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Looks like Wells Fargo Bank is experiencing computer glitches. I contacted them on a transaction which I did not make and they insisted I close all my accounts. However, after talking with numerous WFB reps I found out that no web login activity for my account was logged for date in question for the transaction of interest - which was verified by WFB rep to be an on-line transaction. So how can an on-line transaction be processed/requested when their logs indicate no login to request any such transaction. And I made no such request in any form. Either WFB has...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Federal regulators on Tuesday filed civil charges against Bank of America Corp. /quotes/zigman/190927/quotes/nls/bac BAC -1.12% alleging that the big bank lied to its investors about the riskiness of loans packaged and sold in $850 million worth of mortgage-backed securities. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint alleging that Bank of America defrauded investors when it sold them the securities.

The Federal Reserve Bank, with a capitalization of $62 billion, has recently lost $192 billion, as interest rates have risen, according to ETF Guide and Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners. This, despite attempts by the central bank of the United States to keep interest rates much, much lower "Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year,” writes Minerd, “has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed’s holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began...

I was on Fox Business with Connell McShane and Dagen McDowell talking about the low homeownership rates for Millenials. I mentioned that mortgage rates are expected to rise, hindering a housing recovery. On that note, Kate Berry at American Banker wrote today about the shrinking of mortgage units at lenders. “Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) are laying off hundreds of employees at their mortgage units, one of the most tangible signs yet of the falloff in refinancings and the painful shift underway in the mortgage market.” In the latest Mortgage Bankers survey, mortgage purchase applications remain in a rut...

Economic blogger and author, Charles Hugh Smith, joins Rick for an in-depth discussion on cycles and why he foresees a banking crisis in 2015. Other cycles covered are cycles of war, and climate.

The Mortgage Bankers Association have issued their proposal on Federal housing reform. Here is their proposal. 2013KeyStepsontheRoadtoGSEReformPaper-Transition The Mortgage Bankers proposal is a minimalist approach to housing finance reform. That is, it keeps Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac around along with the government guarantee. It just recommends small changes to the existing model. Here are the five recommended steps: 1. FHFA should require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make their individual mortgage-backed securities fungible, or create a common security, for delivery to the TBA market. 2. FHFA should require the GSEs to implement up-front risk sharing programs that restore...

The Obama administration, already under fire for the IRS scandal and National Security Agency snooping of the computers and cellphones of Americans, is also spending millions to have private contractors conduct a dragnet for confidential and personal credit and bank transactions without a warrant. Newly obtained documents from the Obama-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reveal that the administration has OK'd a project to accumulate the personal financial data of some 5 million and share it with other agencies to build a "nationally representative panel of credit information on consumers for use in a wide range of policy research projects." The...

SAO PAULO (AP) — Protests are planned in more than 80 cities across Brazil Thursday, a week after the start of massive demonstrations that have sent hundreds of thousands of people into the streets denouncing poor public services and government corruption. The biggest protest will likely shake Rio de Janeiro where protesters say they'll march on the iconic Maracana stadium just as a Confederations cup soccer game is getting under way in the afternoon. Protests are also planned in the country's biggest city, Sao Paulo, and towns all over this continent-sized country. Several city leaders had already given into initial...

ZURICH—Swiss lawmakers have heightened the tension surrounding a plan for the country's banks to collectively come clean to U.S. authorities about their dealings with suspected American tax evaders. The lower house of Switzerland's parliament voted against adopting a plan for banks to step around the Alpine nation's banking secrecy laws and start handing information to the U.S. Department of Justice. The vote sends the measure back to the upper house, which approved it last week, for further debate and another show of hands. A reversal in the upper house would mean the legislation's demise—and could lead to severe legal complications...

CHINA -- A Chinese woman almost lost her life savings recently when termites invaded a wooden drawer in which she kept a plastic bag containing 400,000 yuan: the equivalent of $65,000 U.S. dollars. It was only after the woman decided to redecorate her house in Guandong Province that she noticed the termites had dined on her nest egg. According to the Guangzhou Daily, the money was given to the woman by her children. A local bank generously scanned the remaining cash and was able to identity 340,000 yuan which means the termite's meal ultimately cost the woman roughly $9,786.

<p>Technology companies stung by the controversy over the National Security Agency’s sweeping Internet surveillance program are calling on U.S. officials to ease the secrecy surrounding national security investigations and lift long-standing gag orders covering the nature and extent of information collected about Internet users.</p>

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains. The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector. Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters. Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior...

Being a porn star might not meet the approval of everyone you meet but you might think your bank manager would be one person who wouldn't have cause to complain. Adult film actress Chanel Preston has starred in close to 150 porn flicks and is well compensated for her time, but now it appears she is having trouble keeping a bank account.

President Obama will nominate Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) today to be the Director of the Federal Finance Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Many have called for the firing of the agency’s current director, Ed DeMarco. DeMarco has headed the agency since 2009 and was a Bush appointee. Watt’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation. Watt played a key role in the he Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that is now law and has been an advocte for minority lending institutions. Watt is 67 and a graduate of Yale Law School. He has served in Congress since 1993 and...

OK, so a lot of rich people live in New York. We know that. It's not news. But it hits home in a non-abstract way when, if you're not one of the very rich, it's rubbed in your face at your local bank. These two ATM receipts were discovered at a local Chase bank by my old colleague Tony Case, the special reports editor at Adweek. He gave me permission to publish his photo of them. They show that someone recently withdrew $300 in cash on a balance of $1 million, just after someone else tried to withdraw $100 on...

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything. You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many...

Sabino Fuentes-Sanchez hid $25,000 all around his house because he didn't trust banks. Lasonia Christon receives her Wal-Mart salary on a pre-paid debit card. Kim James was homeless for most of the past decade in part because she had no place to save money. There are plenty of reasons people still live all-cash lives, but the sheer number who do it might surprise you. At a time when the majority of Americans use online banking, and some even deposit checks using their cellphone cameras, roughly eight percent of America's 115 million households don’t have a checking or savings account, according...

The Bank of Japan announced their “Shock and Awe” monetary strategy on April 4th to inject $1.4 trillion into their economy in less than two years. (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan unleashed the world’s most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows. That was on April 4th. But on closing on Friday April 5th, the 10 year Japanese sovereign yield regained most of its decline. If we look at the change...

DELETION of data allegedly took place on computers belonging to senior Bank of Cyprus (BoC) executives, according to the leaked findings of a probe into the circumstances that forced the island’s biggest lenders to seek state assistance. Alvarez and Marsal, the firm tasked with investigating why Bank of Cyprus and Laiki sought state assistance, said the information provided by BoC was incomplete and data deleting software were found on the computers of two senior executives. “Our computer forensic technologists have found that the computers of two employees, (former CEO) Mr. (Andreas) Eliades and (senior manager group treasury and private banking)...

When asked if bank account confiscation will be going worldwide, Jim said, ”Well, it’s now in their bag of tricks, but yes, they can do anything they want too now. I for one am worried and I’m taking preparations. Who knows if I’m right or not, but I’d rather be safe than sorry as all of those people who had money in Cyprus have learned. They thought they had a normal bank account…but now it’s been [taken] with the sanctions of many governments and institutions.”