Free Republic

Rising interest rates, the remote work trend, and the dominance of e-commerce sellers have combined to hammer the commercial real estate market over the past few years. Sky-high office and retail space vacancies are plaguing owners in this new environment, rents are plummeting, and borrowing costs have soared. As a result, U.S. commercial real estate prices have fallen 11% since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March 2022, the IMF reported last week, the worst decline in over 50 years. The outlook for the sector is now so bleak that Cantor Fitzgerald’s billionaire chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick...

acknowledging a "clearly disappointing" quarter marred by one-off charges that resulted in a $1.8 billion loss. ... in the middle of a multi-year effort to cut bureaucracy, increase profits and boost a stock that has lagged peers ... "The fourth quarter was very clearly disappointing," CEO Jane Fraser .. We know that 2024 is critical." ... layoffs from the sweeping reorganization, Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason ... Citi will also no longer count 40,000 jobs when it spins off and lists its Mexican consumer unit Banamex in an eventual initial public offering, eventually aiming to reach a staffing level of...

Citigroup warned investors late Wednesday that charges tied to the decline of the Argentine peso as well as the bank’s reorganization came in far higher than recently disclosed. The bank said its fourth-quarter results, scheduled to be released Friday morning, were impacted by $880 million in currency conversion losses from the peso and $780 million in restructuring charges tied to CEO Jane Fraser’s corporate simplification project. Those charges are significantly larger than the “couple hundred million dollars” apiece that CFO Mark Mason told investors to expect at a Dec. 6 conference hosted by Goldman Sachs. ... They gave guidance just...

Many banks are kept afloat by borrowing from a special short term rescue fund at the Fed. To date over $ 100 billion has been borrowed to keep the banks solvent. The banks are sitting on a keg of financial dynamite with over $ 650 billion in unrealized losses on Treasury securities in addition to dealing with their silent bank run problem. The Banks are having a bunch of massive problems related to their lending business as well.

In a concerning economic landscape, bank liquidity and funding are rapidly declining, and the Business Term Funding Program (BTFP) is running out of time, with just three months left. The situation is exacerbated by subprime debt, comprising 21% ($332 billion) of outstanding auto loans, of which roughly $24.5 billion is severely delinquent. Renowned investor Howard Marks warns, “Securing loans is becoming tougher, posing challenges for businesses needing refinancing.” This sentiment points to impending obstacles for businesses seeking financial support.

Ten banks in the United States are working with the New York Innovation Center (NYIC), part of the Federal Reserve, to test the regulated liability network (RLN), a digital currency platform that will replace cash. RLN would use distributed ledger technology to improve financial settlements and would include commercials and central banks, the firm said earlier this month.

Ten members of the banking community are working with the New York Innovation Center (NYIC), which is part of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to explore the feasibility of the regulated liability network (RLN) — an interoperable digital money platform. The proposed RLN would use distributed ledger technology to improve financial settlements and would include central banks, commercial banks and regulated non-banks, the participating firms said Tuesday (Nov. 15) in a press release. “The 12-week PoC [proof of concept] will test a version of the RLN design that operates exclusively in U.S. dollars where commercial banks issue simulated...

The big concern about the failure of Chinese real estate titans Evergrande Group and Country Garden was that their financial collapse would spread into the rest of the economy. Specifically, the concern was that so-called shadow banks, which were involved in many of these property deals, would be impacted. And sure enough last week a major shadow bank called Zhongzhi Enterprise Group sent a letter to investors announcing it was insolvent.China’s Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a leading wealth manager, told investors it is heavily insolvent with up to $64 billion in liabilities, threatening to reignite concerns that the country’s property debt...

A man with a history of robbing banks has been sentenced to federal prison again for his latest heist. John Charles Anderson, 40, will have to serve 12 more years, followed by five years of supervised release. He's already serving three years for violating his last supervised release, which didn’t go well. Anderson had finished serving time for committing five bank robberies but after a month, authorities said “Anderson armed himself, donned a mask, and robbed a bank.” Skip That was in January 2022. The feds said he “pointed what looked like a semi-automatic handgun toward the teller and demanded...

A man who killed five people at a bank in Louisville earlier this year wrote in his journal that he wanted to demonstrate the consequences of gun laws that he viewed as too lenient, according to police. The Louisville Police Department released a report Tuesday with quotes they said were taken from Connor Sturgeon’s journal entries in the days leading up to the shooting on April 10, 2023. “I have decided to make an impact. These people did not deserve to die, but because I was depressed and able to buy ___ (guns?), they are gone,” Sturgeon reportedly wrote on...

Citigroup (C.N) employees expect announcements about management changes and layoffs on Monday in the next phase of the bank’s sweeping reorganization ... Employees are awaiting more details about the scale of layoffs at the bank, which employs 240,000 people worldwide. .... Last month, Citi announced plans to cut management layers from 13 to eight as part of its biggest overhaul in decades. In the two top layers of leadership, Citi reduced 15% of functional roles and eliminated 60 committees, ... The third-largest U.S. lender will also eliminate co-heads of divisions and regional roles, cut 50% of internal financial management reporting...

Citizens Bank, a 94-year-old establishment in Sac City, has closed after significant out-of-state loan losses, according to a news release from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The bank reported $65,558,000 in assets and $58,930,000 in total deposits in the third financial quarter, leading to its Nov. 3 closure, according to the release. The FDIC said no advance notice is required when a financial institution is closed. The Citizens Bank main office and drive-up will reopen Monday under the operation of Iowa Trust & Savings Bank in Emmetsburg. The Iowa Trust & Savings Bank bought all consumer, business and public deposits...

A single mom of two in the Chicago suburbs was killed Saturday at a Chase Bank ATM. Police on Saturday afternoon in Worth, Illinois, responded to a Chase Bank branch and located a woman who had been fatally shot, according to FOX 32. Two suspects who are linked to multiple armed robberies around the Chicago area were taken into custody by police. Family members of the woman identified the victim as Jonnie Angel Kleins, who was a single mother to a 15-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. She was also her mother's caretaker. "She worked tirelessly to provide for her...

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday: Bank branches are vanishing across the country, and San Francisco is having a record-testing year. Twenty branches shuttered across the city through Oct. 28, according to data from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The closures — from the central Richmond District in the west to Mission Bay in the east, from Fort Mason in the north to Bayview in the south — add up to more than the previous two years combined and represent the most in a single year since at least 2000. … All over California, 277 bank...

Citi has fired one of its personal bankers after she defended Hitler and the holocaust in a vile anti-Semitic post following the Hamas terror attacks. CUNY Brooklyn College graduate Nozima Husainova, 25, sparked outrage with the remark which she posted on her now-deleted Instagram page and she's since lost her job, the bank confirmed Thursday. Responding to a post about the Gaza hospital bombing that Israel has denied, she wrote: 'No wonder why Hitler wanted to get rid of them all,' complete with a smiley face emoji.

A grand jury in Georgia has charged five dozen Antifa goons with 18 crimes, including arson, racketeering, and domestic terrorism, in connection with their attack early this year on the building site for a new police training center.

Joe Biden's Delaware home was listed as the beneficiary address on two wire transfers Hunter Biden received from China, a top Republican has said. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability committee, says he obtained bank records through a subpoena that showed Hunter received payments from Beijing in 2019, when Joe was vice president. The records state that Joe's Wilmington, Delaware, home at '1209 Barley Mill Rd' was listed as the beneficiary address. Hunter is believed to have lived there for two years following his divorce from first wife Kathleen Buhle in 2017. He was also said...

WASHINGTON — President Biden tried to laugh off a question Thursday about whether he will comply with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s request for his bank records ahead of a possible impeachment inquiry into his role in first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. “Hee-hee-hee,” the 80-year-old president chuckled during a gaggle with reporters at FEMA headquarters in Washington after discussing the impact of Tropical Storm Idalia on Florida and nearby states. “Let’s talk about why I’m here,” Biden deflected. Biden had answered without complaint several prior questions that were unrelated to the storm, including about Overdose Awareness Day, Senate Minority...

Did Bank of America discriminate against a Tennessee ministry over its Christian views or was it simply a business matter? Steve Happ, board member and founder of Indigenous Advance, a Memphis-based charity that, along with Indigenous Advance Customer Center LLC, has partnered with and served indigenous people in Uganda since 2015 to provide basic needs and share the Gospel. Despite holding deposit and credit card accounts with Bank of America since its inception, Indigenous Advance received a series of letters in April in which the bank announced it was closing the group’s accounts within 30 days. According to the nonprofit...

WEST MELBOURNE, Fla. - A man from Melbourne was arrested after he unsuccessfully robbed a Wendy's and a bank, according to police. Daniel Jeconiah Gibbs was nabbed Tuesday for the double attempted robbery on August 5. He was taken into custody by the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, but the Palm Bay Police Department is also expected to bring more charges toward Gibbs. The alleged robbery attempts happened August 5. Gibbs walked into a Wendy's at 135 Palm Bay Road and approached an employee behind the order counter, police said. Gibbs displayed what employees believed to be a gun in his...