Goldman Sachs / Fannie Mae infiltration subversion and conflict
Tax Shelters: Why Israel Could Be the Next Switzerland - US - CNBC
www.cnbc.com/.../Tax_Shelters_Why_Israel_Could_Be_the_Next_ ...Cached
19 Jun 2012 – ... US Drops Goldman Sachs Financial Crisis Probe 09 Aug 2012 · Li & Fung Shares Plunge ... It looks like Israel is going to be the next Switzerland — at least as far as the ... Calls to Bank Leumi for comment were not returned.
19 Jun 2012 – ... US Drops Goldman Sachs Financial Crisis Probe 09 Aug 2012 · Li & Fung Shares Plunge ... It looks like Israel is going to be the next Switzerland — at least as far as the ... Calls to Bank Leumi for comment were not returned.
'Tainted,' but Still Serving on Corporate Boards - NYTimes.com
dealbook.nytimes.com/.../tainted-but-still-serving-on-corporate-boar...Cached
23 Apr 2012 – It may be surprising that the former chief of Fannie Mae still remains the director of a public company as prominent as Goldman Sachs and ...
23 Apr 2012 – It may be surprising that the former chief of Fannie Mae still remains the director of a public company as prominent as Goldman Sachs and ...
SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling
www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-143.htm
15 Jul 2008 – SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling ... "naked" short selling in the securities of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and primary ... now than it has ever been," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. ... Goldman, Sachs Group Inc, GS ... http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-143.htm ...
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SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2008-143
Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008 - The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued an emergency order to enhance investor protections against "naked" short selling in the securities of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and primary dealers at commercial and investment banks.
Additional Materials
- Amendment to Emergency Order
- Submit Comments on Emergency Orders (File No. S7-20-08)
- Emergency Orders FAQs
The SEC's order will require that anyone effecting a short sale in these securities arrange beforehand to borrow the securities and deliver them at settlement. The order will take effect at 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday, July 21. In addition to this emergency order, the SEC will undertake a rulemaking to address these issues across the entire market.
"The SEC's mission to protect investors, maintain orderly markets, and promote capital formation is more important now than it has ever been," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. "Today's Commission action aims to stop unlawful manipulation through 'naked' short selling that threatens the stability of financial institutions. We will continue our vigorous commitment to investors by working within the SEC and in close cooperation with our regulatory counterparts to promote the continued health and vibrancy of our markets."
The Commission's emergency order, pursuant to its authority under Section 12(k)(2) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, will be effective at 12:01 a.m. ET on July 21, 2008 and will terminate at 11:59 p.m. ET on July 29, 2008. The Commission may extend the order to continue it in effect thereafter if the Commission determines that the continuation of the order is necessary in the public interest and for the protection of investors, but for no more than 30 calendar days in total duration.
"The SEC's mission to protect investors, maintain orderly markets, and promote capital formation is more important now than it has ever been," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. "Today's Commission action aims to stop unlawful manipulation through 'naked' short selling that threatens the stability of financial institutions. We will continue our vigorous commitment to investors by working within the SEC and in close cooperation with our regulatory counterparts to promote the continued health and vibrancy of our markets."
The Commission's emergency order, pursuant to its authority under Section 12(k)(2) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, will be effective at 12:01 a.m. ET on July 21, 2008 and will terminate at 11:59 p.m. ET on July 29, 2008. The Commission may extend the order to continue it in effect thereafter if the Commission determines that the continuation of the order is necessary in the public interest and for the protection of investors, but for no more than 30 calendar days in total duration.
# # #
The securities identified in the Commission's order:
| Company | Ticker Symbol(s) |
| BNP Paribas Securities Corp. | BNPQF or BNPQY |
| Bank of America Corporation | BAC |
| Barclays PLC | BCS |
| Citigroup Inc. | C |
| Credit Suisse Group | CS |
| Daiwa Securities Group Inc. | DSECY |
| Deutsche Bank Group AG | DB |
| Allianz SE | AZ |
| Goldman, Sachs Group Inc | GS |
| Royal Bank ADS | RBS |
| HSBC Holdings PLC ADS | HBC and HSI |
| J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. | JPM |
| Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. | LEH |
| Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. | MER |
| Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. | MFG |
| Morgan Stanley | MS |
| UBS AG | UBS |
| Freddie Mac | FRE |
| Fannie Mae | FNM |
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http://careandwashingofthebrain.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-bernie-madoff-goldman-sachs-and-fed.html
How Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs and the Fed stole TRILLIONS
Wanna play a rigged game in which you take home the winnings but let your losses be absorbed by someone else? Then become part of this unique insider's club that has manipulated the stock market to their own ends and when things got hot and the market turned sour, dumped the losses on the backs of We the People and our offspring and at the same time, stealing trillions using Goldman Sachs' Doomsday software program.
No wonder the Fed is fighting against an audit... They don't want Americans to wake up and realize they've been robbed in broad daylight.
So keep worrying about manufactured "boogiemen" like North Korea, the Taliban and Iran while Wall Street, the Fed and that country we enjoy a special relationship with steals this country blind.
No wonder the Fed is fighting against an audit... They don't want Americans to wake up and realize they've been robbed in broad daylight.
So keep worrying about manufactured "boogiemen" like North Korea, the Taliban and Iran while Wall Street, the Fed and that country we enjoy a special relationship with steals this country blind.
Goldman Sachs Loses Grip on Its Doomsday MachineGuess Wolfie Blitzer was so busy covering the Michael Jackson death scene that he didn't have any time in his daily THREE HOUR broadcast to mention this massive Wall Street con game, eh?
(Bloomberg) -- Never let it be said that the Justice Department can’t move quickly when it gets a hot tip about an alleged crime at a Wall Street bank. It does help, though, if the party doing the complaining is the bank itself, and not merely an aggrieved customer.
Another plus is if the bank tells the feds the security of the U.S. financial markets is at stake. This brings us to the strange tale of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Sergey Aleynikov.
Aleynikov, 39, is the former Goldman computer programmer who was arrested on theft charges July 3 as he stepped off a flight at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. That was two days after Goldman told the government he had stolen its secret, rapid-fire, stock- and commodities-trading software in early June during his last week as a Goldman employee. Prosecutors say Aleynikov uploaded the program code to an unidentified Web site server in Germany.
It wasn’t just Goldman that faced imminent harm if Aleynikov were to be released, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal magistrate judge at his July 4 bail hearing in New York. The 34-year-old prosecutor also dropped this bombshell: “The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.”
Market Manipulation
All this leaves us to wonder: Did Goldman really tell the government its high-speed, high-volume, algorithmic-trading program can be used to manipulate markets in unfair ways, as Facciponti said? And shouldn’t Goldman’s bosses be worried this revelation may cause lots of people to start hypothesizing aloud about whether Goldman itself might misuse this program?
To the power that the ISA led Goldman Sachs bank has had over the US in allowing them to steal nearly the entire wealth of that Nation has been devastatingly detailed by the Rolling Stone Magazine News Service in their report titled “The Great American Bubble: How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression”.
Most important to note in this report are the details describing how Goldman Sachs “Doomsday Programme” was “created” by Israeli Security Agency programmers workingunder the Chairman of the Israeli National Security Council, Dr. Uzi Arad, his wife, Dr. Ruth Arad, Vice President and Chief Risk Officer of Bank Leumi, and Jacob Ezra Merkin, who bought the Bank Leumi from the Israeli government headed by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and finance minister Ehud Olmert, who became Israel’s Prime Minister after Sharon but was forced to step down while under corruption charges allowing Netanyahu to steal the Premiership from Livni.
Now, what is really interesting in these reports is that Jacob Ezra Merkin allowed his longtime business partner Bernard Madoff the “personal use” of the “Doomsday Programme” which he then used to enrich himself, Dr. Arad and his wife, and Madoff to the tune of over $65 Billion they stole largely from the wealthiest Jewish Families in America, and who they knew would not testify against ISA agents in any US Court.
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U.S. Goldman Disclosure a Rare Break in Secrecy
The unusual public announcement came after Goldman’s lawyers pushed for a notification that the bank would not be charged, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity...........
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Ex-Fannie Mae execs lose bid to end SEC fraud lawsuit
Like other regulators, the SEC has faced criticism for not cracking down harder on individuals accused of contributing to the 2008 financial crisis and five-year housing slump through poor underwriting and misleading marketing of mortgage debt.
Mudd, Dallavecchia and Lund were sued on December 16, 2011, the same day the SEC filed a similar lawsuit against three former Freddie Mac executives, including onetime chief executive Richard Syron.
The Freddie Mac are trying to dismiss that case, and oral argument is scheduled for August 20 before another Manhattan federal judge, Richard Sullivan.
Mudd and Syron are among the most senior individuals charged by federal or state investigators in any case related to the financial crisis.
Angelo Mozilo, who built Countrywide Financial Corp into one of the biggest subprime lenders, settled an SEC case for $67.5 million in 2010, though Bank of America Corp, which had bought Countrywide in 2008, indemnified him for $45 million.
The SEC did in 2010 win a $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc over that bank's packaging and sale of a collateralized debt obligation known as Abacus.
Goldman did not admit wrongdoing, and the SEC is still pursuing its lawsuit against the only individual charged in that case, Goldman vice president Fabrice Tourre.
On Thursday, Goldman said the SEC dropped a separate probe over its role in selling $1.3 billion of subprime mortgage debt.
"ABOUT ZERO PERCENT"
In its Fannie Mae lawsuit, the SEC contended that the company concealed exposure to more than $100 billion of subprime loans and $341 billion of Alt-A loans.
It quoted Mudd as telling the public as recently as August 20, 2008, during a radio interview less than three weeks before the seizure, that Fannie Mae had "about zero percent" subprime loan exposure. He defined such a loan as "a loan to a borrower that has had a credit problem in the past," court papers show.
In their defense, lawyers for Mudd said some of the suspect loans did not meet Fannie Mae's definition of subprime loans.
They also said that Fannie Mae, even after going under "full government control and new management," continued to report loan exposures "exactly as it did" previously.
The FHFA last year filed lawsuits against 17 banks over losses that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered on about $200 billion of mortgage debt.
FHFA spokeswoman Stefanie Johnson said with regard to Crotty's decision: "We are reviewing the case."
Mudd resigned in January as chief executive of Fortress Investment Group LLC, one of a few publicly-traded U.S. hedge fund and private equity fund managers, after having taken a leave of absence in the wake of the SEC charges.
The Fannie Mae case is SEC v. Mudd et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-09202. The Freddie Mac case is SEC v. Syron et al in the same court, No. 11-09201.
(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Steve Orlofsky and David Gregorio)
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ISLAMIC-INTELLIGENCE: Goldman Sachs and Israel's 'work of God ...
islamic-intelligence.blogspot.com/.../goldman-sachs-and-israels-work...
18 Jul 2011 – Goldman Sachs and Israel's 'work of God', destroying the nation-states in the US, EU to build the NWO, ruling the world from Jerusalem ...Illumination: the Secret Religion - Goldman Sachs
armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/Goldman-Sachs(1499343).htm
Goldman Sachs is a Zionist organisation and one of its great aims is to secure the defence of the state of Israel. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a serious threat....Obama, Romney and Goldman Sachs - 2012 - YouTube | |
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWBzUuo9_eo22 Jan 2012 - 7 min - Uploaded by RestinoP
Goldman Sachs owns both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and Romney will serve the wishes of Goldman ... | |
www.aliyahjobcenter.org/show_company.php?id=914
Goldman Sachs Israel. Sector(s), Banking, Investment & Financial Services. Contact Name, Alek Voronov. Job Title, VP. Email, alexander.voronov@gs.com ...DailyWealth - Stansberry Research
www.stansberryresearch.com/pub/reports/sdw_message.html
My friend and colleague Porter Stansberry is at the center of a big ... predicted the collapse of GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and America's biggest mall owner ...U.S. Not Seeking Goldman Charges
Updated August 9, 2012, 10:10 p.m. ET
by Reed Albergotti and Elizabeth Rappaport
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577579840698144490.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won't bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +1.07% or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis.
In a statement, the Justice Department said "the burden of proof" couldn't be met to prosecute Goldman criminally based on claims made in an extensive report prepared by a U.S. Senate panel that investigated the financial crisis.
"Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report," the statement read.
The Justice Department reserved the right to bring charges in the future if new evidence emerges.
In a statement Thursday, Goldman said: "We are pleased that this matter is behind us."
In April 2011, the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a scathing report on the financial crisis, highlighting Goldman as a culprit. Lawmakers accused the firm of breeding a greedy culture and running conflict-ridden businesses, and they said Goldman put its own interest ahead of clients.
Sen. Carl Levin, D., Mich., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee, said Goldman executives lied to Congress about the firm's bets against the housing market. The accusation triggered a Justice Department probe of possible perjury.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Levin's office didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The report concluded that even as securities firms flooded the market with securitized mortgages and advised clients to buy them, firms privately used words like "crap" and "flying pig" to describe the financial instruments. The department's probe was launched when Goldman's reputation already had been battered by civil-fraud charges filed against the New York company by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused Goldman of fraud related to a mortgage-bond deal called Abacus 2007-AC1.
Goldman was accused of failing to inform investors that hedge-fund firm Paulson & Co. had helped choose underlying securities in the deal and was betting against it.
Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to end the SEC's civil-fraud suit. The company said marketing materials for the Abacus deal contained "incomplete information."
The announcement comes amid criticism of the Justice Department from some lawmakers for what they contend are disappointing results in efforts to bring criminal cases against firms and individuals for crisis-related wrongdoing.
Justice Department officials have defended the agency's track record, and some legal experts have noted the difficulty of targeting specific individuals and firms given the enormity of the financial crisis.
In the statement Thursday, the Justice Department said prosecuting financial fraud and "protecting the integrity of our banking system" is and will continue to be the department's "top priority."
The criminal investigation was led by the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The probe also included the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
U.S. Not Seeking Goldman Charges
Not just Newt Gingrich: Mitt Romney profited from Freddie Mac too
Tue Dec 13, 2011 by Jed Lewison
In light of Mitt Romney's demand yesterday that Newt Gingrich return the $1.6 million he was paid to advise Freddie Mac, this is pretty funny:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has long been critical of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, blaming the government-backed housing lenders for inducing the home-mortgage crisis and saying they have become too unwieldy. [...] Yet Romney has profited from investments that were made in both government entities, according to his personal finance disclosure forms and documents compiled by American Bridge, one of several Democratic groups in Washington formed to back the election campaigns of Obama and other Democrats. [...] On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Over the previous year, he had reported earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.Unlike most of his investments, these weren't in a blind trust—so Romney can't claim they were out of his control. Moreover, they were made in late 2007, right around the same time that conservatives decided to (incorrectly) blame Freddie and Fannie for the housing crisis.
Neither Gingrich nor Romney come out of this looking good. Despite their present-day condemnations of Freddie Mac, Gingrich was essentially a lobbyist for the agency and Romney invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money in it. No wonder Republicans are having such a hard time choosing who they want to nominate.
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LOM FIXED INCOME FUND LTD.
www.lom.com/.../Audited_LOM_Fixed_Income_Fund_Limited.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View653,000 Fannie Mae 3.85% 14Apr2009 637,080 3.15 636,740 ... 400,000 Freddie Mac 6.25% 05Mar12 404,172 1.98 400,576 .... Bermuda Stock Exchange
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/u-s-subprime-mortgage-crisis-hits-discount-and-leumi-too-1.249642
U.S. subprime mortgage crisis hits Discount and Leumi too
Israeli analysts forecast at the end of last week that large write-offs at Leumi and Discount are not likely.
The pressure on the two stocks comes from overseas. The huge losses racked up by the semi-governmental U.S. mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have brought these U.S. firms near the verge of bankruptcy, said a number of senior U.S. government officials at the end of last week. Fannie Mae shares have plunged 74% since the start of the year, and 85% over the past 12 months. Freddie Mac shares performed even worse: down 77% since the start of the year, 87% over the past 12 months.
And what does that have to do with Leumi and Discount? Discount has a large investment in the two firms' mortgage-backed securities, and if as feared Fannie and Freddie have to raise a total of $75 billion in the near future - a near-impossible task - the value of the securities held by Discount will plummet. They were valued at NIS 9.3 billion at the end of the first quarter. This sum is even larger than the bank's entire equity value of only NIS 9.2 billion.
Leumi has invested NIS 4.1 billion in similar securities - no small sum - but this represents only about 20% of Leumi's equity.
Almost as worrying is the collapse of IndyMac Bank, which the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized last Friday - the second largest U.S. bank failure in history.
IndyMac was one of the largest subprime mortgage lenders; the bank collapsed after customers withdrew $1.3 billion in deposits within 11 days in June. The bank had assets of $32 billion and revenues of $2.8 billion in 2007 - but a market value of only $28.3 million after its shares fell 95% over the past two years. The takeover is expected to cost the FDIC between $4 billion and $8 billion.
Until very recently, investments in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were considered rock solid, as they had an implied guarantee from the U.S. government, though not an official one. This made Leumi and Discount's investments safer than those of Bank Hapoalim, which invested in similar mortgage-backed securities issued by investment banks without any government back-up. Now it seems that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may not be immune after all.
The two U.S. firms have also seen a widening gap between the premium demanded on their bonds compared with U.S. government bonds. This premium has doubled in the past few weeks from about 0.4% to between 0.8% and 0.9%.
Israeli analysts forecast at the end of last week that large write-offs at Leumi and Discount are not likely, but they said there is a lack of certainty about these investments - so the shares have suffered..........
http://www.worldfinance.com/banking/investment/european-subsidiaries-boost-israeli-bank
European subsidiaries boost Israeli bank
World Finance talks digital expansion, new appointments and European mergers with leading Israeli banking corporation, the Leumi Group
After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Leumi Group operated in a dual-role capacity: as a regular bank, serving customers, as well as the Central Bank of Israel, until the Central Bank itself was organised and officially established. Since then, Bank Leumi has grown along with the state of Israel and has contributed significantly to its development, with its vision centred on being a banking group that is involved in and supports the welfare of the community.
“The bank sees itself as a supporter of the community, involved in many areas – such as education – and a supporter of the community in general,” says First Executive Vice President and Head of the International and Private Banking Division, Zvi Itskovitch. “We champion organisations acting in aid of the needy, arts and culture and a variety of other activities including science, entrepreneurship and leadership.
“The board of directors and head management, under the leadership of the outgoing CEO Galia Maor, and the incoming CEO, Rakefet Roussak Aminoach, are well aware of the importance of community involvement and Bank Leumi will continue to invest in these areas.”
Adapting to succeed
The new appointments within the bank’s management are the result of the recent promotion of the Head of the Corporate Banking Division to CEO and the desire to use that opportunity to adapt the bank’s structure to the changing business conditions. “In the normal course of events, the Corporate Banking Division is responsible for handling the largest corporations in the economy, and the organisational change will make it possible to better focus on these customers,” says Itskovitch. “The deteriorating economic forecast and its influence on profit require the bank to take appropriate measures. The board of Bank Leumi le-Israel will no longer deal with credit approval, so the structural change is especially appropriate.”
Bank Leumi has already established itself as a leading expert in the private banking sector, and was wise enough to prepare itself for increasing competition for private banking assets some time ago. “We are considered one of the best banks in this field in Israel, and we focus systematically on the relevant market segments,” says Itskovitch. “Survey after survey has indicated that the service at Bank Leumi Israel receives the highest grade from our customers. We have excellent managers, advisors and services that offer our customers unique products and opportunities. In addition, the bank has excellent computer infrastructure supporting our private banking services.”
Itskovitch is in no doubt the bank will continue to invest in keeping its competitive edge over time, as the recent global and economic downturns have suggested. “The net profit of the Leumi Group was $495m in 2011, compared with a profit of $670m in 2010, and while there is no doubt that global monetary developments influence the Israeli economic forecast, and by definition the local banking industry, we passed the previous crisis comparatively well, compared to other countries, including those in Europe and the US.”
However, Itskovitch stresses the bank isn’t about to let its guard down any time soon: “Our most recent assessment has concluded that the current deterioration in Europe could affect us more than previously thought,” he says. “In addition, regulatory capital requirements for banks are increasing significantly throughout the world, including in Israel, and meeting these requirements necessitates preparation. It’s clear that the ability to broaden one’s activities is affected by regulatory capital requirements. All this will, without doubt, have an effect on the profit of the Leumi Group.”
Embracing the present
Itskovitch advises on needing to adjust to the fact that the yield the global banking system was accustomed to in the past will not return: “I anticipate that one digit yields of return on equity are more likely than the two digit yields customary prior to the crisis,” he says.
Looking to continue its international presence, Bank Leumi announced in November 2011 that it will be acquiring the entire outstanding share capital of Bank Safdié SA, a private bank located in Geneva, with operations, among others, in Zurich, Lugano, Luxembourg and a representative office in Israel, and plans to integrate it into Bank Leumi Switzerland.
The merger is expected to strengthen the standing of the Swiss subsidiary, and make it a leading private banking brand among Israeli banks active in Switzerland. “A bank which isn’t an adequate size will not be able to achieve adequate and stable profitability,” says Itskovitch. “We had to confront the outlook that banks with assets under management of less than $10bn will find it hard to achieve adequate profitability over time. When an opportunity presented itself to us, Bank Leumi purchased Bank Safdié, which increased the assets of Bank Leumi Switzerland significantly. The synergies of both banks will enable Bank Leumi Switzerland to be more competitive within the industry and improve profitability.”
Itskovitch believes that Bank Leumi Switzerland is preparing for increased competition, and adapting to the new regulatory requirements that are on the horizon will ensure continued functioning of the subsidiary, and is another step in establishing Leumi as a leading bank in the international arena. “We have no doubt about its contribution to expanding the range of services we provide to our international customers and that it will strengthen the standing of Bank Leumi Switzerland as a leading financial institution,” says Itskovitch. “There are no current plans to expand into other countries in Europe in the next few years, so the bank will focus its efforts on its current subsidiaries.”
Despite holding off on further expansion in Europe at present, Bank Leumi Luxembourg is a basis for activity in the continent as the country is part of the EU, enabling the bank’s representatives to act in the region’s countries under the European passport umbrella.
“Various options are being considered to expand Luxembourg’s activity in fields in which the country has a significant advantage, such as fund management and SICAVs,” says Itskovitch. “Due to its efficiency, the Luxembourg office has been profitable over the years, and joins the other international subsidiaries as a strong presence in the market.”
The Luxembourg subsidiary joins other big players in the market, including Bank Leumi UK, a commercial bank that focuses on the middle market and who turned over a net profit of £12.1m in 2011. “The subsidiary in the UK has developed additional fields outside of its traditional realm of expertise (real estate financing) in recent years,” says Itskovitch.
“These new areas include ABL, custodian services in Jersey, commodities financing and funding for media and films. This enhanced expertise enables Bank Leumi UK to choose its customers meticulously and to maintain a strong and healthy credit portfolio.” Another field in the UK which Leumi intends to progress in is local private banking, and the bank has started allocating resources into this area.
At Bank Leumi’s US subsidiary, a new development strategy has recently been approved. “Bank Leumi USA is essentially a commercial bank with the private banking function of a supplement, actively raising funds,” says Itskovitch. “The plan has been put in place to allow Bank Leumi USA to increase its efforts to strengthen its local banking activities by focusing on developing relationships with commercial clients in order to provide full customer service and to be the clients’ primary bank.” Itskovitch says that under this approach, the bank expects to raise increasing funds from local sources.
Managing finance on the move
Bank Leumi is now able to offer customers the ability to manage their finances on the go, with their new upgraded app for iPads, after a successful two month pilot period. The application allows customers to receive information, carry out transactions and track past payments in a simple, user-friendly way. The simple format also makes it possible to examine transactions and account balance, and joins the wide range of mobile services offered by the bank.
“Today’s banking environment is dynamic and highly competitive,” says Itskovitch. “In the past two years, there has been an increase of over 2,000 percent in digital usage by customers and Leumi is looking to grow in the changing market environment. The flexibility of the web and mobile technologies offers unprecedented opportunities for the bank to reach out to its customers.”
Itskovitch believes the bank can no longer take a lifetime relationship with its customers for granted and has to look to new ways to foster relationships in order to retain customer loyalty: “The iPad application joins the wide range of mobile services offered by Leumi, which include the Digital Wallet iPhone and Android applications already used by hundreds of thousands of customers, and we continue to maintain our position as a global competitor as such,” he says.
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http://big-lies.org/NUKE-LIES/www.nukelies.com/forum/viewtopic9468.html
Bank of America Set Up As Fall Guy/ Rats Leave Sinking Ship
by NUKELIES » 03 Mar 2012 12:07
It looks like Bank of America is going to declare bankruptcy. Can the government afford to take it over like it did General Motors? Probably not - too expensive.
I think Bank of America was set up beginning with its 1998 acquisition by NationsBank of Charlotte to be a dump for the subprime mortgage bubble. It is now bloated with sour mortgage assets which have turned it into a zombie colossus. I believe they will use the collapse of Bank of America to initiate the coming depression followed by WW3/Iran. Lehman Brothers was just a test.
I think Bank of America was set up beginning with its 1998 acquisition by NationsBank of Charlotte to be a dump for the subprime mortgage bubble. It is now bloated with sour mortgage assets which have turned it into a zombie colossus. I believe they will use the collapse of Bank of America to initiate the coming depression followed by WW3/Iran. Lehman Brothers was just a test.
116 RESIGNATIONS FROM WORLD BANKS 3/2/12
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| y: washunate Wednesday December 30, 2009 1:10 pm |
Tweet
Today, I am following up with a broader brushstroke, a general declaration for corporate governance in the financial industry.
I’ll start with a little follow up from yesterday, because I want to explicitly state that while yesterday was talking specifically about one individual Board Member who is representative of a systemic problem, today is about addressing that problem on a systemic level. As I said
I disagreed yesterday with the particular letter that Hamsher wrote with Norquist, and I still disagree today. I’m not claiming that I have a criminal indictment against Rahm Emanuel. Rather, I’m asking if his conduct as a Director is relevant at all? Do we care whether the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States is incompetent, or negligent, or irresponsible, or indifferent, or honestly got fooled by the shenanigans by Freddie’s executives, even when those questionable practices included criminal lawbreaking and billions of dollars? After all, not all of those explanations can be true. Do we sweep those kinds of questions under the rug, or do we deal with them? That, I think, is a political question, not a legal question. Responsibility and leadership are much broader concepts than their rather limited legal connotations.Assuming Emanuel wasn’t a key instigator of the questionable practices, was he incompetent or negligent?
And more importantly for our political purposes, is that question worth investigating?
Indeed, most corporate crime these days doesn’t even involve an admission of wrongdoing. Massive crimes, involving even billions of dollars, can magically result in a fine where no one admits fault to anything. It’s brilliant for its complete lack of transparency and accountability. Brilliant, at least, for those responsible who largely get off the hook. These things are simply written off as a cost of doing business.
And of course, there are even bigger crimes we’re not investigating at all. Not to sound like a broken record, but when we don’t even instigate legal proceedings for fundamental constitutional violations, let’s get real, we’re not going after white collar corporate criminals. We make public enemies of specific people from time to time, like Martha Stewart or Bernie Madoff in the financial realm, or England and Karpinski with regard to detainee treatment, and then tell everyone to Move On, Show’s Over, Nothing to See Here, it was just A Few Bad Apples.
Heaven forbid we call out a specific individual; that’s unfair, they couldn’t have done anything, the problem is the system. Emanuel was just a Board member for one year, what could he have done? Gosh darn it, the criminals, the executives at Freddie, were hiding information from him and trying to trick him and confuse him. You can’t possibly expect Board Members in such a situation to do anything!
Well, I can. That’s what makes my position radical change. I believe corporate governance has to change, and in a big way. It starts with not accepting the status quo, which says that nothing can be done. The future is what we make of it; it is not set in stone, it is not inalterable. And Emanuel is a great personification of this. There are corporate executives to this day that are trying to trick the Administration, that are trying to hide information from the Administration, that are hoping the Administration will look the other way and not ask questions. That’s what makes Emanuel’s Board tenure at Freddie Mac so scarily relevant, from my perspective. His indifference to corporate wrongdoing then doesn’t seem to be an anomaly. It seems to mesh very well with career opportunism that has made him a fortune of wealth and political power.
But, let’s move past Emanuel from here on out. Indifference to corporate wrongdoing, disinterest in effective corporate governance, is a systemic issue, particularly in the financial world. In fact, I’m going to make a statement that is perhaps even more controversial than anything said so far.
Many Board Members of large corporations, the people responsible for the governance of an organization, have no idea what their organizations are doing.
It’s a crisis. And like our wage crisis, our environmental crisis, our healthcare crisis, our prison crisis, corporate (mis)governance is not a crisis of sudden urgency. It’s a slow-motion crisis, something that has developed over years and years. It’s not the fault of any one person or event, but rather, the aggregate sum of many actors and many events. At a certain level, assigning responsibility is difficult. Is it fair to single out one person when ‘everybody’s doing it’? Well, do we arrest drug users collectively, or do we arrest individual people for individual acts? Is it fair to demand a higher standard of conduct? Well, is it fair that attractive people make more money? Life ain’t fair. And when it comes to individuals who are paid to serve on corporate boards, well, they’re generally the folks who have the least room to complain about the unfairness of life.
The aggregate consequence of absolving everyone of responsibility is that no one is accountable for anything, either preventing bad behavior from occurring or correcting bad behavior once it happens.
There is one specific compromise step which I will advocate today which will help us delineate between Directors who are personally responsible for corporate failures and those who just were too indifferent or uninterested to know any better. You see, at many nonprofit organizations, Board Members (Directors/Trustees/Council Members/etc) are volunteers. Churches, social service agencies, schools, and so forth frequently attract people by appealing to a sense of community involvement, of service. There is much debate in the nonprofit world about the role of compensation generally, and compensation of Boards in particular. But some nonprofit organizations and for profit organizations pay Board Members. This usually comes in the form of stock and cash compensation.
Here’s my proposal. Let’s declare 2010 a year of corporate governance amnesty. It will be a year when Directors can come clean, acknowledge their responsibility for not understanding the business in exchange for protection from ramifications from legal connotations of things like negligence related to the admission. There are two criteria for this.
1. There must be a specific, written document outlining the areas of weak or incomplete understanding, and
2. There must be a personal check written to the US Treasury equal to the total amount of compensation the individual was paid by the organization for serving in the capacity of a Board Member.
This is important because fixing our systemic failure of corporate governance is more important than holding grudges against individual actors in the system. What this does is it puts people on record as affirming whether they ‘earned’ their compensation or not. There may be social ramifications for someone to come forward, but there will not be legal ramifications.
Then, that allows us to focus our energy on those who do not return the money. You see, those people, the ones who pocketed some money and went on their way, are precisely the folks who’ve been rummaging through the US Treasury piggy bank these past couple years. Before one dime of taxpayer money is spent, corporate leaders should show actual leadership and take responsibility for their own mismanagement. One way they can do that is contributing financially to the bailouts.
In short, those responsible for governing corporations can’t have it both ways. They either have a responsibility due to their compensation, or they should absolve themselves of responsibility by donating their compensation to the US Treasury that has donated so much money to the very companies they mismanaged into the ground. If non-executive Board Members aren’t responsible for anything, then their compensation is tantamount to theft. But like everything else, theft is in the eye of the beholder.
My year of amnesty is one step, not a comprehensive solution. As long as Board Members can receive financial compensation for not doing anything, none of the more drastic steps for revamping corporate governance are remotely achievable. It’s a profitable system for the actors involved, and nobody wants to rock the boat.
Crossposted at Daily Kos.
my comment
And it’s even worse than you state.My theory is that most of the money placed in shares of Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac and probably all shres named ex corrupt ex SEC Chairman Christopher ‘Naked Shorts’ Cox on the sec.gov website in 2008(including Goldman Sachs!),were NOT ‘naked shorted’ at all.
This was a term first made up or erroneously popularized by Steve Forbes’ National Taxpayers Union founder James Dale Davidson who still runs penny stock scams out of the NTU office a few blocks from the main Securities Exchange Commission office in Alexandria,Virginia.He is an untouchable and protected for some reason by both Republicans and Democrats.
He founded Agora Inc penny stock Holding(and dumping) ‘company’ of Baltimore for his penny stock money laundering ops and used LOM or Lines Overseas Management of Bermuda to pump and dump Genemax with its supposed cancer vacine and probably Endovasc,etc., then craeted NAANSS or National Association Against Naked Short Selling in 2002 and claimed they were ‘naked shorted’.
So how strange years later that the collapse of Rahm Emanuel’s Freddie Mac and Barney Frank’s boyfriend Herb Moses’ Fannie Mae would be officially ascribed to naked short selling’ a term made up to distract from illegal pumps ands dumps of penny stocks.Only thing is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae like a Lanny Davis connected ponzi scam called Novastar Financial all paid dividends and the criminals like ex SEC Chair Chris Cox who claimed-lied that they were victims of ‘naked short sellling’ can’t answer the question of why if counterfeit shares were being dumped then why did no one complain of not receiving their dividends !
Rahm Emanuel and BARNEY FRANK SHOULD BE CALLED TO DEFEND OR REFUTE THE LIE THAT FANNIE MAE AND FREDDDIE MAC SHARES WERE ‘NAKED SHORTED’ OR COUNTERFEITED.Our own government is the enemy and even Senators Carl Levin,Arlen ‘Magic Bullet’ Spector Chuck Grassley,Bob Bennett,Orin HATCH and Jon Testor have promoted this fraudulent rumor so they are covering up for Emanual and Frank and the biggest heist of American investors’ money into offshore accounts in world history.LOM of Bermuda and Leumi Bank of Israel and many more anonymous accounts inclusding in Switzerland and Caymans held Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when they were methodically dumped – then the SEC and Chris ‘Naked Shorts’ COX PLACED THE LIE ON THEIR WEBSITE(WHERE IT REMAINS)THAT FREDDIE MAC FANNIE MAE BANK AMERICA LEHMAN GOLDMAN SACHS,ETC,ETC., WERE ALL VICTIMS OF ‘NAKED SHORT SELLING’ ! Case closed.
The SEC ands its ‘special council’ STEVEN G JOHNSTON BY THE WAY WON’T PROVIDE ME WITH ANY PROOF THAT THEY AREN’T LIEING AND TELLS ME I’D HAVE TO GET THE SEC’S AND CHRIS COX ‘PROOF’ OF ‘NAKED SHORT SELLING’ BY APPLYING UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OR FOIA.Ionly wish there were real investigative reporters and someone would take them up on their offer.I know they would only give me the run around as they have for years.
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-143.htm
SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2008-143
Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008 – The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued an emergency order to enhance investor protections against “naked” short selling in the securities of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and primary dealers at commercial and investment banks….
The securities identified in the Commission’s order:
Company Ticker Symbol(s)
BNP Paribas Securities Corp. BNPQF or BNPQY
Bank of America Corporation BAC
Barclays PLC BCS
Citigroup Inc. C
Credit Suisse Group CS
Daiwa Securities Group Inc. DSECY
Deutsche Bank Group AG DB
Allianz SE AZ
Goldman, Sachs Group Inc GS
Royal Bank ADS RBS
HSBC Holdings PLC ADS HBC and HSI
J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. LEH
Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. MER
Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. MFG
Morgan Stanley MS
UBS AG UBS
Freddie Mac FRE
Fannie Mae FNM
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-143.htm
Yeah,sure.
“The SEC’s mission to protect investors, maintain orderly markets, and promote capital formation is more important now than it has ever been,” said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. “Today’s Commission action aims to stop unlawful manipulation through ‘naked’ short selling that threatens the stability of financial institutions. We will continue our vigorous commitment to investors by working within the SEC and in close cooperation with our regulatory counterparts to promote the continued health and vibrancy of our markets.”
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http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1249.htm
Reports Massive $18 Trillion Theft Of US Funds By Israeli Backed Network
