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UBS Group Chairman Colm Kelleher on Wednesday said that the Swiss bank is "not too big to fail," as he criticized Swiss government proposals to strengthen its capital requirements. "UBS is not too big to fail. UBS is one of the best capitalized banks in Europe, with a sustainable business model and a corresponding low-risk balance sheet," Kelleher said. The Swiss government earlier this month made a range of recommendations aimed at protecting the wider economy from potential instability at UBS and three other major banks.

A report in the Daily Mail says that Republicans in Congress are investigating more than ten banks “for colluding with the federal government to spy on Americans after the January 6 protests.” The alleged witch hunt was in search of “‘extremism’ indicators.” You won’t be surprised at all to learn what qualifies as an “extremism indicator.” Fox News reported on January 17: Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of “religious texts” could indicate “extremism,” the House Judiciary Committee...

The Federal Reserve quietly lost a fortune in 2023 as interest it pays out to banks swamped the interest it earns on its bond portfolio, data released by the central bank Friday showed. The Fed said it lost roughly $114.3 billion in 2023, its largest-ever annual loss. The losses occurred because the money the Fed pays banks for reserves held at the central bank exceeded the interest earned on the mortgage bonds it holds. The Fed has been raising the interest rate paid on reserves alongside the hikes on the benchmark federal funds rate to stem the worst inflation in...

Top U.S. bank JP Morgan Chase on Friday reported $49.6 billion in profits for 2023, a record for the bank, despite a sector crisis that shut down multiple smaller institutions. Profits for the year were up for the bank despite net income bringing in only $9.3 billion in the fourth quarter, falling 15%, while the company brought in $39.9 billion in net revenue, up 12% for the quarter, according to JP Morgan’s fourth quarter earnings report. JP Morgan’s record profits come after a year of crisis for the sector, starting with a bank run in March at Silicon Valley Bank...

Three US banking giants have just had their ratings downgraded to “negative” by Moody’s. Moody’s Investor Service downgraded JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America to negative ratings after previously classifying them as stable, MarketWatch reports. Analyst Peter E. Nerby of Moody’s said that the worsening outlook on bank debt was due to “the potentially weaker capacity of the government of the United States of America (Aaa negative) to support the U.S.’s systemically important banks.” In particular, JPMorgan’s downgrade was partially because the bank runs a “complex” capital markets business that may post “substantial” risks to its creditors. A...

What screams may come! Actually, the aftermath of excessive monetary policies under Bernanke, Yellen and Powell are coming home to bit the big banks. Interest expenses at big US banks are rising much more quickly than interest income. Across the six largest US banks, interest expenses are set to climb to roughly $78.7 billion from $15.5 billion in the same period last year. There is still $8.3 Trillion in monetary stimulus sloshing around the monetary system. The Fed played a game. And is still playing!!

The House Weaponization Committee shone a big bright light on a concerning action by Bank of America that should concern all Americans. Now, the House GOP is taking action.On Thursday, the House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said they would be investigating what they’d learned from whistleblower testimony — how Bank of America, without any legal process from the FBI, turned over to the FBI a list of all its customers who purchased anything within the neighborhood of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2021. That means they turned over...

...the narrative has been that deposits are fleeing the small commercial banks and flooding into the biggest banks that are perceived as too-big-to-fail and thus offer a safer venue for deposits. Because these mega banks are the same ones that the Fed has been bailing out since the financial crisis of 2008, We decided to check out that narrative for ourselves. Not only is that scenario wrong, but it is so decidedly wrong, and it’s so easy to get the accurate figures, that from where we sit it looks like there might have been an agenda by someone to harm...

Only 10% of U.S. adults say they have high confidence in the nation’s banks and other financial institutions, a new poll finds. That’s down from the 22% who said they had high confidence in 2020. Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this month, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that a majority say the government is not doing enough to regulate the industry. The underwhelming assessment of America’s banks and bank regulation comes after a series of shocks brought back disturbing memories of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. […] Though confidence in banks...

Shares in First Republic Bank plummeted some 26% on Friday morning even after a rescue deal backed by a number of large financial institutions. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup each offered to contribute $5 billion of liquidity to assist First Republic Bank, which is heavily involved in wealth management and has many customers with deposits exceeding the $250,000 threshold protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Banks such as Truist Financial and BNY Mellon also contributed to the overall $30 billion arrangement. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, and...

Over the weekend, amid populist howls of outrage that a bailout of SVB would promote moral hazard (in the end depositors did get bailed out with a full recovery, but other unsecured creditors oddly enough would get nothing, while the common stock is a doughnut), we said that while technically true, the events that toppled SVB and now SBNY as well, are really a subsidy for the big banks.Many view what's happening as a question of moral hazard and a bailout of small banks. It's really a subsidy of big banks: JPM was solidly green in Friday's rout https://t.co/GAlJJ2iSLI —...

Small things can lead to big reactions, and that seems to be the case with bank stocks on Thursday, as a huge loss at SVB SIVB 0.00% Financial has caused stocks like JPMorgan JPM +2.48% Chase, Bank of America BAC +0.29% , and Wells Fargo WFC +1.50% to get pummeled. Here’s what happened. Silicon Valley Bank’s parent, SVB Financial (ticker: SIVB), said Wednesday night that it had sold securities from its portfolio for a $1.8 billion loss, while also announcing plans to raise capital via an offering of common and preferred stock. SVB Financial stock tumbled 60% to $106.04 on...

Fintech startup Brex received billions of dollars in deposits from Silicon Valley Bank customers on Thursday, CNBC has learned. Other companies including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and First Republic have also seen heightened inflows Thursday, as SVB’s stock tanked amid VC-fueled concerns of a bank run. The exodus of deposits put increased pressure on SVB, which attempted to raise equity funding earlier this week and had turned to a potential sale, CNBC reported. Regulators shut down the bank on Friday. Fintech startup Brex received billions of dollars in deposits from Silicon Valley Bank customers on Thursday, CNBC has learned. The...

Regulators closed troubled Silicon Valley Bank after deposit outflows and a failed capital raise plunged the country's 16th largest bank into crisis, roiling the larger lending industry. It became the largest bank to fail since Seattle's Washington Mutual during the height of the 2008 financial crisis, and the first since 2020. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged the industry turmoil Friday, saying there are "a few" banks the department is closely watching. "There are recent developments that concern a few banks that I'm monitoring very carefully and when banks experience financial loss it is and should be a matter of concern,"...

In mid-November, while the whole world was focused on the Ukraine crisis, the US midterms or whatever other “big story” the media decided was more important, a truly momentous shift took place in the global financial system. It might seem like a small step on the surface, but it has the potential to bring about a real and possibly irreversible sea change in the way we use money; or better said, the way it uses us. As Reuters reported on the 15th of November, “Global banking giants are starting a 12-week digital dollar pilot with the Federal Reserve Bank of...

Once the government can control all money in America with the push of a button, anything approaching liberty is dead on arrival. When I first saw the acronym “CBDC,” I may have betrayed my California roots when I thought it was some new cannabis product that will join all the other CBD products sold everywhere, including at truck stops. I’m not so naïve now, and I know that CBDC, which stands for Central Bank Digital Currency, is possibly the most dangerous idea ever bandied about in American politics. The plan is that the federal government would end paper and coin...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that it would be teaming up with global financial giants to launch a 12-week digital dollar pilot program. The New York Fed’s experiment will review how banks are able to process digital dollar tokens within the central bank system and quantify their impact, with the assistance of the some of the largest financial institutions in the world. Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo & Co. were among the major banks said to be participating in the trial, which was led by the Fed’s New York Innovation Center (NYIC), according to a...

Despite recent hedge fund disasters and almost every economic indicator pointing to a potential stock crash, Biden’s administration has completely ignored a potential equities bubble.Since March 2020, $5.9 trillion in so-called relief spending authorized by Congress, as well as $3.3 trillion in quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, has been pumped into the U.S. economy. America’s pandemic response resulted in 22 million jobs lost in a matter of months, and we still have 10 million fewer jobs than before March of last year. The fiscal and economic repercussions of going from stronger than expected job and wage growth in January...

The Federal Reserve says it will restore capital requirements for large banks that were relaxed as part of the Fed’s efforts to shore up the financial system during the early days of the pandemic. The Fed said it will not extend the relief from what is called the supplementary leverage ratio past March 31. The easing of the regulation had been intended to give banks flexibility in what assets they could hold to meet regulatory' requirements during the turmoil of the pandemic, when banks were having to suddenly write down billions of dollars of loans. The banking industry had lobbied...

Three of the nation’s biggest banks are asking shareholders to reject racial-equity resolutions after they expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement last year. Citigroup Inc. C, 3.22%, Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, 3.83% and Bank of America Corp. BAC, 4.87% were among the many large U.S. companies to make public statements of support in response to widespread protests last summer after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In recent days, they have all officially opposed shareholder groups’ calls for them to conduct and publicize racial-equity audits and other changes, saying they are already doing enough...