stearns had to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase & Co., ending 85 years as an independent firm. To prop up Bear Stearns while the deal could be negotiated, the Fed extended a $12.9 billion emergency loan to the firm through JPMorgan. After the deal was inked, the Fed supplied as much as $30 billion to Bear Stearns through the PDCF and single-tranche open market operations to float the firm while the takeover was pending.

Peak Amount of Debt on 3/28/2008: $30B

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U.S. citizens, who did not cheat and defraud investors by peddling toxic mortgage securities – deserve nothing less than to be granted the same access to liquidity that the Federal Reserve supplied to Bear Stearns and scores of other major banks and insurers during great financial crisis of 2007 – 2010.

The mechanism for this direct access to liquidity – a Citizens Credit Facility – via The Leviticus 25 Plan.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen –  Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57294 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 – Excerpts:

“Wells Fargo & Co. became the largest U.S. home lender and fourth-biggest bank after purchasing Wachovia Corp. in 2008 as that bank was teetering near collapse. Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, borrowed as much as $45 billion in February 2009, a day after regulators released details of how they would conduct stress tests on the nation’s 19 largest banks.

The Fed’s Term Auction Facility was “one of several programs offered by the government that Wells Fargo and other financial institutions were encouraged or required to participate in,” said Ancel Martinez, a spokesman for the bank.”

Peak amount of debt on 2/26/2009:  $45B                                            

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Wells Fargo
By Philip Mattera
Wells Fargo is the smallest of the four giants that now dominate the U.S. commercial banking business, but it has surpassed its larger counterparts in the extent to which it has been embroiled in a series of scandals involving reckless lending practices and customer deception.

Wells Fargo’s corporate rap sheet: https://www.corp-research.org/wells-fargo

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Honest, hard-working, tax-paying U.S. citizens, the backbone of our Republic, deserve nothing less than to be granted the same direct access to liquidity, through a U.S. Citizens Credit Facility, that the Fed so graciously provided to Wells Fargo & Co and other major banks during the height of the financial crisis.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57294 downloads )